Rock Star: INXS -- week 6

How about that all-acoustic show? The eight performances on Tuesday night were quite a change of pace for this show. The songs were chosen for the singers, and all of them were performed acoustically, which presented dual challenges for them.

My vote went to Suzie this week, for her classy rendition of Sam Cooke's "Bring It On Home To Me". (Evidently, my vote couldn't save her from the bottom three). Close runners-up were Ty for his soulful interpretation of Rod Stewart's "Maggie May" (although I agree that he should lose the tongue affectation) and Mig's solo piano performance of Peter Frampton's "Baby I Love Your Way" (although his inclusion of Jordis and Marty for the Wednesday night encore was a bit corny).

Deanna struggled through "I Can't Make You Love Me". Her voice is well-suited to the heartbroken country ballad, but she couldn't quite make it ache like Bonnie Raitt could. Jessica actually did fairly well with "Torn", the Ednaswap song that was a hit for Natalie Imbruglia, but she predictably landed in the bottom three along with Suzie and Deanna. All three women did well performing INXS songs on Wednesday night, but one of them had to go. Not surprisingly, it was Jessica. She had been on borrowed time for the last few weeks, and her time was up. Time will tell if we see more of her in the future, or if she is simply headed back to the coffee house.

Near-misses: after inspiring the all-acoustic show with his surprise move last week, Marty went back to being predictable with his Cobainian rendition of the Britney Spears hit "Baby One More Time". Regardless of who made it famous, it's really not a bad song, but Marty's performance held no surprises. Jordis was in good voice for her performance of Bob Dylan's "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" (the same song that resulted in the show's first elimination when Dana swiftly got booted), but her interpretation of the song was strange. She smiled through much of it and added the line: "just like I did so many times before". She sang the song as if it is about faith, not about dying. Does she misunderstand the song, or was she trying to reinvent it? It was hard to tell.

The worst was the notorious JD. His ineffectual performance of the Stones ballad "As Tears Go By" was the worst rendition I've ever heard of the song. Even Marianne Faithfull's most whiskey-voiced performance of the song is preferable to JD's. He also looked bad on Sunday night's reality portion on VH1, showing a somewhat childish inability to work with others. It's a wonder he continues to evade the bottom three.

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