Girls! Girls! Girls!

Oh yes, it’s Ladies night which is Marcia’s favourite night because she gets to let loose with music industry pearls of wisdom, such as ‘sister girlfriend’ and ‘you go girl’. It’s a little known fact but Mother Marcia is allowed to mentor and dress one Idol Girl and one Idol Boy each year and this year the girl she’s chosen is Tarasai. This explains the only slightly dead looking ‘thing’ Tarasai had looped over her shoulders and I must admit when I saw her wearing that at the start of the show, I got a whole Thunderdome vibe and was CONVINCED she was going to come out singing ‘We Don’t Need Another Hero’. And we all know Marcia is dressing Matt Corby as well, which is why he’s wearing another bloody silly tablecloth around his neck.

But let’s get on with it. Our hosts go straight to the Sensible Judge and ask Dicko what he thought of last night and he rightly tells the boys to collectively pull their vocal socks up. G doesn’t bother asking any of the other judges – because really, Daddy’s back and we don’t need to bother the others anymore – and leaps straight into telling Matt Corby that he’s through. Matt is the only person in Australia remotely surprised by this, and he is roundly applauded and hugged by all. He is joined by – huzzah! – Jacob Butler, who is suitably chuffed, although slightly lost for words. He rallies and offers to compensate those who voted for him and I just quietly may need to send him a bill.

First girly cab off the rank is Sally My Surname Is Too Ludicrously Long And TallulahBelle Just Made It Even Longer For The Sake Of A Not That Terribly Funny Joke van der Zwart and she’s – oooooh – she’s singing Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Never Again’. Tough, tough song. She does this really quite well, hitting all those big KC notes, whilst managing to inject a suitable amount of bitchiness into it, because it is a very catty hell hath no fury song. (Interesting song choice with Ms Jesse Curran also singing tonight . . . but we’ll get to that.) Sally’s stagecraft is a little unpolished but quite frankly, she’s already blown the boys from last night OUT of the water and on to the beach and they're lying there gasping for air and flapping their fins frantically. I may have taken that analogy too far, although Daniel Misfud's hair is 'wavy' - get it?! - and oooh, maybe the scarf is hiding gills . . . NOW, I've taken that analogy too far. So. Judges? Thoughts?

Kyle thinks she has star potential but just needs to work on her nerves and get a little polish. Marcia said she was just so calm and centred back stage, with her own invisible Kotex shield and well done girlfriend (you need to imagine that every time she says “girlfriend” I sigh so hard that it causes a tornado in Kansas). Dicko has an attitude about contestants covering Idol songs and makes a lovely remark about how they’re creating some weird mutant pop monster that’s beginning to devour its young and BY GOD we have missed you, sir. Never leave us again Dicko, never! Mark calls Dicko narrowminded and uses Missy Higgins as an example of how snobby the ‘real’ industry is about Idol (reportedly there are signs up at the auditions reminding contestants that Missy has forbidden Idol to use her music because she has conveniently forgotten that she won a music contest on JJJ). He asks Dicko to just tell her she sang a crap song (which, true, it ain’t a great song) but that she did it really well (also true).

The fabulous Natalie Gauci is up next and my heart will break if she isn’t ace – we’ve seen how well this chick arranges so please god, let her not do a carbon copy of Xtina’s song ‘Hurt’, make it yours Natalie . . . oh. Sigh. That tinkling noise you hear is the remnants of my shattered heart falling to the floor because she is . . . not . . . great, it’s actually kind of shrieky and paradoxically also not powerful enough. I wish she’d arranged it differently, I feel like this really could have worked for her but it didn’t.

Marcia goes straight to song choice, how Xtina is one of the finest singers in pop today (I would argue, finest pop sing ever) and tells her she “cut that” – now initially, I thought this was Marcia’s GhettoTalk for 'bad' but it turns out, she thought it was great and I would recommend upping the dosage, Marcia. Dicko tells Natalie that just because you think you can, doesn’t always mean you should, and that she went suburban – agreed, she shouldn’t be trying to be That Girl, we have enough That Girl’s, we want That Other Girl, thanks. Mark calls it a monster song and says he didn’t know she had that kind of control and that her tones, shades and falsetto were all superb – is my tv broken, is that why I thought she tanked and they loved it? Kyle backs me up by telling her that it was a pretty good job but that everytime she went around the corner, she clipped the gutter, that it wasn’t very smooth and then gives sartorial advice about not wearing satin pants on high def. Good point, that.

Cheray Doughty needs to pick me up from the disappointment of Natalie and Joss Stone’s ‘Tell Me About It’ is a DAMN fine start. Okay her dancing is slightly daggy but her vocals are GREAT. She bops around the stage, completely involving the audience there as well as at home and she sings the hell out of this number – yay!

Dicko asks wide eyed where she pulled that rabbit from, calling the performance cheeky and noting that she played with it but it didn’t become cheesy (and nobly resists the urge to firmly say “Husny” here). Mark has been worried that Cheray might be too Olivia Newton-John but says that, in actual fact, she’s a hot tomato. Cheray is wonderfully not in any way offended about the Olivia remark and even busts out a little ‘Let’s Get Physical’ – hah! Love her! Marcia smiles and says she’s liked Cheray from the beginning – so apparently, she wins that contest – and that she whispered to Kyle that she likes this chick because she doesn’t sound how she looks . . . and I’m pretty sure Cheray should be offended by that, but she laughs gamely and doesn’t sneer at Marcia’s wig, like I would. Kyle agrees that she’s great, she knows what she can do and she does it.

Tarasai Don’t Hate Me Because I’m A Jesus Loving Belter Vushe is next and please by all that is holy, don’t let her be singing Whitney . . . ooh, she’s doing ‘River Deep, Mountain High’, formerly known as the Song Owned By RickiLee and which is now, the Song Jointly Owned By RickiLee and Tarasai, because this is kind of awesome. She gospels the start and when she cr-ACKS into the big voice rock bit, she is seven different kinds of cool. Yes, she’s got the yell-y singing going on that I hate but she isn’t slapping me around the face with it, it’s not permeating every single note that she’s singing, she’s respecting the song and she’s just freaking nailing it. THIS is the kind of performance that GUARANTEE’S you a Top 12 slot.

Mark calls her the miniMarcia, a force of nature, loves her control and power but he keeps thinking Cosima and can she keep that level of performance without hurting her vocal cords? To be fair, didn’t Cosima herself say she sang with a sore throat which exacerbated the whole problem? Tarasai sagely nods that yes she can. She’s strangely confident whilst also this meek little thing at the same time – weird. Kyle tells her mum that she should be very proud of her powerhouse beautiful child, and tells her she’s great and she should continue to soar. Marcia is chuffed that Tarasai started at one and moved her up to eleven – so of course, Mark has to interrupt and disagree that she in fact started at eleven and went up to thirty three and shut up, Mark, god. Marcia advises Tarasai to just always ignore Holden – ahhhh, if only we could ALL do that, Marcia, if only. Dicko confesses that she fascinates him, the competition needs her and big notes win votes. He also says he likes her because she’s barking mad and once more, awesome call sir.

Okay. Jesse Curran. Yes, she is dating James Blundell. Yes, reportedly he left his wife and kids for her, but you know whose business this is? NO ONE BUT THEIRS. Let’s leave the muck racking and slander slinging outside of the Reality Tv Show about SINGING, shall we? Let’s concentrate on her bad BAD choice of song, U2’s ‘One’ which works only when Bono sings it with Mary J Blige and even then, I’m kind of over it. She sings this well, but like Junior the night before, it’s waaaaay too pretty, too soprano-high-standing-in-front-of-the-boys-choir-on-the-stage-live-on-KerriAnne. It’s midday music. She gives it more of a country feel towards the end and I wish she’d arranged the whole song this way.

Kyle wanted to be blown away by Jesse (oh, I wish, here’s a shotgun with which to make that happen) but it was a little too Julie (Andrews, as in the hills are aliiiiiiiive) for him. Marcia calls it a polite performance and alludes to what’s going on in her personal life and shut it Marcia. Mark and Dicko point out that her foot is currently protruding from her mouth and Marcia calls them the Kings of Innuendo. Actually Marcia, they weren’t hinting, they were flat out telling you you’re an idiot for bringing it up. Kyle tells Mark to shut the fuck up and let Marcia talk her turn and stop stealing other people’s time and sometime Kyle, you are the Voice of Reason. Hear hear. Dicko says he knows she’s had a tough week and refers back to the history of the song and this is why I love him, he loves the background details, the minutiae of music and where it comes from – hence his horror Season Two when no one but Chanel and Courtney knew the Beatles. He didn’t like the rewriting of the song – Jesse says it’s the Johnny Cash version and now the country bit makes sense. Mark loved the fresh feel of the arrangement but is disappointed to hear it isn’t hers and he felt the lament and pain of the song suited her. But he comments that she never really hit the pitch, she slid up to the notes and kind of missed them, never really hitting the bullseye. She takes it all well and is lovely and bubbly – don’t hold the bullshit gossip mongering against her, just the lacklustre performance . . .

Lana Musical Theatre Krost loves Jewel and has over imitated the trademark Jewel quaver and fuck me, she’s singing Fergie’s ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’. Sweet baby jeebus – oy. I can’t listen to this song on the radio because of the line ‘I’m going to miss you like a child misses its blanket’ because – the fuck? What the fuck kind of lyrics are those? What eight year old wrote those? Those are some seriously AWFUL lyrics and that line ruins the ENTIRE song for me, I have to sing la la la la everytime she gets to that bit and I often just change the station instead of bothering. This is NOT the right kind of song for someone Lana’s age to be singing either, its about a really fucked up chick who needs to be on her own because she has some issue pertaining to her childhood or something. You don’t GET that at 17, hell you’ve barely given UP your blankie at 17. Stupid choice, stooooopid. And she doesn’t get it at all, she meanders across the stage with stiff Musical Theatre arm and hand waving in a hideous white puffy dress thing, she puts zero passion in the song and it is pure elevator music. She sings every note correctly, but like Daniel Misfud the night before, it is b-l-a-n-d.

Marcia tells her she looks like a picture – a picture of what exactly Marcia? One of those dolls you put over your toilet paper? – and then says she picked a perfect song for her age group – WHAT? I believe this is the earliest in any season of Idol where Marcia has officially lost the right to speak to contestants anymore. Dicko loves me more than Marcia and tells her it was a bad choice and whilst he is desperate for the other contestants to learn, he wants her to Unlearn as her default position is too mannered. Ad nauseam repeat, but I FUCKING love him. She is too High School Musical. Mark tells her that she is a very pretty little girl with a very pretty little voice. That is ALL that he says. He is patronisingly dismissive. Ass. Kyle has seen her sing better than that and that song needs to be sung sexier (and by an older woman.) Marcia asks her to rough herself up and Dicko tells her to smack Kyle in the face. Australians countrywide stand up and applaud.

James and G – who have not been NEARLY as witty as they were the previous night, sigh – once again ignore all the other judges to ask Dicko’s Final Thoughts. He tells them it’s a world of difference making it to the Top 12 then it is making it to Top 24 and then drops the bombshell that SonyBMG have insisted that only one contestant – the winner, obviously – will be getting a contract this year. I scoff loudly and doubt that very much, but just in case, I give dibs to my current favourites; Jacob, Sarah, Sally, Breanna, Mark, little Ben or Cheray.

Tuesday is Mark, Lyall, Dave, Ben, Jack and Marty. I can only see Mark and Lyall going through from that group – adorable though Ben may be . . . and my money’s on Tarasai and Cheray to go through from the girls. Maybe Sally. Let’s see, shall we?