The Power of A Mom Haircut

I didn’t watch American Idol last night because honestly, my DVR was blowin’ up at 8 PM, and if I have to choose between Survivor, Community, and a one hour results show featuring Danny Gokey, guess which one’s getting dropped? And so it was with great shame that I sacrificed Idol for the greater good, but I did hear the results. Discussion after the jump.

Thanks to Lyndsey Parker at Yahoo!, I received up to the minute information about who was going home last night, and the results didn’t much surprise me. All four of them either failed enormously on the big stage or simply served up forgettable tunes. Such was the case with John Park and Michelle Delamor, neither of whom were particularly bad, just boring. I would have liked John to have stuck around one more week (perhaps sending Aaron Kelly home in his place), but I’m not sure I can necessarily blame the voting public for his ouster. John Mayer is simply not the best way to make a lasting impression.
Same goes for Creed, but we already knew that. Michelle Delamor certainly did not benefit from a lack of screen time during the audition and Hollywood week phases. An average performance of an average song didn’t help matters either. Again, no shock to see her go; although, surely Lacey Brown should have left instead. Let’s be honest here. Lacey is terrible. She has no stage presence, her fashion sense is deplorable, and her voice occasionally sounds like a creaky door swaying in the wind. And yet for two weeks now, she has somehow avoided the ax. Is it her red-state, Texas appeal? Or has she simply mobilized a particularly rabid segment of the antiquing population? I’d like to blame the Mom haircut. Sitting atop her head like a giant, red potted plant, Lacey’s hair looks like it could belong to any 35 year-old mom who’s given up on trying to look attractive. I know that might sound vaguely chauvinist, but go to any mall in northeast Pennsylvania (or rather, take a stroll through the Dallas-Fort Worth airport), and you cannot deny that it’s true.
Nevertheless, my tenuous theory is that all these moms with their awful haircuts (and we must assume, accompanying mom jeans) see themselves in Lacey and thus have voted for her to stay. Why else would they keep her around? It’s certainly not for her ability to hit high notes (or really any notes at all). Down with Lacey, I say!
Side note: she does seem awfully sweet!
Side side note: but seriously, that HAIR.
As for the other two Idol rejects, Jermaine Sellers and Haeley Vaughn went home simply for being awful. Jermaine gave us a sleepy butchering of Marvin Gaye, but even worse, he displayed prima dona tendencies in front of the judges by challenging them to pick a song for him and then proclaiming that Jesus would keep him around another week. Well, I guess Jesus forgot his Idol obligations because Jermaine got the sacred boot last night, thus ending a precipitous fall from grace. How could someone so wonderful and likable in his audition turn out to be such a total failure? I guess that’s the magic of this show. Let’s not forget Constantine Maroulis (actually, if we could forget him, that would be lovely). Back when he auditioned, he was just a wide-eyed, friendly chap with long hair. Cut to eight weeks later, he became the smirking, camera-raping, chest-hair preening sleaze that we all know and loathe today. Fame and the big stage can do many things to many people, and it’s not always good.
Luckily for Haeley Vaughn, she seems largely untouched by her sudden micro-fame. She is a sweetheart, and I really do hope the best for her, but truly her voice was simply not up to par. It makes me wonder why she even made it to the semifinals. Clearly it was all based on personality because had the judges been pushing for vocal skills, clearly they would have taken someone like Angela Martin. Alas.
What did you guys think of the ousters? Did America choose correctly? And how was Danny Gokey?