So this is it – down to the final three. Compared to years past, there is no lock for the final two – not because all three are deserving (at this point, Taylor is clearly the best contestant left) but because Elliott and Katharine have so many weaknesses. And their faults were on vivid display tonight. BTW, due to Simon’s insistence, Clive Davis was not at the judges table offering critiques because Simon does not like celebrity judges cutting into his critique time (this has held true for the entire season). Although Davis did an admirable job of criticism in the past (he did not sugarcoat and offer bland platitudes like the other celebrity judges), his songs choices tonight make you wonder if he’s been watching the show this year. Finally, long time Idol viewers will realize that Taylor had the good fortune of pulling Randy to choose his song. Randy has consistently been the only judge to pick just the right song for the contestants at this stage of the competition, and he chose well yet again. And while you know Paula is going to choose badly because her faculties are impaired by booze and stupidity, Simon is equally as bad because Simon has really bad musical taste. I mean, this is a guy who made his bones producing boy bands and put together Il Divo, a group of so-so opera singers who sang cheesy shit Celine Dion wouldn’t touch. Simon’s reliance on cloying pap is at odds with his image, but what does he choose tonight? Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Case closed. Okay, it worked out for Katharine (for reasons that had nothing to do with Simon which I will discuss later), but when you heard the choice, who didn’t stick their fingers down their throats?

Elliott – Open Arms? The classic Journey power ballad? C’mon now, that’s just too much to ask for from Elliott, a guy who can’t get out of third gear much less sing with power. As expected, Elliott sang a washed out sounding version that paled in comparison. It was like a Ferrari versus a Ford Focus. Look, no one will fare well singing a song made indelible by Steve Perry’s gut-wrenching power vocals, but at least admit defeat and change it up. Instead, he goes out and tries to sing it the same way, except he totally can’t. Which even he may have known, since the expression on his face made it look like he was singing in the middle of oncoming traffic. A lackluster effort, lacking charisma, connection, and passion.

Katharine – You gotta understand that Katharine will take the simplest song and load it up with runs and big, long notes, and all the other melismatic tics that make Christina Aguilera unbearable to listen to. So when Clive Davis selects a song that already overwrought and ham handed, I almost expect Katharine to crash through the stage under the weight of all the embellishment. Here are all of Katharine’s weaknesses laid bare – the weird facial contortions, the creepy smiles, screechy notes, and awful, awful runs. I have come to the conclusion that Katharine doesn’t really know what she’s doing when she riffs like that – it’s like she’s faking it, and it totally doesn’t work. It comes off more like a parody of some other, much better singer. And while Taylor likes the multi-song format to appeal to two different listening audiences, Kat likes to dress up to appeal to two different watching audiences. The excess cleavage on display during her first song was an appeal to the horndog vote. BTW, Kat appeared sort of whiney and defensive towards the judges, excusing herself for her terrible performance by blaming it on Clive Davis’ song choice. Of course, I agree that it was a poor song choice, but she was the one that butchered it, you know?

Taylor – Again, not a great song choice. I don’t understand why Clive Davis is oblivious to the fact that Taylor’s voice and style is a triangulation of Joe Coker/Ray Charles/Michael McDonald and that Bruce Springsteen isn’t a good fit here. Dancing in the Dark isn’t a soul song anyway, and while I don’t hate the song, I always found it to be jangly and overtly pop-y compared to the rest of his oeuvre. While Taylor manages to get through the song okay, he has a minor vocal malfunction trying to pluck Paula out of the audience to dance with (a la Bruce pulling a very young Courtney Cox from the audience in the video) and he starts with a series of DeNiro-esque facial contortions that scream out for a Separated at Birth collage. BTW, was it me, or does Paula dance almost as spazzily as Taylor? Uhh… wasn’t she a choreographer? Doesn’t that mean she should be able to dance? I guess that goes hand in hand with the fact that she was a recording artist who couldn’t sing and is now a talent judge with no eye for talent and impaired judgment.

Elliott 2 – That poor bastard drew Paula for the judge’s pick ‘em. So we’re totally expecting disaster, right? Okay, so he starts out sounding pretty good – I can hear him (which is surprising) and there’s a nice soulful texture to his voice. And then he either runs out of steam or concentration or something, because it just gradually spirals into boredom. By the middle of the song my eyes glaze over and I lose interest and the applause is my only cue that he’s finished. He’s done this before a couple of times – it starts with my wife exclaiming, “Hey, he sounds good. He sounds great.” It ends with snoring. It didn’t help that the song was repetitive and didn’t have a real hook. I also doubt that most of the audience was even familiar with the song. That’s the bad song choice Daily Double. Had it been out of his range, she would have hit the trifecta.

Katharine 2 – I still contend that this song choice displays Simon’s poor musical taste, and I was afraid that Katharine was going to try to over-sing this like most people do, but she sat lady-like on the stage and produced a subdued, musical, and simplified performance that let her show off her voice without the dreadful ornamentation that ruins most of the songs she sings. I had thought, back when she sang Someone to Watch Over Me in a similar style, that she was coasting, but I was wrong – this is actually her element, more Jane Monheit/Eva Cassidy than Kelly Clarkson. Her voice is very nice now that she’s not shrieking, and simple notes sound clear and pretty compared to those godawful frilly runs. She even dropped the tics and facial contortions to make it more pleasant to look at, and the ruby red slippers were a nice touch. All is not sunshine a giggles, however – my wife quickly pointed out during the performance that Katharine appeared to have lifted a lot of the arrangement directly from the aforementioned Jane Monheit. I’ve listened to both versions, and they both start out a cappella (although they start at different points in the song) and the phrasing is obviously copied in the beginning. The middle is different (although my wife thinks that part was taken from Eva Cassidy’s version). The ending comes back to sounding like Jane again, and the lilting falsetto at the end during “beyond the rainbow” is spot on (and it’s actually one of the best parts of the song). This is pretty much the same situation Chris found himself in after his uncredited version of Walk the Line, and if I’m going to dog him about that, Katharine really shouldn’t get off Scot free either. Again, it’s not that she copied – the contestants copy Whitney and Christina all the time – it’s that she didn’t credit, which leaves the impression that she came up with the arrangement herself, and she should not be taking credit (and the extra votes that come with it) she does not deserve. All throughout tonight, Taylor went out of his way not to sound like the version everyone knows even though he went out of his way to credit Bruce Springsteen, Joe Cocker, and Otis Redding (okay, Springsteen was self-evident… Still). I mean, would it have killed her to say, “I love Jane Monheit and Eva Cassidy’s versions, and I’m going to be doing something like that”. That’s really all it takes to not be a plagiarist unless, of course, Kat wanted everyone to think she’d come up with this fantastic new arrangement, which is just a whole ‘nother can of worms.

Taylor 2 – Randy, Randy, Randy – what up dog? How is it that he nails the song choice at this stage when the others falter? This was a great song for Taylor due to the Joe Cocker connection, but then Taylor decided instead of aping Joe Cocker, he’d switch it up and make it more like Ray Charles. Which is still all good, and Taylor really sang well here. That little falsetto whoo-whoo run was just awesome, better than anything Katharine has ever managed. The interesting thing about Taylor is that he’s slowly pulling out new elements from his vocal repertoire – at first, he’s all about growly soul, then a few weeks ago he hangs a long, clear note, then a couple of weeks ago he busts out a falsetto, and now this. Maybe he can do that throat singing where he produces two tones and he’ll pick a Bobby McFerrin song next week. On the whole, it was terrific, but I’d put Something and In the Ghetto in the same league – I’m not so sure it was head and shoulders his best performance like the judges think. It certainly wasn’t the kind of transcendent version Joe Cocker’s is, which is so hypnotizingly good that I never noticed until tonight that it consists of two sentences repeated over and over. It’s like a Valentine’s Day greeting card set to music or something a drunk guy says to his frat buddy.

Elliott 3 – This is repeat of last week, where Elliott picks a song that needs him to sound snaky and dirty, but it comes out like Clay Aiken. Elliott has a soulful texture to his voice, but he loses it here and ends up sounding totally whitebread. Somewhere in the middle it sounded like even Elliott got bored, and it was like he was treading water to the finish. Unlike last week, however, Elliott received the appropriate level of criticism, and it was not universally positive. I sort of don’t understand why that was good and this wasn’t so hot, but that’s how it goes with the judges sometimes. The common thread of all three performances (aside from the fact that they were a weak group of songs) is that Elliott is a karaoke guy who tries to wow you with his voice but has nothing in terms of performing or connecting with the audience. Contrast that with Katharine, who tries too hard to make an emotional connection and ends up looking phony. That’s what Taylor brings to the table – he can make that connection and he has that charisma. Plus, he doesn’t look all nervous like Elliott. Elliott’s other problem, as my wife pointed out, is that he seems to concentrate too much on what he’s going to sing a measure from now and doesn’t feel what he’s singing in the present. Witness all the times he winds up to hit a big note or a run and leaves the rest of the song just sitting there. What comes across is that when Elliott sings, it’s sounds like a series of big notes and runs inter-connected by humming. Might as well be humming – it’s not like you can hear him over the band anyway.

Katharine 3 – Man, I don’t know who decided to pair that outfit with that lighting scheme, but basically, the black dress and knee high boots blended into the background so all you could make out was a disembodied head, a pair of arms, and a set of knees. Then she proceeds to absolutely mangle her song by reverting to her creepy smiling, facial contorting, shrieky-singing self. And her runs were so badly performed that at one point, she attempted a run while singing, “nu-uh-uh-uh-umbers” that sound more like Katharine Hepburn than Katharine McPhee. And the weird thing was, the song was about a broken hearted woman with the blues but she sang it with a big, stupid, fake smile on her face. What up with that? It’s something Lisa Tucker used to do. No hint of melancholy and no bluesy feeling at all – she sang it with some inappropriately peppy attitude that was more Doris Day than Ella Fitzgerald. If she could have just gotten through this song without reverting back to form, she would have pulled away from Elliott. Now it’s a horse race.

Taylor 3 – I was totally expecting Taylor to hit this one out of the park, especially the ending of the song that seemed, well, tailor made for him. I sort of didn’t really love the way he ended the song, but he tore the roof off compared to Kat and Elliott, so he didn’t hurt himself. I think he was trying not to ape Otis Redding, but it was a bit too screamy and he dropped the “got to, got to, got to” part that’s just too classic to ditch. All in all, it sort of seemed rushed, either in execution or in preparation, as if he thought knew so cold that he didn’t really take the time to polish it. I don’t think anyone’s going to hold that against him at this point.