I have a greater appreciation for disco music tonight. Given the butchering that a selection of disco hits took on tonight's episode of American Idol, I've clearly underestimated the difficulty of the genre.

The show started off with word that Corey Clark, he of the ear-shredding "upper reigster" that Randy and Paula seemed to love, had been booted off the show for not telling the producers about a pending legal case where he was charged with beating up his sister, resisting arrest, etc. In a taped segment, he denied the charges, apologized to anyone and everyone who may not have made it on the show due to his being there, and promised that he'd keep trying to abuse our hearing for years to come. It may have had more of an impact if he'd apoligized to his family, given the embarrasment of the whole thing.

(As of about 5 minutes ago, Corey is still in a group shot on the show's main web page. Whoops!)

In any case, the show did go on, complete with guest judge Verdine White, who everyone except Mike Hoey-Lukakis has probably not heard of. He's the bassist for Earth, Wind and Fire, who I've not thought of as a disco outfit but they did record some stuff that'd fit. He wore Seinfeld's puffy shirt and shiny pants, not sure if they were leather, pleather, vinyl, or whatever.

Quick hits on the kids, even though the memory is painful at times:
Rickey sang something (the song list isn't up and I can't remember) that had him hitting notes as high as the backup singers track. Not good.
Carmen proved that she cannot hold a note to save her life. Also not good.
Clay sang something and sang it well, but he's not disco.
Camera whore Kimberly Caldwell wasn't that bad, I thought, as she has power enough to get through the song. Paula actually made a negative comment, noting that she thought Ms. Caldwell was a little off and may be getting complacent. It's all meh to me.
Kimberly Locke sang "It's Raining Men" (how does thatsong stick when the rest haven't?) and took a second to warm up, but she did well. Her disco look was good with the hair, not so much with the dress.
Ruben sang "Can't Get Enough" by Barry White, but he's nowhere deep enough. Kimberly Locke has a deeper voice than Ruben. Sang it well for not being Barry, though.
Trenyce was OK, not her best but she's got enough voice to get through.
Joshua was God-awful singing "Celebration" by Kool and the Gang. He's gone all country, making disco a bit of a reach, but he could have done much, much beter.

(An aside: over the weekend I caught bits of Nashville Star on USA and, though I'm not a country fan, I thought their performers were better overall. It helps that some of them are a little older, and have thus been able to mature. They all play instruments, too, and play with a live band. That helps a lot.)

As for American Idol, it isn't exactly groundbreaking, and my attraction to it is formed, at least in part, by the train wreck aspect of things. Which should have made tonight's hour sit much better than it did. I'd rather watch Bill O'Reilly go a full hour with Peter Arnett than watch this show again.

The overall crapitude makes picking a bottom three difficult, but as I've been so off in the other weeks I suppose it doesn't matter. I think Joshua gets into the bottom three as he has the whammy of going last and being really underwhelming. I have to think that Carmen will finally lose whatever protective coating she has and will enter the bottom three (unless the Mormons have a well-organized phone tree). Rickey will round the group out; being the bottom three last week gives the public a taste of booting him out.

And, pressed for a loser, I'll go with Joshua. I know, he's a Marine and we love him for it, but the performance was really not good at all.

Be sure to tune in next week, when the theme is polka and our guest judge is the reanimated corpse of Lawrence Welk! (Not really, of course, but wouldn't that be cool?)