I know I am not the only person in the world who was hoping by some miracle it would be Lazaro Arbos eliminated last night on American Idol, but of course it was Devin Velez instead. It is not like Devin had a prayer of actually winning the whole competition after being in the Bottom 3 for the third straight week, but in terms of actual singing ability, he is light years ahead of Lazaro. I have taken the latest WhatNotToSing performance scores (sorted from highest to lowest by their solo performances only) and updated them with last night's results, making the columns yellow for any week where a contestant was in the Bottom 3, red when they are eliminated (sorry, Devin) and either pink or blue otherwise depending on their gender. The chart now has 5 columns for each contestant to help show their trend for the past 5 weeks. Several observations are very clear:
1) Janelle Arthur has definitely been improving and now is definitely a contender. I am curious to see how the odds makers will place her after two pretty good weeks for her after her first few weeks were okay but not stellar. She is now catching up with the leading contestants like...
2) Candice Glover who is the most consistently good (with Kree Harrison narrowly behind her.) But now the expectations for both of them are high every week. So if they have an off week they will start looking like...
3) Angie Miller who peaked early and has been on a downward trend, especially the last couple weeks with some not so impressive performances. Luckily I believe she has a very big fan base and will probably be safe for a few more weeks. No matter how unimpressive her performances may be she will still probably last longer than...
4) Amber Holcomb who has been consistently good but needed that Bottom 3 week to fire up her voting fans. This week she was not in the Bottom 3, but she has to keep bringing more interesting performances or she will end up like...
5) Devin Velez, an impeccable vocalist but a not so interesting entertainer. Devin also started strong but people got bored with his very well delivered but sleepy performances. Now he has plenty of time to practice all the words to all the group songs for the tour so he can repeatedly bail out...
6) Lazaro Arbos who is also one of the most consistent singers on the show, but he is consistently bad. I was happy to finally see him in the Bottom 3, but we all knew it would not be him headed home. His enunciation when he sings is terrible, and he seems to be a nervous wreck. It is hard to believe he is the only guy left except for...
7) Burnell Taylor, who is the only male with a shot of finishing in the Top 3. Burnell does have a great tone and sound to his vocals, but he needs to liven things up too. Hopefully since next week is "rock week" it will give some of the sleepier contestants like Burnell (and Amber) a chance to deliver some excitement in their performances. They need it if either of those two want to end up in the Top 3.