Confession time with Mandy

OK, I’m just laying it right out there: I love Dolly Parton.

I think she’s infinitely interesting and intriguing. The woman’s a prolific songwriter with some great songs in her list. She’s a walking contradiction of music business savvy, down-home politeness, country, rock, and pop. And, really, her body defies the bounds of physics. She’s someone I’d love to meet. I think she’d welcome you right into her living room, serve you up a glass of cold sweet tea and tell you stories that made you laugh so hard you cried. Then you’d talk and she’d listen, really listen.

So when I saw that Dolly was the mentor on “American Idol” last night, I was there. (Well, actually, I had a dinner meeting, so I taped it and watched it two hours later.) And Dolly was AWESOME! It was great watching the AI boys and girls attempt to do justice to songs that really only work when Dolly’s singing them. So here’s my review:

• Brooke: “Jolene” was a great choice, but it’s Dolly’s song. Mindy Smith, though, has a beautiful cover and on the album version, Dolly sings harmony (another point for Dolly: that woman can sing harmony to anything with anyone. She just hears the part and goes for it. You probably heard her singing harmony with the AI singers when they came for their sessions with her last night. For someone who doesn’t naturally hear the harmony and has to have the notes in front of her to be able to sing it, this is an astounding feat. And Dolly rocks!) Anyway, Brooke was good, not great, but I enjoyed the arrangement and the performance. I thought it was better than Simon did.

• David Cook: He continues to rock my face off. I’m not a huge fan of the falsetto, but it worked. And the haircut was awesome. And if you can make “Little Sparrow” haunting and rocking at the same time, you may be America’s next American Idol!

• Ramiele: Snore. That was bad. She’s my pick to get bounced this week.

• Jason Castro: “Traveling Through” I thought it was one of his best performances. The kid is so much better behind the guitar. And I felt like he got into it. Simon disagreed, but oh well.

• Carly: eh. She’s got a great voice, but I don’t connect with her. I feel like it’s a technically good performance, but I don’t ever feel like she’s engaged with the songs and the lyrics. I don’t think they mean anything to her.

• David Archuleta: He’s still a cutie. And he picked—gasp—a ballad. I think I’m going to call him the next Josh Groban. It was good; the boy can sing; but it wasn’t smoldering or electrifying.

• Kristy Lee Cook and her coat of many colors needs to go. The girl is always just a hair under pitch. It bothers me. And while I think Ramiele was the worst performance this week, Kristy Lee definitely needs to go. She is not of the same caliber as many of the other singers.

• Syesha: Let me say that I love “I Will Always Love You.” Great song (written for Porter Waggoner). But I’m a purist who prefers Dolly’s original simple, beautiful version. As I told Mindy, I think there are some songs, some lyrics that are so beautiful that they don’t need all the vocal acrobatics to make them special. That’s why I love Jeff Buckley’s version of Hallelujah so much, I think. Syesha tried to do one half Dolly, one half Whitney in her performance. You could almost tell exactly where the Dolly section ended and the Whitney section began. I didn’t care for that. Pick one or the other and go your own completely different direction, but don’t take two separate approaches, cut them right down the middle, and call it an arrangement.

• Michael Johns: Sweet Lord, he’s pretty. And he was singing a bluesy version of “It’s All Wrong, but It’s All Right.” One of the lines said “Let me use you for awhile,” and I think, at that moment, I might have been OK with that. That boy sang the bottom out of that song and turned on the sex appeal. Seriously, Mindy nearly passed out when she watched the performance and needed a cold shower afterward. Wow. He renewed my faith in him last night. He can perform more than Queen!