Ryan Seacrest’s words, not ours! Last night on American Idol it was all about final impressions — Adam Lambert and Kris Allen needed to pick the right songs and hit the right notes to remind us why we like them. They both did a good job, but it was pretty clear that Adam did a little bit better. (God, it pains us to say that.) From his reprise of “Mad World,” which he originally sang during the “Songs From the Year You Were Born” week, to a toned down Sam Cooke song, he took a slight edge over Kris, whose jammy style felt weaker by comparison. If you joined in our live American Idol blog you would have been there for all the fun and the impromptu drinking games (more on that in a sec), but for now, here are our highlights.

Adam’s Performances

Adam played the game smartly last night, he sang “Mad World” again, which was universally lauded the first time around and got the first-ever standing ovation from Simon Cowell. He also toned down the rock/glam aspect (okay, he sang “Mad World” while wearing a leather duster, surrounded by dry ice fog — he toned it down AFTER that) by singing “Change is Gonna Come,” a song chosen for him by show creator Simon Fuller. It was completely out of character but he handled it competently and the only way he knew how, with a few obligatory screeches. Paula loved it so much she threw an improv-mimed lasso around Adam though to rein him in and keep him locked up forever, presumably in the same dungeon where she keeps MC Skat Kat.

Kris’ Performances

We think the judges are slightly abusive, the way they throw out their love for the contestants one minute, then they coldly rescind it the next, then are like “Baby, shh, we didn’t mean it, you’re great again.” That’s how they treated Matt Giraud and Lil Rounds for the entire show, and it’s how they’ve been treating Kris lately. After he sang “Ain’t No Sunshine,” everyone was all “Wow, awesome, you moved me,” but when he fell a little flat on his coffeehouse-ish rendition of “What’s Goin’ On?” it was like “Kris who? How did he get here?” Y’all might as well just wear “Lambert Lover” T-shirts, judges. It’s hard to keep up with your wavering, just admit you don’t give a crap about Kris.

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Charts, schmarts. Kris Allen arrived on Idol with little to no fanfare, and now he’s in the top 2 with chosen one Adam Lambert. Looks like Danny Gokey’s Christian television cult couldn’t make up for his tight pants and sloppy singing. What was Milwaukee’s own thinking as he pressed his finger to his lip, feigned serenity and watched his farewell reel? Probably something along the lines of “Kris Allen? Kris Allen? Are you for real? I, Danny Gokey, lost to Kris Allen?” You know it had to hurt.

Can Lambert tongue-lash the upstart out of the ring, or will Allen’s lucky streak take him all the way to the top? Only one week to go!

[Photo: Getty Images]

You are so beautiful to meeeeeOOHH MY GODDD!!! The Top 3 got two songs each last night on American Idol—first they had to sing the worst possible song the judges could think of, then they had to sing the crap they plan to peddle on us once they’re off the show. Naturally, the second song was a little tighter—especially for Danny Gokey’s pants.

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And you thought his scream was bad—Danny Gokey’s performance of “Billie Jean” during his Milwaukee homecoming would have  steam coming out of Simon Cowell’s ears. Blaming a lyric sheet that blew away, Gokey stands silently at first, before arguing with the back-up singers (one announcing “I’d leave it to the professionals!”), messing up the arrangement (”but the key changed!”) and basically getting run over by a merciless band that refuses to let him find his place. Were they big Allison Iraheta fans?

“That’s all I got for you, Milwaukee—I don’t know the words!” If  that’s the case, why was he singing it in the first place? Hopefully he’ll learn the words if he’s performing it again for Tuesday’s Top 3. [video via VFTW]

Last night we shed a single tear for Allison Iraheta who, despite 64 million votes being cast on Tuesday, got the lowest amount and was ousted from American Idol. It pains us to admit that our baby’s gone. We know Adam Lambert is going to win this now, he’s the only performer the judges haven’t criticized harshly for any of his performances and that’s the only thing that pains us more than seeing Allison go. We can barely go on anymore. But we must. …

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Back in March, the word was that Idol producers pegged Danny Gokey and Alexis Grace as this season’s top two, with Lil Rounds and Adam Lambert right behind them. With Rounds rejected last week and Grace not even making the top 10, it’s no surprise that Simon Cowell placed Gokey and Lambert as the likely top two at a press conference.

I would put my money on Adam and Danny … It is going to be Adam and somebody. I would like to see Adam and Danny because I think they are the best two singers, and at the end of the day that is what should happen.

Between “Adam and somebody” and his critique of Gokey during Disco Week, it sounds like Cowell prefers the shrieker to the soulster. Which is your favorite? Let us know on our American Idol poll page.

[Photo: Getty Images]

When we heard that the theme for this week’s American Idol was songs from cinema, we were psyched and thought we’d hear “Diamonds Are Forever” from Adam Lambert (of all the contestants, he’s the one with an inner Eartha Kitt), or we thought maybe Anoop Desai would sing “Gangster’s Paradise”, there are plenty of kickass choices that would have suited these contestants really well. Alas, we got two Bryan Adam’s songs that haunted us through high school and that will continue to haunt us for the next 24 hours, and one “Born to Be Wild” (shudder) among others. Quentin Tarantino was the mentor (and awesomely, Idol couldn’t even plug his upcoming film Inglourious Bastards because the title is too racy for the 8 o’clock hour), and as tiresome as his manic craziness can be, we had actually hoped for more Tarantino. We did enjoy a few moments from the show though.

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The American Idol theme last night was “Songs from the Year You Were Born” and we can think of about ten thousand songs we would have preferred to hear instead of the dreck that was sung last night. We were surprised by how much we liked hearing Allison Iraheta’s version of Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me” and we give credit to Adam Lambert for making the best song choice of the night with “Mad World” but we still don’t like that guy and ain’t nothing gonna change that. Here are a few things we did like:

5. Simon’s Standing O - Undeserved, We Think.

The best thing about the last fifteen minutes of Idol lately is that the judges have to rush through their critiques and give quicker-than-normal notes on a performance, like Kara DioGuardi saying to second-to-last performer Matt Giraud “Incredible on every level! Unbelievable!” and not trying to get poetic and verbose as she often does. So we were kind of shocked at Simon Cowell who chose critiqued Adam Lambert by simply saying “Words aren’t necessary, I’m just going to give you a standing ovation.” Simon, if he had the time, may have wanted to ask what, exactly, Adam did in that song that was so innovative or different from the version sung by Gary Jules for the Donnie Darko soundtrack. The song was written originally by Tears for Fears whose version was kind of uptempo-new wave, but then it was covered by Jules who uh, Adam basically ripped off. We still love the song and think it was a great oasis in a desert of blah song choices, but if you’re going to call something karaoke, this was it.

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During the results shows, we always feel a little bad for the contestants since their flaws are re-pointed out for the purpose of bringing everyone up to speed, and then we feel bad for being critical too. While we tend to flip-flop our support for Anoop Desai and Matt Giraud, we do stand by our criticisms of Megan Joy, and finally this week America also seemed to get sick of her too. Anoop and (for some unknown reason) Allison Iraheta were also in the bottom three (seriously America, what’s your beef with Allison?), but poor Megan was sent home to weepily reunite with her baby and caw softly to him to her heart’s content. Some of our other favorite moments follow.

5. The Get-Along Gang

During the “What do these guys do all week?” video we learned a lot about what goes on at their Hollywood mansion - a chef comes in and makes Scott MacIntyre special chocolate cake, Kris Allen practices his sexyface in the mirror, and everyone gets along.  There’s a lot of hugging and laughing at the mansion. These guys like each other so much that they do impressions of each other and the songs they’ve all sung. Trust us when we say that we once learned the hard way that doing what you think is a hilarious impression of a friend can lead to severed ties, so we’re impressed that these guys are so good-natured about it. Ryan made them all do some of the impressions on stage, with Matt Giraud and Allison Iraheta impersonating a riff-happy Danny Gokey and Anoop impersonating a yelly Kris Allen. Awkward much?

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Last night on American Idol, it was more about the hair than the music. Because if nothing else, the hair was more entertaining. It’s getting pretty easy to start weeding contestants out (we’re going to make a prediction that the final four will be Allison Iraheta, Adam Lambert, Danny Gokey and Kris Allen), because basically everyone has had a dud by this point, but some people haven’t recovered from those duds. There was no official theme for the show this week, the contestants could sing any songs that are popular on the iTunes download list, new or old. No mentors to glean important, historic lessons from either. There weren’t many highlights last night but here are a few moments that stood out for us:

5. All About The Hair

Everyone was rocking a new or improved ‘do last night. Megan Joy had a weird braidy-dreadlocky thing happening as an homage to her Bob Marley song, Allison Iraheta had the pink version of Tina Turner’s 1980’s wig, Scott MacIntyre was introduced to pomade before being given a ride in a convertible, Lil Rounds got a sleek new wig, and Adam Lambert kept his Elvis pompadour even though he was singing disco. All in all, we were focused on the follicles more than anything else this week - seems the contestants knew that we’d need something to distract us from their singing.

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