Pop Goes the World

[jlh]

Not pop, actually, but an assortment of "songs that Gwen Stefani and Tony Kanal really love and/or wrote." ziggy1278 noted that Gwen was an excellent coach and I completely agree. No Rymon tonight, but a weird "Ryan mugs for the camera in a closeup shot" moment that I love but do not entirely understand.

1. Lakisha, "Last Dance." But what will be left for disco night with Barry Gibb? She was lovely, and I, too, loved the boots.
   
2. Chris Sligh, "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic." Jesus, Chris, it's called syncopation. What a mess.
   
3. Gina, "I'll Stand By You." She was awesome! Yay!
   
4. Sanjaya, "Bathwater." Like the judges, I have nothing to say here, except perhaps *sigh*
   
5. Haley, "True Colors." I feel that Gwen wasn't all that impressed with Haley. I wish that we'd had more time tonight so that we could have heard what the hell Haley was trying to do, but I really didn't like her version at all. Hugely clunky.
   
6. Phil, "Every Breath You Take." So this song is actually sort of boring if you aren't staring at Sting's cheekbones. But then I usually find Phil sort of boring. He did a nice job, but it didn't touch me.
   
7. Melinda, "Heaven Knows." Once again, awesome. But they really have to stop with the belts. They think that they're giving her a waist, but they actually call attention to her tummy, which is like, her only figure flaw. Where are the Gayles? But I love the flip; so much better than the pageboy thing she was rocking last night.
   
8. Blake, "Love Song." First, he didn't do the Cure song; he did the bullshit 311 cover (Paula), which is unsurprising since they're his favorite band. So I hated it and the cheesy hand gesture at the end, and also 1982 is calling and wants its sweater back.
   
9. Jordin, "Hey Baby." She sounded fantastic. But I actually really hated the outfit, like, so much. Grey is NOT her color. Even in a horrible outfit she managed to be adorable, so hey.
   
10. Chris Richardson, "Don't Speak." Um, you know, it was fine, whatever. I'm just sort of not really all that impressed with him. He'll be around for a while, and then he'll be gone. Seems like a nice kid though.
    

So this is the thing about Sligh and his inability to find the "pocket": He needs to listen to more black music, or even rock that was actually influenced by black music. There is little whiter than Christian rock and he just can't handle anything that isn't a straight ahead rhythm, which is weird, because he has all these pretensions of musicality but actually a child can hear the reggae syncopation of The Police. It's like he sang too many pop songs in a show choir, because those school choir arrangements nearly always take out the tricky rhythm because it's so tough to get a lot of kids to do it in unison. Music master class my ass. I dread his still being around for disco night, I really do.

Poll The Hollywood Ten