Idol Watch: The End for Elliott?

In a striped blazer and gold bling that made him look like a yachtsman who’d somehow docked at a casino fountain in Vegas and then swaggered onto the carpeting, Rod Stewart visited the American Idol set for Tuesday's show and did a surprisingly good job coaching the contestants in the sort of American standards he records nowadays.
Even if the night as a whole sometimes felt less like Idol than an old variety show, most of the performances were really very enjoyable. Even Simon finally seemed to be paying attention again. In the past few weeks, he’d been sinking into apathy. I was afraid Paula had poked him with a manicured nail and he’d sprung a tiny leak.
However, he did conspicuously lower his head as Kellie Pickler picked her way through "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered," a very tricky, very slow number that can leave a singer swamped in the middle. Well, it swallowed Kellie whole and then it burped, and it might even drag her down into the bottom three tonight. Lucky for her, the camera loves her open-faced, guileless prettiness, and maybe voters will expect her to bounce back next week and give her a break.
I was a bit bored by Chris Daughtry’s "What a Wonderful World" and kept myself amused imagining he was singing "It's Not Easy Being Green" instead, but anyway the judges liked it. And they went crazy for Katharine McPhee doing "Someone to Watch Over Me." Eh. To me it just sounded starchy – stiff. Paris Bennett did a standout "Foolish Things" (how’d she know to lift her shoulders in rhythm with "I knew somehow this had to be…”?), and Taylor Hicks redeemed himself after last week’s lousy Queen performance, which I thought might be the beginning of the end. Well, for “You Send Me,” he ditched the cornball Bye Bye Birdie dance steps and put a little Van Morrison growl into the lyrics. You’re the dog, man! Or the cat! Or the goldfish! last week’s show I also had wondered if Ace Young, the handsome young man who keeps winding up in the bottom three, might have a saving triumph singing a standard, but I don’t know… He had his hair slicked and pulled back, and he wore a suit, all very Spandau Ballet, but it still didn't really work.
Elliott Yamin, who sings with so much vibrato he ought to be shaking like a rubber plant, swung nice and easy through “It Had to Be You,” but he was sabotaged by backup vocals that sounded like harmonizing squirrels, and then Simon told him he lacked “personality” – which means, I think, that sometimes you're better off looking like Spandau Ballet than crooning like Sinatra. He may be out, shoo be doo be doo, la dah dee dah dah…