dream on

For those of you who have been complaining that Adam Lambert shrieks when he sings in falsetto, I offer you one Danny Gokey. His final note on "Dream On" was perhaps the most painful single note I have ever heard on "American Idol." Honestly, I feel a little bad for the guy, since he's not the type who could ever sell a rock song. (It's not like Sammy Davis Jr. would have sounded any more credible doing Aerosmith.) Still, with nearly every rock song in the world to choose from, Danny chose this one, and that's all on him.

Kris, too, is no rocker, and as he sang "Come Together," I was mostly thinking about the strange shapes his mouth forms every time he sings. (It's interesting that neither he nor Danny chose to turn a rock song into a soft, plaintive ballad -- sort of like what Brooke White did last year with "Love is a Battlefield." Maybe the presence of Slash was too intimidating.) I'm hardly a Styx person anyway, so I found the Kris-Danny duet fairly painful. It had a Jonas Brothers kind of feel, and -- no offense to tween girls -- I don't mean that as a compliment.

Allison is a rocker, but, like the judges, I was left a little cold by her Janis Joplin. There was something weirdly thin about the arrangement. But her duet with Adam was smokin'. And Adam...what can I say? As Randy said, there warn't nothin' Broadway about that. The man dares to do Zeppelin -- a huge, frightening dare -- and he pulls it off. I'm not sure he's ever looked as comfortable onstage. This week, his fans will be supercharged, too. Can we shut this thing down already?

Agree? Object? Have something you need to say about Kara's rocker-grrl grommets and Paula's, um, stripes? Have at it in the comments, then come back here tomorrow at 10 for our weekly "Idol" chat!