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"FacebookPinterest\n\n (Even at this stage of the game, with 16 eager contestants still on the board, a typical episode of American Idol only features about three crucial data-points. These are those data-points. You're welcome.)\n\nMercifully, gloriously, delightfully, we are down to just eight women remaining in the competition\u2014one week to go until the hallowed Top 12. Which means that this week's pair of Idol episodes are just one hour apiece. So, no poorly produced interview segments, no awkward pre-performance banter with Seacrest (\"Are you nervous?\" \"Yes.\"), and very little extended rhapsodizing from our judges. Last night was simply eight women performing while sporting lots and lots of lip gloss (proudly strange siren Siobhan Magnus), '80s hair (a goofy Katelyn Epperly), and Mom pants (quickly-losing-her-grip 17-year-old Katie Stevens). There were three other things that happened and these are those things.\n\nTHE GOOD THING: Last week, the judges told Didi Benami she was simply \"not good\" after a creaky, creepy performance of Bill Withers' \"Lean On Me.\" It made sense: Withers' thunderous but warm baritone has rarely translated to wispy, blond coffeehouse types. This week, Benami scaled back and channeled her inner blond vamp, reworking Fleetwood Mac's \"Rhiannon.\" (Hear it here.) Her version\u2014slow, acoustic, gutsy\u2014won everyone back and then some. Benami has consistently recalled Season 7 contestant Brooke White all season. She's mocha latte-core, through and through. But last night she jumped up and out, not necessarily to a contender, but at least to someone who might one day release a record you can purchase at Starbucks\u2014a better fate than last week would have predicted.\n\nTHE BAD THING: Paige Miles has been a baffler. She has a broad, rangy voice, but she appears completely out of time. About 20 years out. Close your eyes and she appears, sidled next to Chynna Phillips in a Wilson Phillips video, swaying and singing with abandon about Billy Baldwin's thighs and eyes. Last night she wasn't just era-lost, but talent-dry. Performing the steely standard \"Smile,\" Miles was all over place. (Hear it here.) The song moved from A Capella to Bossa Nova to Crapola. Randy Jackson, in arguably his most inspired comment ever, said, \"I felt like looking at Simon and Kara and Ellen and saying, 'We're in a banquet, are you gonna have the chicken, the beef or the shrimp?'\" Miles is inches away from elimination. (Sad trombone.)\n\nTHE OTHER THING: At this moment, the producers of American Idol appear dead-set on propelling dreadlocked, chin-pierced, baby-having, guitar-strumming Crystal Bowersox into stardom. Simon Cowell went on The Tonight Show on Monday night and named Bowersox the prohibitive favorite. He has fawned like a wet-eyed cheerleader nearly every week. She has been called an original often and with enthusiasm by all of the judges and been given a plum performing slot every week. She has been the fortunate daughter of \"positioning.\"\n\nBowersox performed Tracy Chapman's completely fine 1995 MOR hit \"Give Me One Reason\" last night. (Hear it here.) The song is neither contemporary nor particularly original. It's a nice song\u2014perfect if you own a Subaru and really enjoy the films of the Ephron sisters. It is mass culture, elegantly disguised as auteurism. But ever since Idol introduced the use of instruments to the setting for Season 7, the show has let \"the package\" overwhelm. Whether last year's winner Kris Allen's self-lacerating performance of Kanye West's \"Heartless\" or David Cook's manly (and admittedly brilliant) reinventions of songs by Lionel Richie and Mariah Carey, Idol has favored \"artists\" over artists. Blame Chris Daughtry, who sold more than four million albums after working the same angle. Bowersox, ever-attached to her guitar and sometimes a harmonica (cred!), is another in long line. And probably not worth the fuss.\n\n **\n\n TOMORROW:** Eight men sing, one man writes, then, same man sighs."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/three-things-about-last-nights-american-idol-all-right-we-get-it-everyone-loves-crystal-bowersox>