A bit of a disappointment

You know, I totally appreciate the throwback to "Miami Vice" in the opening sequence tonight, but I have to wonder - what percentage of "American Idol's" viewership is actually old enough to remember the show? I suppose the young kids would still get it because of the movie with Colin Farrell, which was based on the show, but still.

Shannon McGough is immediately likable for me. She's 18 and works at her parents' meat market. She's very pretty and her sequined beret says that she's got her own style, her own personality and isn't afraid to show it. And if that wasn't enough, she also can belch louder than anyone I've ever known. I'm not sure why she would tell people about that - she actually wonders aloud about that herself - but I guess it's just one more thing to set her apart from the rest.

She's going to sing Janis Joplin and I'm immediately afraid - it's a difficult sound to mimic, so unless she plans to sing the song her own way, I'm thinking this may not go well.

Wow - saying it woudn't go well turns out to be an understatement - her singing is like a mix of raspy screaming and this trying way too hard to be sexy sound. I personally don't like it at all, which is a disappointment because she's so likable otherwise, and if the judges give her a ticket to Hollywood, I may have to boycott the rest of the season.

Well they tell her it was bad - Simon even tells her he couldn't understand a word of it, that she sounded like the Hungarian Janis Joplin. She asks to sing another song and Simon says "Never!" But she does it anyway and the weird thing about her is if she didn't force her voice so much to sound a way that it shouldn't, her voice maybe wouldn't be so bad.

She tells the judges that she's never had anyone tell her she sings bad before and Randy's like, "Really???" He tells her that she can't hear the melody and that he thinks she's almost tone deaf. She looks devastated and if she hadn't been so bad, I would feel really bad for her. And the funniest thing is when she tells her mom, her mom is completely shocked, but I guess that's what moms do - they support us and love us and think we're great no matter what.

Former boy-bander turned rocker Robbie Carrico, from Melbourne, Fla., has a nice voice, but to me, there's nothing special about it or him, really. They don't say too much about him or give us too much in terms of his background, so I can go either way about him. Plus the song he sings has almost no melody - it's actually a bit dull. But Simon says yes, as to Randy and Paula, so he's through to Hollywood.