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She has a beautiful voice, and she knows how to use it.
She was one of the best performers last week.
She put in a decent performance this week, but could have choosen a better song.
Simon called her a "dark horse" to win AI7.
But America voted, and Alaina Whitaker went home tonight.
What went wrong? Was it the song, or her performance? Was it the lack of airtime Hollywood week? Or did she just remind people too much of Carrie Underwood? Whatever it was, it caused Alaina to show poorly on Dialidol last week, and come in dead last on Dialidol this week. Now she's gone without a chance to even tour this summer. Our loss, and hers.
It came as a surprise, indeed, although I had placed her in the bottom 4 of my list. But I felt pain for Alaina. She is so hopeful and upbeat about being on the top 20. I admired her early showing of potential. Good luck, honey. The world looks at you and you could do something about it with what you got. Keep singing, Alaina.
Anyway, I could be accused of favoring someone else, therefore, I have no better explanation than just that. But, just getting it real, Alaina's vocals didn't impress me as much as I was impressed of the others. I was not a real fan to begin with. Sorry. Her vocals are not really that inherently versatile sounding to me, although I believe she could be trained.
Ballads are tough to sing. There is a serious responsibility that goes with singing a ballad and that is interpretating it with your own emotion. I'd rather sing a broken hearted song because if I cried singing it, I would have succeeded. Perhaps that's one reason why there are too many songs about broken relationships - because it's much easier to interpret it. We've all experienced pain and somehow it's part of life, so singing about pain could just be as natural as drinking coffee every morning.
Be careful when trying to sing an Olivia Newton John classic. Your voice has to be melodious, pure, soft and tender. Alaina's voice was too shaky in parts. She failed to give the song an emotional drama that was crucial. I didn't feel any. The song didn't get its proper interpretation. Majorly, it was the wrong choice of song.
But then again, you really can never tell the reason for Alaina's early boot. I was expecting Amanda to go instead, like what some of us in the pool did, but I guess we know now that Amanda has a larger fanbase than Alaina.
PLEASE VOTE. JUST VOTE.
For what it's worth on DialIdol, they had Jason Y & Robbie in second & third this week so....granted they cover themselves with the "margin of error" and the only real prediction they made was that David Archuleta was safe. It's hardly perfect.
As for Alaina, I didn't think she was the best female in the bunch but I think she's a whole lot better than Amanda. And her two performances are better than Kady's first two. But I think Kady's shown more in her clips (Alaina's food thing was silly) and Kady also had the better audition which if you look around the Internet, it does matter. You start building momentum all the way back from your audition and Kady was near the top there.
So who else is there? I'm guessing the ones in danger next week are Kristy Lee, Kady, Amanda and Asia'h. I have a feeling which was that's going to go but it would ruin my picks for next week if I said already so I won't.
I think Syesha, Carly, Ramiele and Brooke are safe barring a disasterous outing.
I thought Alaina had a good vocal timbre in the first week. Her second performance wasn't quite as good--but it was better than Amanda's as noted. And here I thought the sandpaper rocker voice by Amanda was wearing thin. Well, I think it will after tonight. A lot of girls probably just like the grit of Amanda's voice in an age when attitude in performance give an edge teen girls love. Alaina was just too good of a vocalist if that makes any sense. We're at the point now where singing on key and having a listenable vocal timbre is almost shunned by some part of the population because it doesn't have an edge.
So, in this case, it was probably more to do with her voice exclusively rather than how she looked and looking somewhat similar to Kady Malloy sometimes. Nevertheless, she's only 17 and you could see the signs that she didn't have enough experience as a vocalist as some of the others have had. I'm one to think that an "AI" finalist should be at least 18 rather than making it 16. I know the producers are taking advantage of the fact that a lot of talent is nearing in to fetus level --but nobody still in high school (or even middle school) should be subjected to the pressures of this show and show business. It was obvious from AW's strong emotional burst there at the end that the "AI"pressure is really just too much to bare for someone not experienced with the rigors of the music business.
With that in mind, Alaina Whitaker is probably a whole lot happier being home and just finishing high school before doing anything more to start a singing career...
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