Katharine McPhee or Taylor Hicks Will Win American Idol

After tomorrow night, we will be down to the finale two contestants on American Idol. As much as I love his voice, I think Mr. Elliott Yamin is going to be leaving us. Simon was right when telling Elliott that despite his incredible voice, his songs choices never connected with the audience. That’s been one of Elliott’s issues throughout. But you can’t deny his voice. I hope someone recognizes his talent and gives him a record deal, because he’s more talented than most people with recording contracts out there today. Just listen to the radio for a bit and you will see what I mean.

So with my prediction that Elliott will get the boot, I’m looking at Katharine McPhee and Taylor Hicks making it to the grand finale. Both gave incredibly strong performances tonight.

Katharine McPhee was ‘thisclose’ to a perfect performance with her rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. She got points off for sitting on that damn floor again. Stand up already!!! And there was one note that almost ruined it for me. Well, it wasn’t a note as much it was a word…”heard”. In a split moment, Katharine got nervous and forgot to apply the melody to the word. It came out nasty, and punctuated. If she didn’t completely rock the rest of the song, that might have been it for me and Kat. But she did rock it. It was probably the best performance of the whole competition from a singing perspective. It was simple and beautiful and it suited Katharine’s voice perfectly. I got chills hearing her sing.

And then there was my Taylor. Sweet Taylor, oh how I want you to win next week. I voted for you a few times already, but I’ll be honest, you didn’t win 100% of my votes tonight. Sorry, but Kat outsang you a bit and she couldn’t be left was in the dark. Speaking of “dark”, Taylor did a nice job with Bruce’s “Dancing in the Dark”. Springsteen is one of my favorite’s of all time, so I’m so glad he didn’t butcher the song, because if he did, well let’s just say that he and I would need to have a little one on one time to work through our issues. Good thing I don’t have to deal with that, right? I was surprised that Simon said Taylor’s rendition of Joe Cocker’s “You’re Beautiful” was the best of his Idol career. I thought some of the notes were a little weak, and I would have loved to hear him break into that very famous falsetto …“to meeeeeee”. But how he brought me back into the Taylor Hicks Love Camp with his take on “Try a Little Tenderness”!!! This song was perfect for Taylor and he f’ing nailed it. If only Jon Cryer was there to jump around the stage with you. And as much as my own DuckyxDale wants Kat to win, I have to imagine that he at least enjoyed that homage to Otis Redding and the original Duckster.

So I’m thinking it’s Katharine McPhee and Taylor Hicks next week. I’ll be watching, and hoping Taylor takes it all. But to be honest, with Chris Daughtry gone (a moment of silence please), I don’t have the same level of passion & excitement that I had for the show last week.