Australian Idol: Celebrating Mediocrity Since 2003

The theme for this week’s Idol was Two Hours of Power. I saw little evidence of the latter, but it certainly felt like more than two hours. After the final four sang a version of “We Built This City” (does anyone remember Mike Moore from Frontline singing this in his car?) as the opening song, Nathan Brake was put out of his misery. He can now go and join the cast of Wicked or a West end version Phantom of the Opera…

James Johnston

James… poor James… it really wasn’t a good week for him. Kicking off the Two Hours Of Power show with Toto’s “Hold The Line” seemed to be some sort of musical contradiction in terms. He followed this with Extreme’s “More Than Words” where he played acoustic guitar to little effect. Saving his “best” till last, James had a crack at the Foo Fighters “Learn To Fly” where he donned a Gibson SG and with all the “awesome rock power” of Greg Brady as Johnny Bravo, proceeded to show the audience that this will be his last week.

Hayley Warner

Hayley got her night off to a really bad start by singing the U2 track “One”. This is one song that should NEVER be allowed to be covered by an Idol artist anywhere in the world. A cover band worthy reading of INXS’s “New Sensation” followed without any real excitement and it was left to her last performance “Bittersweet Symphony” to give her just barely enough to make it into the final two.

Stan Walker

Basically, Stan wiped the floor with the competition. He even managed to sing Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” and not look like a complete idiot. His version of “It’s a Mans World” was spot on and even a god-bothering version of ”Amazing Grace” couldn’t dissuade me from anointing Stan as your next Australian Idol.

Fortunately there are only two weeks to go.