American Idol Viewer's Guide - Lennon & McCartney

As Ryan announced last week, we’re back to the Lennon/McCartney songbook. I guess no Taxman. Would have been topical…

Two seasons ago provided some heroics, especially David Cook’s coming out party with Eleanor Rigby.


It also brought along some disasters, like David Hernandez’s swan song with “I Saw Her Standing There”


At IPM Headquarters, we’re expecting the same this time around. With so many songs to choose from, I can already imagine Kara’s condescension and Simon’s exasperation as they wonder how the contestants might not choose the right one of 400 songs.

I’ll just pray that no one sounds like Steven Tyler last night.


Maybe we should add an extra side pot for the person who identifies the woman he won’t take his hands off of during the song.

I try to be forward-looking in these previews, but I can’t help but go back to Didi’s elimination. She was the first contestant to leave that really put a dent in a significant number of pool members’ picks (with apologies to the Alex Lambert fans). Was Ryan too pushy on Tuesday night? Was Didi too visibly irritated? Didi clearly didn’t want to tell her story, but she has since said her friend was on her mind. Would it have helped Didi had she told the story on stage and gotten some extra sympathy votes? Would she have seemed too fragile? We’ll never know. But it’s clear that Ryan is intent on making himself more central to the show this season, perhaps to try to make up for some of the missing excitement in the show overall.

Back to looking forward, here are the results from the IPM supercomputer’s predictions for this week’s performances (again, no order):

Sanja…I mean Tim Urban: I said “Michelle” (reggae style) last week, and the computer agrees. Though it sure would be fun to see Simon’s inevitable reaction if he did “Ticket to Ride”.

Aaron Kelly: Seems like he has “Yesterday” written all over him. It will be boring but solid, and he’ll move on. As usual.

Casey James: I know he said acoustic this week, but I’m betting he won’t be able to resist “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”.

Katie Stevens: I’d love to see her do something interesting, like “Norwegian Wood”. She’s not going to win anyway, but the wanna-be diva stuff is getting a bit tiresome and it would be nice to mix it up.

Siobahn Magnus: Seems like a pretty good bet that she’ll move back to some the more haunting songs (House of the Rising Sun, Paint it Black) that she’s thrived on. She would either do an incredible “Day in the Life”, or it will totally bomb.

Michael Lynche: Maybe an R&B version version of “Lovely Rita”? This week could be tougher on him, but, to play Kara for a moment, he seems to know who he is.

Crystal Bowersox: She could go in a lot of directions, but a “Blackbird” cover not so different from Sarah McLachlan’s would be fun to see and would work well with her style.

Lee Dewyze: Am I the only one who thinks his raspy vocal would make for a really good rocker version of “Day Tripper”? I could see that being a highlight.

Andrew Garcia: Finally got back on track last week. Is he building momentum or was it just a flash in the pan? It would be funny to see him sing “Nowhere Man”, but the computer thinks he’ll bring back the guitar on “Here Comes the Sun”.

With so many possibilities, I would guess that all of these are wrong. Please chime in in the comments with your predictions.