American Idol does new gen & older gen songs

Interesting theme to last night's show - doing a song from their generation and another song from their parents generation. Pretty broad categories.

We were shown that Sheryl Crow was this week's mentor. She gave some good advice and had some good insight.

The Idols would do the new gen songs first and then come back later and do the older gen songs.

James went first and did "Closer to the edge" by 30 seconds to Mars. Iovine seems to not like older metal/hard rock and felt that this more modern rock fit James better. I don't think this song did much of anything in showing James range and I found it solid but average. His second song "Without you" was way better though and we saw that it meant a lot to James as well. I am an emotional singer myself so I not only really liked it but also know that when you know a singer feels what he's singing, that leads to magic on stage and we saw that last night.

Jacob decided to do the Jordin Sparks/Chris Brown duet "No air" as his first song. He also decided to try to sing both parts and not only was the idea not a very good one but the execution of it was a mess. NOT GOOD at all. His second song was Nazareth's "Love hurts" and Sheryl showed him how to approach the song and it seemed he mimicked her delivery at the start of it. It was good but a bit too all over the place.

This second song was the first time of the night where we saw Iovine giving bad avice to a contestant. He told him that he has to be careful with just being the Luther guy. Really? Luther is a legend and is right where Jacob should be aiming his sights vocally and musically. To have Jacob leave his comfort zone and away from where he is going to be an artist at this point in the competition is not only short-sighted but risky. Another piece of advice that Iovine gave to another contestant was really bad too. More on that in a bit. Was Iovine stacking the deck against some or was it just really bad advice?

Lauren went 3rd and she did Carrie Underwood's "Flat on the floor". It was a good performance for a 16 year old but nowhere near what Carrie does. I think in a few short years that Lauren will be near Carrie's level vocally but Carrie brings so much more to a song than just her vocals, she also brings attitude and an emotional connection that Lauren still is failing to grasp IMO. That's my biggest complaint with Lauren, she sings great but I just don't see that emotional connection to the lyrics. Hopefully it will come with age and experience. Still, with all that said, she sounded really good. Her second song was "Unchained melody" and I basically feel the same with this performance as her first. Really good but not totally connected to the lyrics.

Scotty went 4th and he did Montgomery Gentry's "Gone". I found his singing pretty good but his performing was vastly improved! He didn't do too much of the weird mic holding and he was commanding on stage. I liked the performance a lot. His second song was "You're always on my mind" and his vocals sounded really good. He's definitely constantly improving and working on little things to get better.

Haley went 5th and was given a song by Iovine that was an unreleased Lady Gaga track. At this point in the competition, that was highly risky. She was hesitant at first but did it after getting Miss Gaga's blessing. She was right to be hesitant to do a song that nobody knew. Turns out as usual, there's a reason why the song was unreleased. It wasn't very good by Gaga standards. Haley gave it her all but the song let her down and the judges came down hard on her for it. Felt bad for Haley. She followed it up with an amazing powerhouse performance of "House of the Rising Sun". She brought it and by the end she knew she had nailed it and sent a statement to the judges and Iovine to let her do her thing. Performance of the night by far.

I expect Jacob and Haley in the bottom. I think Jacob goes home tonight.