Bye-bye, American Idol

Blogging live for all but the first few minutes. 45 million votes last night, Ryan says at the top. Asks the Idols how everyone's doing. And they're gonna sing together, which should be interesting. Ryan promos the upcoming tour. Doing 'Together we are one'.

Chris kicks things off, good start; Tyler comes in nice and sweet, then Katharine off-key as usual. Paris and Elliott join for the chorus. And a choir troops on stage behind them. Elliott's solo is nice, then Paris takes over, big notes for her.

Car commercial dumb as ever, except at end when they show Idols walking toward camera in ridiculous outfits. Clips from last night's show, late. They oddly start with Paris and portray her negatively; then Chris and Taylor, who get praise (except for Taylor's dancing). Instead of focusing on Katharine's horribly bad performance, they pretend Simon's going back and forth on her. And they end with Elliott, mixture of praise and bad.

So bottom two should be Paris and Elliott, based on how they're setting it up. Wow, so next week is some sortof Elvis workshop at Graceland.... Taylor's safe, of course. Chris should be too. Not so for Paris, I'm afraid. Ryan asks her to sing--with no prior notice--she gives him her gum. Off she goes, a bit hoarse, maybe. But she's a pro, you know, it's actually maybe her most impressive performance, considering the circumstances and how she just knocks it off. Even ignores dropping her body mike, Ryan comes over to give it back to her.

It's obvious Paris is going home, only 3 minutes left in the broadcast--kindof a dumb way of doing it, maybe testimony to how they wanted to make sure she got a song in. Then Elliott--ah, I guess he's also got to sing. They're really cutting this close.

Ugh, and it really is good-bye to Paris Bennett. She's not crying, yet. Her clips are all famous people saying how great she is, it's unprecedented actually. Hmm, she looks like Oprah in some of the shots.

And she sings again at the end, which I don't think we've ever had. The other people come out behind her; I think it's pretty clear who the biggest star in 10 years is gonna be.

At the beginning of February, I listed Paris, Tyler, and Kellie, and Garet Johnson and Mecca Madison as my favorites; a week later added Chris, and Patrick Hall and Lisa Tucker. Amazing that three of my favorites made the final six....

Too bad my favorite's now gone.

Photo of Paris from her first audition via Rickey.org. More photos of her are on the site, here.