1. Luke Menard’s voice is like one of those horrible high-pitched squeals that only dogs can hear. And I’m the dog.
2. Goddamn Chikezie covering Whitney Houston did not help me in this pool one bit. Shut up, Chikezie. Sing Aretha next week or you’re dead to me.
3. INXS already has a mediocre new lead singer, Michael Johns.
4. When I cracked a joke about David Hernandez’s most embarrassing moment, balloons and banners fell from the ceiling, for I was the one millionth person to do so.
5. When Leonard Cohen and his one-half-octave range sang “Hallelujah,” he did not “work it out,” Randy Jackson. Also, when dumb-ass Jason Castro sang it, and you praised the “degree of difficulty,” you might have acknowledged that Jason Castro either dodged or completely biffed the hard parts of Jeff Buckley’s arrangement of that song. That last note was a joke! A joke! A JOKE!
RAR!
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7 comments:
Oh, Jason Castro, you don't go near Jeff Buckley, even by proxy. Because then this kind of thing happens. All-Caps and italics!
When Stephen ends things "RAR!", that's how you know he's real mad.
Seriously, I don't get the freaking out over the Jason Castro thing. I remember saying, long ago, that one of my favorite things about that Jeff Buckley cover is how it starts with a breath. It's just...so brilliant and still that you can't fake it. To me, Castro came off like a big faker, trying to emulate something genuinely artistic, and it just doesn't work that way.
You're exactly right: As a vocal showcase, it's not just that huge, pure note Buckley hits at the end; it's the stillness and subtleties along the way. Castro's performance was so twee and watery and smirky and open-mic-y by comparison; a million dreadlocked monkeys could sit with a million acoustic guitars and make that sound... say, four times out of ten.
This is kind of off-topic, but you have no idea how hilarious it is for Stephen to be like, "Yes, Linda, you're exactly right about Jeff Buckley!" after spending the last three years reconstructing my musical tastes from scratch.
You know how sometimes you read a lambasting like Stephen's in advance and figure when you actually see the performance, it's not going to be that bad? That...didn't happen here, from the very beginning. You heard there was a WHAT chord, Jason? I couldn't even hear him on the first line! It sucked! That last note! And that smirk! What was Simon thinking?
I actually realized that there was an even bigger problem with the "Hallelujah," which was Castro's total lack of control of the tempo. That version of the song absolutely relies on that acoustic guitar...arpeggio? Is that what I want to say?...carrying that incessant rhythm, and he rushed the band very severely. That song has almost a heartbeat the way Jeff Buckley does it, and that was completely lost.
I thought it was nice. Not perfect, but nice. I like Castro's voice; it sounds a little less canned than most of the others.
Then again, I don't think Buckley even does the best version of the song (k.d. lang's is my favorite), so I'm less attached to the idea that the song is untouchable.
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