Well, here we have yet another amazing week to, along with the first, bracket last week's horrendous showing. Perhaps following that week, Simon was a bit over the top this week, even surrounding his rare compliments with heavy sarcasm, including a few comments that were simply insulting. Meh, line of the night from Seacrest, "Simon can stick his opinions where the Sun don't shine, we call it Great Britain!" Beautiful. In the end, it was similar to week one straight down to the single performance that stood far above all the rest, and with that.....

	1. Latoya London: Wow. Perfect on the very difficult soft start, and it only got better from there, including the climactic 8-minute power high note in the middle. Similarly perfect performance to Fantasia in week 1, but I enjoy the sound of her voice much more. Definitely the best performance thus far in the competition. Wow.
	2. Elizabeth Latendre: Excellent, didn't miss a note, only even faltered once. Moved nicely on stage, excellent voice, plenty of attitude, very nice. Even liked the dress, weird junglish thing... and I'll be damned, she wasn't afraid to make fun of herself a bit.
	3. Leah Labelle: Mmmmmm, Leah's lookin' quite fine in her black dress. And damn, she's got the voice to match. Little nervous with the soft start, but settled in nicely with the power parts. Doesn't have quite the voice to match Whitney, but still very good, especially the soft ending. She could use a bit more confidence in her singing, but excellent all around performance.
	4. Jon Peter Lewis: Ahhh, the pen salesman, and don't think he's ever going to let us forget it. Meh, the anti-idol thing is refreshing for a bit, but it's getting a little old. Fortunately, he's got an excellent voice. He has a tendency to sort of give up at the ends of phrases and just let them die off, but for all that still a solid performance, if not quite Elton John-esque ;).
	5. Charly Lowry: Heh, definitely never heard an accent quite like that before, it's almost strong enough to show up in her singing. Very nice voice, but didn't catch my attention all that much. I didn't really hear the pitch problems Randy mentioned, it was just a bit bland. Decent, and she was lookin quite cute in the pink (note, pink is ok for a dress, but...).
	6. Amy Adams: Oh joy, yet another pink-haired hyper-happy chick. Just what I always love. Started off a little shaky, obviously nervous, but once the song picked up so did the performance. It was almost a bit out of her range, she had to back off on a lot of the really high notes. Meh, definitely better than Vanessa last year, and she's at least a little less annoying. Blah. Oh, and Simon says 'cabaret' far too often...
	7. Eric Yoder: Wow, this guy looks like a penis. His whole personality involves talking about his personality, and the best I can say for his voice is that it was pleasant... don't really see any comparisons to Clay. Meh, decent, but fairly forgettable... "I have a big personality, really." Yeah, ok, I'll take your word for it.
	8. Jonah Moananu: Big man from Hawaii, very cool. He's got more personality than Ruben, but not nearly as full and smooth a voice. Not that it was bad certainly, just not as strong as it needs to be, and the familiar breathing issues were readily apparent. Good, not great, might be something to the judge's criticism, the song was a bit too much r&b and not enough power.

© Brandon Baither, 2004, Keep Yo Dirty Paws Off (not like you wanna steal this junx anyway)