peterskim blog

I’m so happy that Sanjaya has finally been kicked off the show. His continued presence on the show has made the competition a joke. It has taken away all legitimacy from the competition. But now the competition is on!

Jordin Sparks is our new favorite. She definitely started out in a lower/middle tier of competitors, but she’s shown extraordinary growth since the competition was narrowed to 12. She’s pretty and I think she has the most potential.

Melinda Doolittle is amazing; the most polished of the bunch. But I feel like her problem is that she’s already peaked. Melinda is just absolutely amazing—but where else is there left to go from here?

I love Blake. I think he’s the most creative and talented (as an overall musician) of the bunch. But unfortunately, this is a vocal competition.

Lakisha is going to be gone next week or the week after. She always looks unhappy. She’s also had 2-3 shaky performances. She has the potential to put out an amazing vocal performance but is just too inconsistent. Not as much of a rock as Melinda is.

Chris is going to be out soon too. Simon is right—his voice is too nasal.

Phil has a good voice but I’m sorry, he looks like a zombie. He might make it to the top 3, but he won’t win.

Overall, this has been a great season for American Idol. I think it has the most talented top 6 in a while, maybe the best top 6 out of all the competitions. In most of the other years, there were maybe 2 people who were *really* good and deserved to win. But this year, we have at least two who definitely deserve to win and possibly two others who might have been good enough to win in other years’ competitions.

I got Good Monsters, the new Jars of Clay album, in the mail today. I pre-ordered it back in August, expecting that it’d get shipped a few days before the release date and that i’d get it pretty soon after the release date. Didn’t happen. It supposedly shipped in September 1st. First class mail usually only takes 2-5 days, so I should have received it by September 8th. Instead, I got it today, September 18th, 12 postal days after the ship date. I’m never going to pre-order a CD again.

Anyways, I’ll start listening to it and try to write a review in a few days. A CCM Magazine review calls it “unequivocally Jars’ best work yet.” I’m doubtful since I’ve already heard some snippits and it doesn’t come close to their best album so far (The Eleventh Hour). A bunch of us are going to see them live in November.

I’ve been wanting to get Fiona Apple’s first two albums for a long time… now I finally have them, thanks to lala.com!

I think Fiona is such a ridiculously talented musician. Her album Tidal was released in July 1996 but it doesn’t sound dated at all when I listen to it now, more than ten years later. Even though many female artists of the same era (Sarah McLachlan, Jewel, Sheryl Crow, etc) became much more commercially successful, Fiona is the one that still blows me away when I listen to her tunes.

I just got Hot Fuss by the Killers through lala.com (let me know if you’re interested in signing up and I’ll send you a referral; you can sign up yourself, but I get something if you do it through me!).

The album on the whole is okay (I’d probably give it 3.5 out of 5 stars) but I love the song Mr. Brightside. It’s probably one of my favorite songs of the past few years. I like it so much because it has a really huge anthemic energetic feel to it that I just can’t help but get swept away in when I hear it.