so, if anyone wants to claim that the fix is in on american idol, now's your chance. unless you want to wait & see if nikki can knock off justin next week.

personally, i'm not terribly surprised. i thought that, based on perfomance, justin and tamyra had given the weakest the previous night. out of what had been considered at the time the top three, i thought she was the most assailable: kelly has 'the voice' and justin is the mop-top, even if his dancing makes him look like he has rickets. even nikki has her whole single-mother thing going on, rarely something, though, that is supported, let alone endorsed, by the heartland. but she's attractive and, oh yes, white, like the majority of voters, i'd reckon. voters who are probably more familiar with melissa etheridge than stephanie mills, and nikki is a straight melissa etheridge, the best of both worlds!

until the last two weeks, i wasn't convinced of tamyra's abilities. the only thing she seemed to communicate was a smug satisfaction with the sound of her own voice, cooing her way through songs by tina turner and gladys knight, originals that were marked with youthful impatience and unbearable longing respectively. and then came "a house is not a home," followed by last night's "feel the fire."

oh, but between those two songs came a feeble attempt at patti labelle's "new attitude." no one sings patti labelle for emotional nuance or to demonstrate subtlety. when you take up one of her songs, you're trying to go as far over the top as possible (ask randy: he apparently worked with her!). maybe tamyra didn't understand this or her maybe throat problems left her incapable of even trying. it was bad and may have left an impression on voters who didn't stick around for the second round. simon said last night in his post-mortem, "you're judged on your last song," which wasn't the case because then it would've been nikki voted off or, in a perfect world, justin and his bumbling "p.y.t." no, i think tamyra knew that patti labelle would be exactly the kind of vocalist who would fare well on american idol and she went for it. whereas the other three don't need to project themselves into singers beyond their capabilities, tamyra, like an uber-christina christian, knew what she had to do and, in the back of her mind, may have suspected that even that wouldn't be enough, that talent would only carry her so far.

someone said last night that the contestants were being judged by different criteria.yes, patti labelle would kill in this type of competition, especially, if she were cute and white. step right up, kelly...