It’s Bee Gees night on American Idol! I love the Bee Gees, and I’m excited about Barry Gibb being the mentor.

The performers are singing two songs each tonight.

Melinda Doolittle is up first with “Inside and Out.” A great song. I don’t understand what Barry’s trepidation about this song is… it sounds great as a solo number. A nice solid performance from Melinda. I’m not blown away… it could have been a bit more exciting. The judges seemed to agree.

Blake Lewis is next with “You Should Be Dancing.” The highlights are back in his hair. I’m hating the reverb the sound engineers are drowning him in. The effects should be enhancing him, not overshadowing. His beatbox trick in the breakdown was great. I would have never guessed that I would fall so hard for a beatboxer. Randy hated the beatboxing. Paula picked up on the fact that he was a bit out of tune at the beginning. Simon hated it.

LaKisha Jones is singing “Stayin’ Alive.” Once again LaKisha has completely ignored the advice of a seasoned veteran performer. She completely butchered the melody of the chorus and instead relied on the backing vocals to carry the soaring part of the chorus. Awful! Why couldn’t she have listened to Barry? The slower tempo was a terrible choice. A total mess. The judges were definitely not feeling it.

Jordin Sparks is up for her first number, “To Love Somebody.” I absolutely LOVE this song. Barry said, “I know a couple of hundred people have sung this song, but I haven’t heard a greater version of it than Jordin’s.” Wow… that’s pretty high praise. She did a good job with the song… she has such a great range. She had a little trouble with the rhythm. Lots of points from the judges. They all declared it was the best vocal performance thus far.

Time for round 2. Melinda is back with “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.” She wisely decided to leave out the line, “How can a loser ever win?” That’s a great choice. I really really really like her version of this song, it was subdued and intense with a fantastic ending. Simon says the second half of that song put her into the semi-finals.

Blake is back with “This Is Where I Came In.” It wasn’t a hit for the Bee Gees, but Barry thinks Blake can bring it up to date. This totally sounded like a song that could be on the radio right now. Randy and Simon didn’t care for it. Paula enjoyed it though she didn’t know the song.

LaKisha‘s second performance is “Run to Me.” She’s picked another slow song. That could be a problem for her. This is about the most boring performance I’ve seen this season. I’m so unimpressed. She lost her voice at the end. Simon says she and Blake are vulnerable tonight.

Jordin is back to close the show with “Woman in Love.” Barry says that Jordin is going to be one of our “great female recording artists.” She did a good job with this song, but it is very hard for me to hear it when I am so familiar with the Streisand performance of it. Her pitch wavered a lot, which is not unusual for her.

So the wrap up for tonight I’m going to rank them numerically.

1. Melinda Doolittle
2. Blake Lewis
3. Jordin Sparks
4. LaKisha Jones

It’s time for LaKisha to go home. She’s been floating by for several weeks mostly on the strength of one of her first performances. She’s basically phoned it in ever since. She’s been lucky in that other contestants before her were so dreadful that she managed to stick around.

I’m torn between wanting Blake to stay on the show so I can continue to watch him, and wanting him to get voted off so that when he does put out an album he still has enough control to stay true to his style. If he were to win, the album that the producers would force him to put out would almost certainly be crap. They have no idea what to do with him.

Jordin has improved the most of all the contestants. She has grown a lot over the past few weeks. She will be quite successful.

However, Melinda has been consistently great. Week after week she has delivered solid, technically perfect, beautiful performances. She deserves the title of American Idol.