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"Idol" Bids Adieu to Paris
Looks like we won't always have Paris Bennett.
The spunky 17-year-old soul singer from Fayetteville, Georgia, was the latest contestant eliminated from American Idol on Wednesday, leaving four hopefuls still in the running.
On Tuesday's performance episode, the contestants sang a song released in the year they were born and a song currently on any Billboard chart's Top 10.
Bennett first took the stage to perform Prince's "Kiss," released in 1988. Randy Jackson complimented the performance, while Paula Abdul was noncommittal. Simon Cowell, on the other hand, deemed it "screechy and annoying."
With Bennett's second song choice, a cover of Mary J. Blige's "Be Without You," the judges flipped their opinions. Jackson called the performance "pitchy," while Cowell opined that Bennett "did rather well with that."
However, she didn't do well enough to keep herself out of the bottom two for the second week in a row, and this time around, her luck ran out.
Upon receiving the news, the pint-sized teen maintained her composure and kept a big smile on her face, as she waved at the audience.
"Love you guys, too," she said.
Escaping elimination was Elliot Yamin, who received the second lowest tally of the close to 45.5 million votes cast by viewers.
After the show, the remaining four contestants--Yamin, Katharine McPhee, Taylor Hicks and Chris Daughtry--were scheduled to be whisked off to Graceland by private jet for an Elvis-themed workshop with music mogul Tommy Mottola.
As the fifth season winds down, the Fox talent search continues to dominate the ratings, with more than 28 million viewers tuning in for Tuesday's show. Last week, Idol finished first and second in the ratings, with 28.7 million watching Tuesday's episode and 28.3 watching Wednesday's episode.
With the American Idol finale only weeks away, online betting site PinnacleSports.com is favoring Daughtry to win, with McPhee coming in second. The site also predicts that Yamin will be the next to go home.
Meanwhile, even the ousted finalists will be heard again, both on the American Idol Season 5 Encores CD, due for release May 23, and on the 2006 American Idols Live Tour, beginning in July.
The CD features the top 12 finalists reprising their most memorable performances, while the tour will put the top 10 finalists on stage to perform live for their fans in close to 40 venues nationwide.
In other Idol news, a poll conducted by Washington-based public opinion research firm Pursuant Inc. determined some not-so-shocking information about the talent search's viewing public.
Some 58 percent of respondents said they valued Cowell's opinion the most, more than double the 26 percent who listen to Jackson's criticisms. A paltry 6 percent favor hearing what Abdul has to say. More Idol fans are from the South than anywhere else and most voters--73 percent--are women.
According to the survey, one in ten American adults has cast a vote for an Idol contestant this season, and of the 1,045 people who responded to the telephone poll, 35 percent of those surveyed said they believed voting on American Idol was as important or even more important than voting in a U.S. presidential election.
Which explains a lot, really.
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