Siobhan Magnus gone in a surprise

Hey, I definitely was not expecting Siobhan Magnus to leave tonight, even if I was not a big fan of her most recent performances. When Ryan announced the bottom three of Casey, Mike and Siobhan, I was guessing at that point it was bound to be Big Mike going home tonight. I found it hard to believe Aaron Kelly was not in the bottom three. How many people can there be to vote for him in Sonestown, PA? I suppose he probably does have the teen and tween fan base as well as the country fan base to help his cause. This had been Siobhan's first time ever in the bottom three and had I assumed she would be one of the two to survive. But, unfortunately, I was wrong and now only one lady is left remaining, Crystal, and the four guys, Lee, Casey, Mike and Aaron. Why have all the other ladies been voted off from the top 12? Only two guys have been eliminated and now Crystal Bowersox represents all the female vocals left in the competition. I guess Crystal also gets her own room in the Idol Mansion now for her duration on the show. You would think with only five contestants left they would each get their own room in the mansion by now. I wonder how that works.

In any case I will miss Siobhan even if I never enjoyed her screaming. She actually has a great voice and since she is only 20, I am guessing she definitely has a future ahead of her in music. On Friday I am going to see "Avenue Q" here in town, and I could definitely envision Siobhan in a Broadway musical type production. Plus she definitely had the best name of any of the contestants on the show. Come on, "Aaron Kelly" or "Casey James" are extremely generic names (much like "Kris Allen" or "David Cook"). Unique artists need unique names!

Latest HCD Mediacurves Survey Information

The latest HCD Mediacurves survey shows that even after a disappointing performance last night, Crystal Bowersox continues to receive over a third of their votes (35.2%) more than combined totals of the next two contestants, Casey James (17.4%) and Siobhan Magnus (16.5%). That helps to show the voting is more based on fan popularity as opposed to the performance of the specific night. Crystal's percentage of the votes did drop off substantially but is still considerably in the lead. Aaron Kelly again is in the bottom of the pack, and we will see if tonight is finally the night he is sent home.

Shania Twain night throws Idol Wacky!

Now that we are down to only six contestants, they decided to pull a "Shania Twain" night and the results were not pretty. The bottom line was nobody was awful and nobody was really fantastic with everybody ending up extremely mediocre. That turns the voting into a pure popularity contest so it will be very interesting to see who goes home tomorrow night. This is actually good news for Aaron Kelley who was probably next to go for sure if the front runners had performed well, but since they did not he may survive the week. Aaron actually performed better than usual although I still would not say his performance was great. The closest one to being great this week was someone else who needed it, Casey James. After his stale performance last week where he was in the bottom two, he is probably the safest contestant this week. Lee was his same old self which probably means he is safe, but the usually top-notch Crystal Bowersox was definitely not at her usual level. She needs to tone down the supporting band which did not help out her performance at all. Big Mike again pulled out a ballad which as usual sounded great vocally but made me cringe watching him grimace and emote. The most polarizing performance, however, was definitely Siobhan Magnus who poured out a performance you either loved or hated. Unfortunately for me I was in the latter category. She has a great voice and does not need to screech and yell at the end of every upbeat song. I simply would never vote for her. She is definitely the person most in need of a talented producer to channel her very capable talents into something wonderful.

So how would I rank the performances?
1) Casey James 6.4/10 - not really that great but the best of the pack tonight -- too much like "Jealous Man" part II
2) Lee Dewyze 6.0/10 - he had pitch problems and was not as strong as last week. He is still probably safe though
3) Crystal Bowersox 5.4/10 - awful arrangement of the song. She could have done this so much better.
4) Big Mike Lynch 5.0/10 - nice vocals on yet another ballad. I still cannot enjoy watching him sing though.
5) Aaron Kelly 4.8/10 - more emotive than usual but still not that exciting
6) Siobhan Magnus 4.5/10 - started nice but never built until the end which was way overdone. She has more vocal talent than most of the guys here but needs real guidance (and not from the Idol judges for sure).

Having put Siobhan in last place, I really do not think she will go home. I am guessing Aaron and Mike will be in the bottom three based solely on their previous votes in the bottom three before and one of those two will be leaving. I think this week's voting will be very indicative of overall long term popularity of the contestants and not so much about the performances of this evening. It will be very interesting to see who the bottom three are besides Aaron and Mike. It could be anybody else as the third person in the bottom. I would be shocked if Crystal were in the bottom three, but if she were that may actually put her large fan base into a frenzy that would guarantee she win the whole thing. Frankly, since I believe either Aaron or Mike is going home tomorrow, being the third "bottom dweller" might help any other contestant by firing up their fans. I do not think Aaron nor Mike have the fan base of the other four contestants and they are bound to be voted off in the next couple weeks.

I figured out my Facebook Fan Page Problem

Most of the Facebook fan pages are actually still there, it is just not very easy to find them anymore. For some reason, now I have to type their name into the search field, and then click the "See More Results for ..." selection to find their fan pages. But when I do that, then the old Fan pages show up with the proper counts except for Tim Urban's which does seem to be gone. There are actually a ton of Tim Urban Facebook pages out there, but none that had the ~20,000 fans he had last week. Oh well, he has been eliminated so I can stop tracking him. However, since I can still find Andrew and Katie fan pages, I can still track them just to keep their lines going. In reality, it now appears that just about all the contestants have "flatlined" on my graph except for Crystal Bowersox and Lee Dewyze. My latest data point is actually 5 days since my last sampling (April 22) and those two are the only ones to have significantly increased. In the five day period Crystal has added about 6,300 new fans (from 73,174 to 79,464) and Lee added about 2,800 (from 37,116 to 39,917) so he is definitely distancing himself from Casey James now. No other contestant added more than 1,000 new fans over the past five days.

So tonight is Shania Twain night with the six contestants performing her songs and being mentored by her. I am guessing she will be fine with Crystal, Lee, Casey and Aaron, and I am curious to see how it goes with Siobhan and Mike. At this point I think Aaron is pretty much a goner in the next week or two, and it is up to Casey, Siobhan and Big Mike to do something wonderful to get into the top three with Crystal and Lee.

Another interesting question is how Tim Urban's departure might help the others in terms of voting. Since he lived in Texas near Casey, I could see his Texan vote adding to Casey's tally. But since Tim was also popular with the teen crowd, I could see his under 20 crowd voting more for Aaron and his cute teen smile. Then there is the VoteForTheWorst crowd who is now supposed to vote for Siobhan, even though many on the board actually wanted to vote for Aaron instead. It will be interesting to see who will be in the bottom three tomorrow, but a lot depends on what transpires tonight.

I am also curious who the west coast crowd are voting for now that all the contestants live in the central and eastern time zones. We now have one from Texas, one from Illinois, one from Ohio, one from Florida, one from Pennsylvania and one from Massachusetts. I have even added a US map with the hometowns of the six remaining contestants in red and all the previous Idol winners in green. It is interesting that Mount Prospect IL, Elliston, OH, Sonestown, PA and Barnstable, MA almost all would fit on a straight lattitude line as you travel east. Four of the six remaining contestants including both of the front runners, Crystal and Lee, are from north of the Mason Dixon line.  None of the previous winners have been northerners before with the winner living furthest north being David Cook from Blue Springs, MO. And if it ends up being Crystal and Lee in the finals that would make for a midwestern final, where both contestants had been in the Chicago music scene.

Facebook turned off the Fan Based Pages!

Alas, it appears that Facebook must have taken all the fan created pages for the contestants except for Crystal's, Michael's and Tim's. So that means I cannot keep updating my lovely Facebook Fan graphs! How sad. I did note that Crystal's fan count is up to over 78,000 now, so maybe the other fan pages took themselves down so they would not be compared.

I thought another interesting graph would be layering the line graphs for the WhatNotToSing web ratings for the remaining contestants. Now that we are down to six, it is now much easier to see them all together over the nine weeks they have been performing. Just showing the overall average of the contestants at the current time does not demonstrate their change over time as well, but my lovely line graph does demonstrate the ebbs and flows of each contestant over the past two months. Some contestants like Crystal and Aaron have been very consistent (consistently good for Crystal, consistently bad for Aaron), but the remaining four contestants have varied quite a bit. I even added a spline to the curves here since I thought the pointed lines were too much. I definitely believe Aaron, Casey and Mike are the ones to worry this week and who really have to deliver a great performance or risk going home Wednesday. Since it is Shania Twain week this should make for some interesting performances.

Down to Six Contestants and my Latest Facebbok Fan Graph

 Now that "Idols Gives Back" is over I thought it was time for my next graph! I am still tracking Andrew and Katie (along with the recently departed Tim) just because I can . When Ryan said the show was going to run late, I did not imagine it would be THAT late, but it seemed mean to not let Tim sing a final farewell song. He kept on smiling though, since that is what he does best. Looking at the numbers from early Tuesday to today, Tim actually was still gaining fans well, adding almost 2,000 in that time (from 19,424 to 21,351). He was still gaining the third highest number of new fans, behind only Lee (gaining about 3,000 going from 34,052 to 37,118) and Crystal Bowersox, of course, who tacked on nearly 7,000 new Facebook fans in two days (from 66,252 to 73,174). Crystal gained more new fans in the past two days than Big Mike Lynch has in total. I noticed some of the other contestants have pretty much stopped gaining many new fans which does not look good for them if Lee keeps increasing steadily and Crystal adds new fans by leaps and bounds. For example, the now departed Andrew and Katie added 300-400 new fans, and Aaron and Casey each only gained about 500. Siobhan did gain almost 900 (from 22,435 to 23,315) but Mike only added 150 (from 6275 to 6425). Since Big Mike was not in the bottom three, however, I am just guessing his fan base is not populated by a lot of Facebook users! I was a bit surprised by Casey being in the bottom three since I thought he had a ton of fans, but then again so did Andrew.

Since I love numbers I also investigated the final web rankings on WhatNotToSing, where the rankings this week actually perfectly selected the bottom three and Tim's elimination as well. Crystal scored another very high ranking of 90 this week, which means after only 9 performances Bowersox has scored 8 "five star" ratings. In terms of five star performances, Mamasox is already in third place on WhatNotToSing's list of top contestants of all time which is pretty staggering. Her average web ranking of 84.1 puts her number 1 of all contestants and she has never scored below four stars (her lowest score is a 78). I will be curious to see if she can continue this impressive streak for her remaining time on Idol, which hopefully will be until the finale, but with the voting patterns of America, you never know for sure.

New HCD Mediacurves poll results released

I just received the results via e-mail of the HCD Research Mediacurves poll after last night's episode of American Idol. Last week I was curious where Katie and Andrew's 15% of the vote would end up, and it looks like most of it ended up with Crystal! Crystal's number was up to a staggering 44.5% of the vote this week with Siobhan surprisingly number two, but at a distant 12.4%. Lee and Casey are pretty much tied at 10.8/10.7% with Mike right behind them at 9.6%. Finally Tim has 7.3% and Aaron again is at the bottom with 4.8%. Last night only 3,081 people responded so their level of response keeps getting lower. So for this week Crystal Bowersox received more votes than Siobhan, Lee, Casey and Mike combined. So much for the backlash from her "quitting" rumor...

My Predictions after 'Inspirational' Night

Being a big fan of Christian music, I was curious how close to true inspiration any of the contestants would come during 'Inspirational' night on Idol. Luckily for me, one contestant actually proved to be inspirational, even if at the expense of making all the others seem flat. After the first six performances, I was thinking Lee Dewyze had done the best job, and it was pretty impressive and held my attention, even if I did not feel it was as inspirational as Simon did (or was he just comparing it to Casey's solid but unexciting performance?) So, I was waiting, as much of America may have been, for Crystal Bowersox to hopefully show a little inspiration herself. In her own words, my reaction would be "Holy Toledo!" She started out singing acapella and was able to not only sing it pitch perfect, but with a ton of soul and emotion. Then when the instruments started she amped it up even more and pretty much knocked it out of the park. She made Lee's impressive performance look like a warm up band performance for the main act. I am wondering what performances like that will do for the Idol ratings, though, if people feel there is no competition left in the show. It seems like from week to week, there might be one other contestant who might be able to match or outshine Crystal, but otherwise she becomes the gold standard each week. It is a bit like the Cardinals having Albert Pujols in the lineup. I am curious what the other six contestants think of her performances.

But the big question for today is not who performed the best last night, but who is going home this evening. That is best done by trying to decide who is safe. The obvious safe ones are Crystal and Lee, but looking at the other five, I am not so sure. I think Siobhan is pretty safe from being eliminated tonight, but if she landed in the bottom three it would not surprise me. Her vocals continue to be fantastic, but she fails to connect with the audience any more and her defensiveness is getting on my nerves. Big Mike is in a similar position with consistently solid vocals, but with an attitude that makes him not so likable. You can tell he is trying to tone himself down, but that is just the way he is, "over the top", physical and a big ham. He is the kind of person who makes a great first impression, but after a while you get tired of his antics. With his seemingly smaller dedicated fan base, I think he may possibly land in the bottom three again but not get eliminated. Casey James is a much more likable and personable presence than Siobhan or Mike, but his performances are getting old and boring. Nevertheless, compared to the bottom two guys I believe he is still pretty safe. So that takes us to Tim and Aaron. When it comes down to it, they should be the bottom two for the evening, but they both seem to have plenty of hard voting fans. On DialIdol, Tim actually has the third highest number of raw votes behind Crystal and Siobhan. However, on the show last night Aaron was able to perform after Tim, which made it easy to compare the two. Tim's performance was quite lackluster and he missed plenty of notes. Although Aaron started off somewhat lackluster himself, he picked it up and by the end was actually starting to show some emotion. I think he did a better job than Tim this week, but that still may not translate into votes. My guess, though, that one of the two of them will be going home.

My overall performance rankings for last night:

1) Crystal - 9.5/10 - Fantastic and moving. Her best performance to date.
2) Lee - 8.0/10 - Good and still less wooden than in the past. Better than anyone not named Crystal.
3) Siobhan - 5.5/10 - Great vocals but I cannot connect with her performance. She seems aloof and not there.
4) Mike - 4.8/10 - More good vocals, but he seems more angry than inspirational.
5) Casey - 4.6/10 - Happy, smiling guitar slinging singer. "Good but not great" could be his motto.
6) Aaron - 3.4/10 - He has potential but not any time soon. At least he has more personality than Tim.
7) Tim - 2.0/10 - His vocals were not good and he is not even interesting this time. What is he doing on this show?

Preparing for 'Inspirational' Night!

Tonight the seven remaining American Idol contestants get to perform an "inspirational" song, and looking at the list, it might be good and it might be awful. If Big Mike picks an upbeat song and hams it up it could be his last week, but how many ballads should be perform? We all know Casey James can be good at performing a ballad, but we really have not seen what Lee or Crystal can do with a slower song. I will be curious to see what Alicia Keys will add to the show as well. I thought Adam Lambert was quite good as a mentor for Elvis week, and Alicia should be able to give some good constructive criticism as well. I wonder if Tim Urban might even listen to her!

It is also time for my latest graph since I like graphs. It has been four days since my graph on Friday, so I was curious how the Facebook fan numbers had changed over the weekend. I even left Andrew and Katie in there just since they were actually getting press time over the weekend since they are both getting some press time on their departure. And sure enough, Andrew actually has the fourth highest increase in fans over the weekend, about 1,200 to put him at 46,760 still a very solid second place count. The only contestants with more new fans over the weekend are Tim Urban with about 1,700 more (19,424 total), Lee Dewyze with 2,400 more (to 34,856) and Crystal Bowersox leading the group with about 4,400 more for a total of 66,252. I guess Crystal's news that she had thought of quitting the show has not decreased her growth of popularity. Lee and Casey are just about tied now in total number of fans, but in reality their combined total is about the same as Crystal's total by herself. Siobhan still has not caught up with Katie, and in fact Katie gained about 900 fans (24,488 total) and Siobhan gained 1,100 (22,435) so I do not know if Siobhan will be catching up. On the other hand, Tim is catching up with Siobhan whereas Big Mike still trails at the bottom of the pack.

Crystal Almost Quit the Show!

The latest American Idol news that surfaced yesterday was a TMZ report that Crystal Bowersox almost quit the show. The article reports that it occurred two weeks ago after a show, so I am guessing that would put it after the elimination show where Didi left the competition. I know in her exit interview with Michael Slezak, Didi Benami had mentioned that she wanted to collaborate with Crystal so I am guessing that the two of them had grown quite close. In fact, Katelyn Epperly had mentioned that Crystal, Lilly Scott and her liked to hang out and jam together, so it sounds like all of Crystal's female friends kept getting eliminated. And now with Katie Stevens gone it is just her and Siobhan Magnus with five male contestants. Since the two remaining ladies are sharing an apartment together and are probably the two most "unique" individuals left, I bet they share a close bond and mutual respect now as well. I cannot see either one of them leaving the show before the final three or four, or it would be a very lonely place for the last remaining female. If Crystal were to leave early the show would definitely be in trouble for the season.

I also just watched Andrew Garcia's interview with Ellen on her show. I really liked his appearance until he started performing again! I then went back and watched his "Straight Up" performance which he definitely nailed. There is some originality and dynamic he had when he performed "Straight Up" that he never really regained again, which is pretty sad. He sure is a likable person though.

Final Pre-weekend graph of Facebook Fan Numbers

I just had to compile my numbers for my graph again before the weekend. Even though Andrew and Katie are off the show, they actually will now get their week of talk shows (Ellen, Letterman, etc) and they will be back for the tour so they may actually pick up more fans than if they were performing! I thought Andrew was particularly gracious after his elimination, and Katie held her composure quite well for a 17 year old who has not even graduated high school yet! Katie actually seems like a very nice girl when she is not performing, and I think Andrew also has a lot more personality when not performing as well. Since he lives in the LA area I bet we see Andrew around in the audience for the rest of the show, probably cheering on Lee. He seems like a pretty cool guy overall. Anyone who will call himself "corny" is okay with me.

But on to my numbers for today! The same trend as before had continued with Crystal gaining over 3,500 new fans since Wednesday (61,885 total), and Lee gaining almost 3,000 as well (31,651). Tim continues to gain a following with over 2,200 new fans (to a total of 17,695). The eliminated Andrew actually gained almost 2,000 (45,585 total) and Katie gained over 1,600 (23,564 total). Casey, Aaron, and Siobhan all gained about 1,000 (Casey to 34,028, Aaron to 28,518, Siobhan to 21,344). Bringing up the rear continues to be Mike with a total of 6,031 fans.

Bye Bye Andrew and Katie!

I was impressed that the bottom two that I selected in my previous posting were actually the two that were eliminated. I had expected Andrew to be one of the two, but Katie's departure was definitely not as certain. I also received a message from HCD Research/Mediacurves giving their results from their Idol Democracy poll where every person can only have one vote. I decided to graph their trends over the five past weeks to visually see the numbers better than their chart of numbers. If you look at my graph above you will see that Aaron Kelly has consistently run at the bottom of their poll, but we know he is still around. He is definitely one who benefits from many multiple voters. Now that Andrew is gone he will be dwelling at the bottom of the vote graph alone. You can also note the two peaks Lee and Casey have enjoyed, Lee's two weeks ago and Casey's last week, but then they both fell down into the pack, with Mike having a slight peak this week. Siobhan has been in a slow descent from four weeks ago, until now she is nestled amongst the pack between 8 and 12 percentage points. And through it all the consistent winner for the poll has remained Crystal whose advantage has actually been increasing the past two weeks as the others fight for a few percentage points. Andrew and Katie accounted for about 15 percentage points between the two of them, and it will be interesting to see who gains from their departure.

Two more bite the dust tonight!

Well, I for one will be happy to see two more people leave tonight and get the crowd down to seven. That means I can stop updating two of the nine lines on my Facebook Fan graph! Since it has only been two days instead of three the rate of increase is not as great for any of the contestants, but we can note the trends to see who has the most momentum. The top three gainers in number of fans over the past two days have been:

1) Crystal - gaining 2,499 to 58,371 from 55,872
2) Lee - gaining 2,029 to 28,766 from 26,737
3) Tim - gaining 1,574 to 15,491 from 13,917

Everyone else gained 500 to 800 new fans over the past two days except for Big Mike who only gained 286 more. I never would have believed the number three gainer would be Tim a few weeks ago, but after watching some of the other performers I am starting to understand why. Lee and Tim both have a lot of momentum now, and Crystal just transcends everyone else as the clear favorite. For tonight's double elimination round it is easy to pick two of the bottom three (Andrew and Aaron) but it will be interesting to see who the final one of the bottom three will be. The obviously safe are now just Crystal, Lee and Casey, and the next safest contestant may actually now be Tim Urban! Checking the latest WhatNotToSing web ratings, the third lowest after Andrew (14, ouch!) and Aaron (42) is Siobhan (46) and then Big Mike (54) with Casey right behind him (55).  I cannot believe WhatNotToSing has Katie at 59 over Casey at 55 right now, and Tim at a whopping 65 for third place for the evening (behind Crystal at 80 and Lee at 74). My rankings for last evening (using my 10 point scale) would be more like:

1) Crystal - 8.0/10 - solid and not spectacular, but compared to the competition...
2) Lee - 7.5/10 - great vocals but starting to get as predictable as Crystal.
3) Casey - 6.5/10 - undo the hair bun and rock out more!
... the top three are great vocalists and guitar players, but all three need some more stage presence.

4) Mike - 5.2/10 - He is so much more enjoyable on the slow songs -- I cannot watch him otherwise.
5) Siobhan - 5.0/10 - She has a great voice but I am losing interest in her. She still seems to be holding back. 
6) Tim - 4.0/10 - Blah, bland boring but not as difficult to listen to as some of the others
7) Aaron - 3.8/10 - Even more boring than Tim, and that is saying something
8) Katie - 2.5/10 - I personally cannot stand to watch her perform anything.
9) Andrew - 2.0/10 - Without a guitar he seems lost. He needs to go home to his family; they need him more than we do.

The amazing fact now is I would rather still have Tim or Aaron on the show instead of Andrew or Katie. I actually like Aaron as a person but his performances just are not very interesting. Put a cowboy hat on his head and let him release a country album and be the male Taylor Swift. And I actually like Mike when he is performing a slow ballad, but not when he is actually being himself! Siobhan is an interesting case of someone with a ton of vocal talent, but something about her no longer clicks with me. I am almost to the point where I would not mind the bottom six going, and I want the top three (Crystal, Lee and Casey) to have wireless headsets and cordless guitar pickups and show more life out there.

I also just checked out last night's numbers from DialIdol and it is incredible to see that Tim actually received the highest number of total votes at over 22,000 (over Siobhan, Crystal, Katie, Lee or Casey.) How many supporters could VoteForTheWorst possibly have?

Over the Weekend Facebook Fan Numbers

Since it has been three days since my Facebook Fan count for the nine remaining American Idol Season 9 contestants, I thought I would update my SigmaPlot graph is so I can have four whole data points! I was curious how many new fans would actually sign up for each contestant over the weekend, especially with the double elimination taking place this week. It looks like Lee (26,737) has continued his ascent with his current count being almost identical to Aaron's (27,069). Lee actually added more than 2,500 new fans over the weekend, the largest number of anybody not named Crystal, who at 55,872 gained 3,400 fans over the weekend. Just about everybody else gained around 1,000 new fans this weekend with the exception of Michael who only gained 342 (from 5,044 to 5,386.) Things are not looked too good for Big Mike, and I can possibly see him surviving this week after his near removal the last time, but I doubt he will make it after the "Idol Gives Back" week when there will be another double elimination week. By the end of April there will only be five remaining contestants, and the only two I see as definitely there would be Crystal and Casey. The other three would be between Siobhan (probable), Lee (probable), Andrew, maybe Katie and possibly even Mike if he can stage a huge comeback. I cannot imagine that Aaron or Tim could make it in the top 5, but you never know with all the weird American voters. I think Siobhan and Lee are probably in the top 5 unless they have a disaster or play it too safe in the next three weeks, which is actually possible between the two of them.

Latest Facebook Fans Numbers

Here is the Facebook Fan graph I just compiled with the latest fan numbers this morning. Since I now have the numbers from April 1 and 6 to go along with today, we can see some interesting trends. The most noticeable change in the past 9 days is how Lee's count (now 24,208) had started near Siobhan's count (now 18,301), then it came up to Katie's (currently 20,687) and passed it and is now approaching Aaron's (26,204). In fact Lee has the highest increase of anybody except Crystal who just keeps on gaining more and more FB fans (now at 52,439). Andrew (41,970) and Casey (31,105) are also still gaining new fans, but not as quickly as Crystal or Lee. I was curious what would happen to Mike in the past couple days after his near departure on Wednesday night, but his number (5,044) still trails even Tim (12,834) substantially. My guess is he will not last much longer on the show, which again shows that vocal talent and popularity are not necessarily correlated. However, since Andrew was in the bottom two this week, Facebook fan count obviously does not match the total voting counts on the show. This week's HCD Poll results also does not correlate well with the Facebook fan numbers, even if it did pick, two of the bottom three correctly this week (Aaron and Andrew). The HCD results, however, put Big Mike safely in the middle of the contestants, which definitely proves he does not receive as many repeat votes as contestants like Aaron and Andrew. It was also interesting to note that the number of respondents to the HCD poll continues to fall, from the 7,397 they reported two weeks ago, to 3,418 last week and 3,305 this week. I guess people are getting tired of the poll. even if it only takes 10 seconds to do it.

Contestant	% that voted for contestant to move on
Crystal Bowersox	30.1
Casey James	13.6
Katie Stevens	11.3
Michael Lynche	10.3
Lee Dewyze	9.7
Siobhan Magnus	9.5
Tim Urban	6.4
Andrew Garcia	5.4
Aaron Kelly	3.8

Wow, Big Mike received the lowest number of votes!

Who would have guessed it was going to be Big Mike to have to sing for the save this evening? I was trying to figure out the bottom three from amongst Katie, Andrew, Tim and Aaron, and the actual bottom three were Aaron and Andrew as expected, but also Big Mike. Neither Tim nor Katie even made the bottom three this time, which is even more surprising after being among the bottom three for the past two weeks. I guess it all depends on how many avid fans you have calling in for you repeatedly, and Mike must not have that many. I would actually vote for him next time if I actually cared if he won or not. When it comes to actual vocal and performing talent, he is definitely head and shoulders above some of the other contestants, but that still does not mean I would ever purchase his album or pay to see him in concert. Or call in for him either. With the 130 million votes that Ryan said they received for the program, you definitely must call in many, many times to make a difference. All of this surely makes for some interesting television!

How dare Tim not stink it up!

I was really hoping for a cheesy, pathetic performance from Tim Urban last night so I would be happy to see him be eliminated tonight. Unfortunately, the Teflon Titan performed a bland but not horrific rendition of "All My Loving" which all three judges actually praised. I think perhaps they were praising him to lessen his pity votes and finally get him off the show. But little Timmy was not the worst performer on the show last night, which may have ended up being more of a "most boring" award as opposed to just plain out bad. That would probably go to Aaron Kelly, although Katie and Andrew were not too far behind (as well as Tim.) I know those would be my bottom four of the night, but it is hard to determine the bottom three for this evening. I am guessing Andrew has the fan base to keep him out of the bottom three in votes, so it will probably be between Tim, Aaron and Katie. I doubt the show producers would let Katie leave the show (to have four girls leave in four weeks), so it is likely between Aaron and Tim going home tonight. With the resilience that mighty Tim has had in the past, that may be very bad news for Aaron Kelly!

After checking the preliminary scores on WhatNotToSing.com, I agreed with most of the top and bottom performers (Casey, Crystal on the top, Aaron and Andrew on the bottom), but I cannot see why people liked Katie's performance so much (more than Lee? more than Big Mike? Siobhan?) And just because Tim did not fall flat on his face does not put him higher than Lee or Mike either. Yes, Lee was weird to have the bagpiper join him, and Mike did cheese it up a bit too much, but I would still much rather listen to either of them than to boring Tim or plastic Katie. I think Katie probably reminds many people of those snotty "popular" girls in high school many of us did not like, and I find it very difficult to enjoy watching her perform. I think she is one of the performers who work much better with the sound on and the picture off (Big Mike is another good example, although I find him much more likable.) So here is my personal final rankings for the evening:

1. Casey (nice change for him -- he showed some emotion and stopped smiling!) 8.6/10
2. Crystal (a little off here and there, but still strong) 8.2/10
3. Lee (more comfortable sounding, not much originality except the bizarre bagpipes) 6.9/10
4. Mike (nice soulful vocals, way too much overacting) 6.6/10
5. Siobhan (pleasant but too restrained, rather boring for her) 6.3/10
... rather large gap here ...
6. Tim (boring, but actually better than some) 3.9/10
7. Andrew (why he is behind the judges? weird arrangement, but still better than Katie) 3.8/10
8. Katie (stop scrunching your face!) 2.5/10
9. Aaron (double zzzzz) 2.0/10

Facebook Fan numbers update

On my never ending search for more numbers to compile, I was able to grab the latest Facebook fan numbers for the final nine contestants to see how they have changed since I first reported them April 1. The rankings based on total fan count have not changed but there are some interesting trends:

1. Crystal Bowersox, was 40,576 now 45,328, gained 4,752 (11.7% increase)
2. Andrew Garcia, was 38,396 now 40,179, gained 1,783 (4.6% increase)
3. Casey James, was 27,662 now 28,694, gained 1,032 (3.7% increase)
4. Aaron Kelly, was 23,527 now 24,812, gained 1,285 (5.2% increase)
5. Katie Stevens, was 18,536 now 19,264, gained 727 (3.9% increase)
6. Lee Dewyze, was 14,887 now 18,394, gained 3,507 (23.6% increase)
7. Siobhan Magnus, was 14,845 now 16,173, gained 1,328 (8.9% increase)
8. Tim Urban, was 8,746, now 10,122 gained 1,366 (15.6% increase)
9. Mike Lynche, was 3,805 now 4,104 gained 299 (7.2% increase)

The obvious big winner in Facebook fans over the past week was Lee Dewyze who had been about the same as Siobhan but now is getting closer to Katie's fan count. He gained a whopping 23.6% more Facebook fans due to his performance last week. Another amazing statistic here is the second highest percentage gainer was Tim Urban who gained 15.6% more fans, and with 1366 new fans has the 4th highest number of new fans behind #1 Crystal (4752), #2 Lee (3507) and #3 Andrew (1783). Why is Tim getting so many more new fans? Another interesting stat is how many new fans and total fans Crystal now has. Her 4,752 new fans is 13.6% more new fans than Lee received even though he was perceived as the big "breakthrough" performance last week. Her total count of 45,328 is now more than 10% higher than the 40,179 of second place Andrew Garcia, and more than 10x more than Big Mike Lynche. This really needs a graph, which I will probably compile next week when I will have three data points.

Record producers: choose Dewyze James

This morning while I was listening to my Crystal Bowersox mix, I was saddened that none of the quite talented male singers are quite at the level of Ms. Bowersox. Then I realized I had the solution for two of them that could make them big stars. The answer is the pop rock duo Dewyze James. Yes, that is Lee Dewyze on lead vocals and acoustic guitar and Casey James on lead electric guitar and vocals as well. Just add any talented bass player and drummer who look half good and you have a band. Since both of them have slight stage presence problems, putting them together should help them both out. Lee will have the tall, blond Casey playing lead guitar so he does need that 100% pressure on him which should allow him to be more comfortable and be able to express himself vocally better. Casey will have a rocking vocalist with a more interesting, growly voice to add to his very nice, but not overly exciting vocals and also allow him to loosen up more while just playing his electric guitar leads. I could see the two of them trading off vocals, or Lee doing most of the lead vocals with Casey adding harmonies. I would be interested in hearing the two of them sing together with some harmonies. If their two voices sound good together that could be quite unique and marketable. The ladies could go to concerts saying they prefer either Lee or Casey, and guys could show up since it is a real rock band, and not just one dreamy guy performing on stage. I think Casey's guitar work would make it more genuine and appealing to guys as well. The music world could use a genuine rock band with not just one lead star. Think Page and Plant, Daltrey and Townshend, Roth and Van Halen. -- why not Dewyze and James?

Latest HCD Polls results and my own Facebook Fans Stats

Yes, I just love American Idol statistics. Here are the results from the HCD survey which I received in my e-mail. I had heard on the news that a poll had suggested that Aaron Kelly would be departing, and I realized that it was the HCD poll that I had participated in! I am curious of the demographic breakdown of the 3418 people who responded to this poll.


Respondents were asked to pick the one contestant that they thought should advance to the next round of the competition:

Contestant	% that voted for contestant to move on
Crystal Bowersox	29.2
Lee Dewyze	14.5
Casey James	10.4
Katie Stevens	9.1
Michael Lynche	8.8
Siobhan Magnus	7.4
Andrew Garcia	6.4
Tim Urban	5.5
Didi Benami	4.8
Aaron Kelly	3.8

This poll did predict 2 of the bottom three correctly, but Katie is again much higher on this poll. just as she was last week. I believe there are a lot of Katie Stevens lovers taking this poll! I was also surprised to see the number of voters drop so much from the 7397 they reported last week to only 3418 this week. I would think as the season progresses there would be more people taking the poll. not less.

I have now performed some quick searches on Facebook to create my own poll to see how many people become fans of each of the contestants as a sort of "popularity contest" which might be more indicative of how many people will actually vote for them, and especially those who will vote multiple times. For more data I decided to add the complete top 12 so we can see how many Facebook fans some eliminated contestants had.

1. Crystal Bowersox - 40,576 fans
2. Andrew Garcia - 38,396
3. Casey James - 27,662
4. Aaron Kelly - 23,527
5. Katie Stevens - 18,536
6. Lee Dewyze - 14,887
7. Siobhan Magnus - 14,845
8*. Didi Benami - 13,621
9. Tim Urban - 8,746
10* Lacey Brown - 8,488.
11. Michael Lynche - 3,805
12* Paige Miles - 2,785
* = eliminated

This is interesting first off since it demonstrates that Andrew has a ton of Facebook fans, almost as many as Crystal. It is also interesting to note that Tim Urban does not have nearly as many fans as Didi, but she was still eliminated. I am also amazed how few fans Big Mike has on Facebook. I wonder why that is? Andrew  has 10x as many Facebook fans as Big Mike. And Katie has more fans than Lee, Siobhan and Big Mike, but she has been in the bottom three two weeks in a row. Her fans must not be calling enough!

WhatNotToSing finalized their results for this week too:

#	Slot	Performance	Web Rating	σ	Result
1	8/10	Treat Her Like A Lady Lee DeWyze	88	17
2	9/10	Midnight Train To Georgia Crystal Bowersox	82	12
3	3/10	Ready For Love Michael Lynche	74	19
4	2/10	Hold On, I'm Comin' Casey James	70	16
5	6/10	Forever Andrew Garcia	65	17
6	10/10	Ain't No Sunshine Aaron Kelly	46	16
7	7/10	Chain Of Fools Katie Stevens	45	16
8	4/10	What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted Didi Benami	28	18
9	1/10	Through The Fire Siobhan Magnus	27	13
10	5/10	Sweet Love Tim Urban	19	16

Siobhan was definitely hammered in their compiled web ratings, but luckily she survived. Otherwise there are no big surprises in their results. And Tim Urban keeps slipping through despite being pounded on everybody's ratings. The fellow should definitely run for office someday, If you look at the updated contestant list sorted by average web rating, it gives some interesting information. Crystal's "off week" actually solidified her lead since Siobhan's average fell substantially while Crystal's hardly fell at all. Lee, Big Mike and Casey are now all very similarly clustered in the top 5 with average ratings in the low 60's and Aaron, Andrew and Katie are now all clustered around 40 as the ones to disappear in the next few weeks. Then there is Teflon Tim still at the bottom, below eliminated Lacey and Paige but still showing up on the program for some unknown reason.

1. Crystal: Average Web Rating: 83.8
2. Siobhan: 67.8
3. Lee: 63.0
4. Mike: 62.2
5. Casey: 60.2
6*. Didi: 52
7. Aaron: 42
8. Andrew: 39.8
9. Katie: 39.7
10*. Paige: 29.6
11*. Lacey: 28.8
12. Tim 23.7