American Idol: Someone Performed That Song From 'Once' and It Was Obviously Adorable

Credit: Michael Becker / FOX

This week, American Idol went to the movies, and like a scan of the multiplex's offerings on a given Friday, there were some highs and lows. You had your sequels that were surprisingly good, particularly when the belovedness of the original material by the audience was taken into account; you had your dependable workhorses churning out material in their wheelhouse; and you had your failed opportunities to cash in on blockbusters that when all was said and done came off as more ineptly craven than smart. Oh, and at one point, the band totally screwed up, too.

Each contestant on Wednesday was introduced by their fellow hopefuls doing imitations of them, and man, did it get mean at times! I wondered how many of the singers were thrown off by seeing packages of people mocking their tics right before they went onstage.

1. Alex Preston. "Falling Slowly," from Once, has its own Idol history; adorable Season 8 winner Kris Allen staked his claim with it during Top 7 week that year. Alex smartly didn't copy the original, nor did he pay homage to Kris; instead he quietly tweaked the song just enough to—as they say in Idol parlance, or did anyway before this year's housecleaning—make it his own. The pinched quality of his voice served the song well, and it was just unique enough to not call up immediate comparisons to either Allen or Glen Hansard. He's probably going to stick it out through Top 3.

2. Malaya Watson. Singing "I Am Changing" from Dreamgirls was such a smart move—it allowed her to show off her budding stank while also telling the story of her Idol journey from tuba-playing nerd to, uh, big-voiced nerd. At the end her vocalizing got a bit too excited with itself, but she's so charming and cute and I just want her to go really far because her enthusiasm is completely infectious.

3. CJ Harris. The slippery nature of the theme—which allowed the hopefuls to do songs that were "heavily featured" in movies—led to some smart maneuvering; CJ took his southern-rock bona fides to Blow, of all places, because it featured the Marshall Tucker Band's "Can't You See." A perfect fusion of singer and song that showed how he's straddling the line between country-tinged rock and rock-tinged country.

4. MK Nobilette. The only judge who was paid homage by the contestants' choices was Harry Connick, Jr., whose 1998 movie Hope Floats contained not one but two covers of Bob Dylan's "To Make You Feel My Love." MK, sporting a shock of platinum hair, dove into crooner mode, and her performance was absolutely lovely; she's starting to come out of her shell, as evidenced by a batted eye here and there.

5. Jena Irene. That this teenage spitfire would cover Paramore was pretty much inevitable, given the similarities in range between Jena and Hayley Williams' voices (Jena gets the edge on vocal thickness, though). She threw herself into a performance of "Decode" and while I think at times her singing style can get a bit overly dogmatic this hit all its marks.

6. Jess Meuse. "The Sound Of Silence" rests, in part, on the delicate harmonies between Simon & Garfunkel, which makes it a curious choice for a singing competition where one has to sing solo. But it's another part of Jess's repertoire back in Slapout, Alabama, and so she brought it out here. Things were fine if a bit boring until the band came in off-cue. (Insert your own "Sound Of Silence" joke here.) That she maintained so well in her performance is impressive; that she stalked offstage without doing the customary post-song chat with Ryan Seacrest seemed like an indication that she was, in fact, pretty pissed about the way things went down.

7. Caleb Johnson. Props to Caleb for going into power ballad (and gender-flipping) mode with "Skyfall," but I just wasn't feeling his performance, mostly because its dramatic arc was like so: "Skyfall… skyfall… skyfall… BIG FINISH BECAUSE I HAVE A BIG VOICE." He's still a front-runner, no doubt, but yeesh.
8. Dexter Roberts. Just don't sing "Sweet Home Alabama," dude. Just don't. Ugh.

9. Ben Briley. After an appealingly manic take on "Folsom Prison Blues" and a downshift to David Nail, I figured that Ben would stay in his lane. But no, he decided to pay homage to his own name by singing Elton John's "Bennie And The Jets," as featured in 27 Dresses. (Okay.) Between his tentative piano playing and failed falsetto, the whole thing seemed like an experiment that he was too deep into to abandon. He's only not ranked last because he at least took a risk.

10. Sam Woolf. "Come Together" is one of the Beatles' dirtiest songs, from its mud-dappled bassline to its surrealistic lyrics. This season's teen idol hopeful decided to sing it, and then decided to basically perform a Pat Boone-like lobotomy on it. Sam seems like a really nice kid, but he's also extremely awkward and that uneasiness dominated his performance. Can Justin Bieber loan him a swagger coach?

11. Majesty Rose. OK, I'll get this out of the way right now: "Let It Go," the song from Frozen that won the Oscar a couple of weeks back, is not that great of a song. It's over the top and screamy and it reminds me of those pop hits that seem to exist for the sole purpose of letting singers leap octaves again and again, as if they're in some sort of vocal gymnastics competition where Sia Furler plays the role of Bela Karolyi. Sure, it's nice to have a song in the pop charts' upper echelons that uses the word "fractal" in its lyrics, but as a song on its own it seems more like a warm-up exercise gone rogue than anything else. And it certainly didn't help Majesty's case this week. She was breathing all over the place and her voice sounded drowned out by itself at certain points. That's two weeks in a row of reaching in the wrong direction for Majesty, which worries me.

MY VOTES: Did not vote, but I would have given so many to Malaya and MK.

THE BOTTOM THREE: For the first time this season, there was a guy in the bottom three—and there wasn't only one, but two! Sam's teen-idol appeal didn't save him from being low on the totem pole; Majesty's gamble on picking a hugely popular song of right now failed; and people agreed with the judges on Ben's "authenticity" problem.

WHO WENT HOME: Ben, who I thought might be able to pull out a save until midway through the song when it all went pear-shaped.

FILLER ALERT: I was much more invested in the Hell's Kitchen season premiere than I was in most of the results episode (the two aired back to back—Idol's Thursday episodes will now, apparently, be on at 9PM). What if the two shows switched casts at one point? Oh man, the hijinks that would ensue!

SPEAKING OF NEXT WEEK: The top 10 will be charged with singing not just songs from Billboard's Top 10, but songs that reached the chart bible's upper echelons sometime in the last four years and change! This means someone's going to try and do that Phillip Phillips song, right?

Maura Johnston is a writer living in Boston. She's on Twitter - @maura