American Idol Recap – Wednesday – January 27, 2009

Avril Lavigne, who is one of my favorite young singers, was the guest judge for the first day of auditions in Los Angeles.  Despite her cat hoodie, Avril is to be taken seriously, and she looked great.  The big freak of the first day was a guy named Neil Goldstein who claimed to have an IQ over 160.  He sang abysmally and almost had to be escorted out using security, just like a poor unruly slob last week.  Finally Simon convinced him to leave before security took him and completed his total humiliation.

Avril coolly quipped when Neil left, “awkward.”

Avril is cool, okay?

Mary Powers – did a great job of singing Pat Benatar’s Love is a Battlefield. She hit the big notes without mimicking her.  She got a yes (golden ticket) despite a catty comment from Simon about her tired and clichéd look.

Andrew Garcia was probably the best singer, not particularly attractive, with big glasses and ill placed tattoos, he could really go far.

Although artistically I prefer Avril Lavigne to Katy Perry (however Katy is a blast and Hot and Cold is a great song) I definitely preferred Katy’s critiquing to Avril’s.  She was a real hard nose, compared to all the other guest judges so far.  She started out ballsy when she arrived via car and remarked, “ridiculous” when she found out the other three judges were arriving via helicopter on the roof.  She thought this was pretentious for sure.

Katy and Kara soon clashed and cattily collided over several decisions concerning auditions.  It seems Katy is most often cold and not hot when it comes to judging fledgling singing talent.  Good for her, enough soft-soaping.

Call me cynical, or mean-spirited (It has been done before), but my favorite part of the show was the crying montage.  Here we got to see dozens of rejected singers bawl and throw tantrums over the judges no decisions.  It was kind of fun to see how immature some of the contestants were; so much for graceful losing.

Here is Randy’s quote of the show, “Yeah you did it, Baby You did it.”

He’s a genius.