Also, I thought he sang extremely well this week – perfect song choice, perfect mood and improved vocals.

I think he will continue to go far in this competition. As for winning? Too early to tell. This season is very strange.

I know they wanted Taylor to stop his outpouring of love to the fans, but he said “no” and somehow managed to get away with it.

This is my theory. T

The other side of the coin is that these singers have little personality and charisma – they are good singers, but the world is full of great singers. This show is al about showing personality and great vocals.

Everyone seems very guarded and cautious. There is no wild abundance of love pouring out from any of them that overflows to the viewer.

Everyone seems a lot more tense than before.

What’s happening?

The Latin theme is very difficult. I know this for a fact. Those tricky rhythmns, the authentic Spanish movements and singing style – these are things that one takes for granted when they are done well.

It looks easy only because the performer has inherited the special gifts to interpret this genre of music correctly.

Kaliope – you are indeed on to something here. I can’t believe that Melinda would choose Sway of her own volition. She was obviously uncomfortable singing this song. She is too intelligent a musician to make this mistake.

And if she did – well – it didn’t work. haha

Country + Chris = could be

Country Music + Sanjaya= Me Laughing.

I noticed Blake pull his head up and thought, uh oh, he’s doing that bad thing again. Had I never read your critiques, I wouldn’t have known that he was compromising his vocals.

As for dropping the Latin week, I don’t know. I mean next week is Country and that causes problems for many contestants. I feel like the Latin Week separated the singers from the musician.

I wanted to chime in that I 100% agree with you about the Latin theme. Every year they do this — I groan with dread. It’s so sad to see quality singers who’ve been consistent every week completely fall apart when hit with a task like this. What I also wondered about was the very limited song choices. We had 3 Gloria Estefan numbers out of eight songs. We also had five up-tempo numbers and only two true ballads, a significant reversal from the typical mix of song types. Also, none of the judges made even one comment regarding song choice. This despite the fact that bad choices were obviously made. This really made me wonder if the singers weren’t forced to choose from a very limited selection or even strong-armed into singing a specific song. The whole thing struck me as very odd. It makes me wish we were allowed to know more about what happens behind the scenes.