Last week, American Idol used its one season save on Sam Woolf... a decision that was definitely going to have consequences when a more talented singer, before the top six, got the boot. And it only took one week for a big take down. Last night (April 10), the soulful, sassy high school band geek Malaya Watson was sent back to tuba class.
The going home of Malaya shouldn't be a huge shock, even though it feels like the first big mistake of the season. In the beginning of the competition, she was a notoriously shaky performer and found herself in the bottom three during the first week of live shows. Since then, she has been steadily improving, with notable performances of Bruno Mars' "When I Was Your Man" and the gospel track "Take Me To The King."
However, Wednesday night (April 9) was not a good showing for her. Though Malaya was strong enough on Chaka Khan's "Through The Fire," the song itself was a poor choice. The hokey instrumentation and dragging mid-tempo speed of the song made for a wholly forgettable performance, and over singers who usually have less personality and stage presence (we're looking at you, Sam Woolf and Dexter Roberts), it was Malaya who was forgotten this week.
The 30-minute episode of Idol began with a little tribute to the '80s, via #ThrowbackThursday pictures of the three judges. Then, without a live performer, it was straight to business.
Dexter Roberts, Caleb Johnson, C.J. Harris and Jessica Meuse were called to the stage first to find out who would be in the bottom two (which is curious, because there was a bottom three for the first top 8 last week). Caleb, after nailing Journey's "Faithfully," was of course safe, as was Jessica and, somehow, Dexter. Sigh, America. Sigh.
But, after slipping a good bit on Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'," C.J. was rightfully in the bottom two.
Then, it was up to Sam Woolf, Malaya Watson, Alex Preston and Jena Irene. Alex and Jena were shoe-ins after strong '80s-centric performances of "Every Breath You Take" and "I Love Rock 'N' Roll" (respectively), so their safety should have been no real surprise. Then, it was between Sam and Malaya, and as we know now, Sam was safe this week.
With no save, that meant it was simply time for Malaya to say goodbye.
After watching her road-to-Idol journey (something the producers have oddly left out the past few weeks), Malaya sang the Dreamgirls track "I Am Changing" to say goodbye to the show that helped launch her to stardom.
This is where we remember that despite all that personality and all the talent, Malaya is actually just a 16-year-old girl. Here, we got our first teary goodbye performance of this season, and it just broke my heart.
Bye, Malaya. And we hope the judges are proud of their decision to save Sam.