Territorial Bloggings

In a word: BO

In slightly more than a word…

It was an enjoyable evening. Both Bo and Carrie seemed to suffer from some nerves, but both overcame them with good, solid performances in a pressure-packed environment. In this season that was chock-full of “the best ever’s” (e.g., the best top 24, top 12, top 6, top 4, etc…), it’s only fitting that this was, IMO, the best finals. I think that these two people deserved to be the top 2, and that talent-wise the choice between them is pretty much a toss-up. Much satisfaction will be derived no matter who wins tonight. Only Ruben vs. Clay was close to being this evenly matched.

All that said, I think it’s pretty clear to those who’ve read my AI thoughts these past weeks that I want Bo to win. While Carrie is certainly & undeniably a huge talent, I just plain like listening to Bo more. His style & genre of music is much more appealing to me. I bought his Recipe for Flavor EP (that he recorded with Sugar Money). I will buy his post-AI album as soon as it’s available. To put it simply, Bo rocks.

But I won’t be crushed if Carrie wins. She’s a good kid. She has a great voice, she’s very good looking, and she has a Boston Terrier! I wish her well, and I understand why so many folks are so solidly behind her. While there are certain songs (generally the more “rockish” of the Country-Pop) that I like, in general I just don’t like her style/genre of music all that much.

As for the performances last night, I would say that Carrie won Round 1 (though that’s not saying much, as neither singer seemed to be all that into their performances), Bo won Round 2 (his reprise of Vehicle trumped Carrie’s solid reprise of Independence Day) by a few whiskers, and Bo won Round 3 by (IMO) a significant margin. His version of Inside Your Heaven was head & shoulders above Carrie’s (which she did for her Round 1 song) and it was better than Carrie’s Angels Brought Me Here, despite it’s obvious emotion-packed performance.

Bo was solid, all around. He showed great range, great emotion, and (as usual) connected with the audience very well. Carrie had what I think was her best performances ever, in terms of projecting emotion & connecting with the audience on a visceral level. While she didn’t have her best technical performances ever, I think it was obvious that her emotions were driving these performances, and that more than made up for the technical flaws. Carrie’s biggest mistake was, IMO, that she chose to follow Bo & perform second. I would’ve thought that she had learned her lesson last week, after she had to follow Bo’s virtuoso performances of Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me & In a Dream — a lesson that stated that following Bo is a very risky proposition. She willingly took that risk, and while it didn’t hurt her, neither did it help her.

In the final analysis, I think Bo should win & I want Bo to win. Heck, I even broke down and voted, throwing about 20 votes Bo’s way, just so that I could say that I did my best to help Bo win! Now, we just get to wait & see how it unfolds tonight.

-ghp