Canadian Idol 6 - Episode 29

Final 3 with Bryan Adams doing the mentoring and providing the songs. In the pre-performance patter Sass works happily (if not hard) at not saying she and Bryan once knew each other in the biblical sense of the word while on tour. I wonder if, cougar that she is, she’s trying to make some young fella jealous. Anybody heard from Sebastian lately?

Drew does Cut Like a Knife in a great arrangement – all Randy Bachmann power chords. More like Cuts Like an Axe. Knocked me out. Check it out on The Canadian Idol website when they get it up, if you missed it. If they released this version as a single it would play for years. Zack thought he should have dirtied up the vocals to better match the music, but he’s wrong. Drew is like that singer in Journey. Steve somebody. Journey was a joke of a band, to me – but their singer sounded like Sam Cooke doing metal and it worked for him.

Theo does Heaven from behind the piano; slower than the original, kind of Jackson Brownish. Theo’s voice is in its usual fine form and he hits the right emotional notes as well. Sass says, “Enormously powerful.” Farley thought the arrangement was incredible, Jake said, “You just blow it up with your voice.” Zack calls it, “One of the best performances ever on this show.”

Mitch simply doesn’t have skills to top top either of the first two performances. He does In the Heat of the Night and shows us angry Mitch. While he doesn’t look nearly as stupid as Theo does when Theo tries to look tough, I couldn't help wishing one of the judges would tell him he should stick to using his inside voice. Instead, they just told him he looked uncomfortable.

Maybe it’s the editing, but we didn’t see Adams give anything that might be mistaken for a musical critique – particularly disappointing in light of the master’s class Anne Murray gave last week.

Round 2.

Drew has changed from his rock star black leather to an intern investment broker’s dress shirt and tie, collar unbuttoned, sleeves rolled up; vest on, but no jacket. He stands at the mic, no guitar, and does I’m Ready. Zack said he looked and sounded like he was doing Bryan Adams in Bryan Adams: The Musical. Zack was right.

Theo does When You’re Gone and is doing well until he walks out from behind the electric keyboard and starts what Zack calls, “Aimlessly walking around the stage.” It’ll be nice to see Theo on a tour of his own, when he can just focus on being a singer and leave being a pop star to the tweens.

And then there’s Mitch. He does When You Love Someone. Afterward Sass tells him he has “redeemed himself” with the performance. It may bring him some comfort, but I think he knows tonight was the closest he’s going to get.

Final 2: Drew and Theo? We’ll see tomorrow.