I just re-listened to his performance, and I thought Scott was off-pitch for a lot of the song.  Now, I’m not saying he sang poorly, but on second listen, I think it’s clear that Ju’Not Joyner was the 2nd best male performance of the night, and deserved one of the spots in the Top 12.  At the very least, Ju’Not deserved a wild card spot over any one of the 4 female wild-cards.

I’m really interested to see how the results turn out for this group.  For the girls, it’s obvious Lil Rounds will get in.  For the guys, either Jorge Nunez or Scott Macintyre.

I’m VERY interested to see who the wild card will be.  Is it possible a girl will be the 3rd qualifier?  I think the dark horse candidate is Kendall Beard.  Past seasons have shown that Southern, country-music-style contestants are very, very popular among the American Idol viewers.  Could Kendall be the next beneficiary from this demographic voting bloc?  Michael Sarver already has benefited.

I will expand on this in another post, but I think performance order was very important this week.   More to come later.

Rate | Statistics

Here’s how much time each of the Group 3 contestants have spent on camera.  This includes all audition episodes through the last Hollywood Week episode.

1. Nathaniel Marshall – 14:43
2. Kristen McNamara – 13:13
3. Alex Wagner-Trugman – 10:38
4. Jorge Nunez – 8:05
5. Von Smith – 7:38
6. Lil Rounds – 7:00
7. Taylor Vaifanua – 6:31
8. Scott Macintyre – 6:27
9. Arianna Afsar – 6:01
10. Kendall Beard – 2:32
11. Ju’Not Joyner – 0:55
12. Felicia Barton – 0:33

The top two had lots of screen time during Hollywood Week, but much of that was drama.  Jorge Nunez was up there because he had lots of screen time in his San Juan audition.

I’m most interested in seeing how people react to Kendall Beard, Ju’Not Joyner, Felicia Barton, who really haven’t been seen at all.  This goes for Arianna Afsar too, whose singing hasn’t even been heard since her first audition, which aired over a month ago.

After the episode, you can rate each of the performances on a scale of 1-10 here at Reality Rate and Predict

Rate This Week’s Performances | See User Ratings for this week’s performances

I’m currently re-watching the 4 episodes of Hollywood week.  The main reason is to track how much air time each of the contestants have gotten before the Top 36 rounds, and see if the amount of exposure influences future voting.

I’m done with the first 3 Hollywood Week episodes, and am about 1/4 of the way through the final episode (i.e. the “Green Mile” episode).  Here are some things I noticed:

• Tatiana del Toro is probably the most annoying contestant in American Idol history.  However, I found it interesting that Rose Flack actually received more screen time than Tatiana during the group round episodes.
• Surprisingly, Anoop Desai hasn’t actually gotten much screen time.  During Hollywood week, he’s been shown for about 2 minutes, with over half of that time occurring during the Green Mile episode.  He didn’t even appear in the Group Round episode.
• Nick Mitchell/Normal Gentle has sung the Dreamgirls song 3 times (Audition, Hollywood day 1, Top 36 round 2).
• During the third Hollywood episode (the one where they put them into rooms), the Group 2 shown on camera consisted almost entirely of Top 36 contestants.
• Before the Green Mile episode, Ricky Braddy has been shown exactly once, for less than a second.  Given how great his voice is, do you think this affected his voting results last week?
• There are many strong male contestants, but seemingly very few strong female contestants.
• There are many instances where a contestant is shown on camera, but not mentioned in the voiceovers.  Casey Carlson, Anne Marie Boskovich, Michael Castro, and Joanna Pacitti all seemed to have been shown a lot in the background, but not mentioned.

Once I’m done with Hollywood week, I’ll take a look at how much screen time each of the next 12 Top 36 contestants have had to date.

I was very impressed by Allison Iraheta’s performance last Tuesday.  However, her pre- and post-performance interviews revealed her lack of charisma.  To be fair, she’s only 16, and probably still struggling with her own identity.  But I feel like I’ve seen this recipe before: precocious talent and an utter lack of personality… i.e. Michael Phelps our American hero.

While Michael Phelps can look like a complete idiot on SNL, it doesn’t diminish his swimming skills.  That’s not necessarily the case with Allison, and with singers in general.  Somehow, personality influences our perception of a singer’s abilities.  I hope I’m completely wrong, because that girl can sing, and I want to see her go far.