New look, new talents and a brand new stage sets the tone for an exciting night of performances. I must admit the jitters did get to a few of them but overall it was highly entertaining and one of the best Top 12 ever to grace American Idol.

The surprise for me of the night had to be David Archuleta forgetting the lyrics thus having a memorable night for all the wrong reasons. That being said, I'm sure his gigantic fan base will see him through to the next round for sure.

The weaker or safe efforts of the night besides D.Archuleta in my opinion would be David Hernandez, Kristy Lee Cook and surprisingly Ramiele Malubay who is one of my personal favorite.

Now comes the performances that blew the new roof off, first was Chikezie who sang 'She's a Woman' with a whole new vibe and funk to it. A huge risk that obviously paid off from the applaud of the crowd and judge's feedback. He looked remarkably comfortable on stage and really let loose.



Next was the back to back performances of Carly Smithson and David Cook. They really showed they mean business and sang their hearts out. Vocally Carly is fantastic as usual and David picked the perfect song to add his flavor to it. I also have to add that David Cook's interview was the best of the lot as well. He really oozes with confident and charisma which probably comes with his age. Out of both of them, I decided to showcase David's performance here cause I feel he did heck of a job on it.

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With the guys on fire the night before, the girls knew what they had to do to put on a better show and that my dear friends they did. Even the so called weak ones did much better than anticipated such as Kady and especially Kristy with a country touch to her performance as she promised.

The judge's favorite of the night was Amanda's performance which although I enjoyed it immensely, I felt it was more of a victory for showmanship rather than anything else. I am sure though that the rockers of America will vote for her in droves after that.



My personal favorite of the night was a tough fight between Carly and Syesha whom I thought both of them really put on an amazing vocal performance. Since I featured Carly last week, so today would be Syesha's turn.



At the end of the day, I am very much like Paula whereby I can't pin point which one of the 8 girls I would prefer to be sent packing so to speak. Amazing talent this year indeed.

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Oh what a NIGHT! Song choice was the highlight of previous weeks and this week the guys really got it spot on. Besides Luke who took the stage first, the other 7 really showed their ability and it is hard to even fathom which two will have to leave.

With amazing performances from several of them, its extremely hard to pick my favorite so to speak but after much thought, the best one of the night belonged to David Cook with his rock rendition of 'Hello'.



I have to give credit to Michael Johns, Jason Castro and Chikezie for very impressive performance on their part. Talking about Chikezie, I really do not agree with Simon on his comment at all. For me the vocal and control was fantastic, so nevermind if it was a Whitney song.

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First and foremost, the girls this week seem to have taken the safe route with an overall average performance by all of them. A point mentioned yesterday about Song Choice from the 70's is even more highlighted by the girls. The bad ones in terms of song choice I feel are Kady Malloy and Amanda Overmyer.

The real highlight of the day I must say is from the very first contestant that took the stage, Carly Smithson with her powerful rendition of Crazy For You. It was indeed an improvement over previous week for Carly and she showed why she is one of the favorite this year.



As I mentioned it was a offnight in my opinion for the girls but I hope to see all of them who makes it through to put on the performance of their career.

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Every year during this stage of the competition, one of the contestants will simply take all of our breath away with an unforgettable and memorable performance. Last year was Melinda and this year it's the highly gifted David Archuleta. I was totally shocked when he started singing as I thought singing 'Imagine' a song so well known is as Simon puts it, highly risky but David did amazingly especially with his own arrangement to it.



For the night as a whole, the guys really showed what they got. The ones that deserves special mention to me would be Danny Noriega, David Cook and especially David Hernandez who gave the 2nd best performance of the day for me.

The thing that bug me a little is with the song choice. With a great decade to choose from which is the 70's, it is just astonishing why some of them did not pick better and more impactful songs for the week.

Oh well, lets just see what the girls cook up tomorrow then.

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