American Idol: Brooke White Says Goodbye

On the April 30th American Idol results show, Brooke White was voted off the island and took the stage to sing her last song. She was joined in the bottom two by Syesha Mercado, who is no stranger to that position. Brooke cried, as was expected, and was barely able to hold it together enough to sing. Was it Brooke's time to go?

I think Brooke is a great singer, but she didn't have the fan base of the other idols. I think this is partly because she's fairly limited in the types of songs she can sing, so a couple of bad song choices have really lowered her in viewers' eyes. Add in last week, when she forgot her words and had to start over, and she was doomed.

Brooke seemed to get a sympathy vote after last week's blunder to keep her in the competition for another week, but that sympathy just couldn't carry her any longer. In addition, the stress of the competition seemed to be getting to her, and her April 29th performance was really lacking. If she'd come back after last week and wowed us with two very strong, moving performances, she might have survived another week or two.

Was it Brooke White's time to leave the American Idol stage? It was inevitable, since she had no hope of keeping up with David Cook and David Archuleta. However, I maintain that Jason Castro should have gone home first. Brooke is more talented than Jason and has more potential as a recording star-Jason is a pretty good coffee house performer (better than Phoebe Buffay, at least), but he's not someone who will sell a lot of records. Like Reuben Studdard and Taylor Hicks, he won't have staying power. I have no doubt we'll be hearing Brooke White on the radio for years to come.

Brooke White's departure leaves us with four contestants for the title of American Idol: David Cook, David Archuleta, Syesha Mercado, and Jason Castro. I predict the final will be between the two Davids, but the title should easily fall to David Cook. Although David Archuleta has improved over the past few weeks and is definitely a prodigy as mentor Neil Diamond said, I don't think he has the star quality of David Cook. Syesha is a good singer, but is generally not memorable, and Jason Castro is just a joke.

I'm looking forward to the remaining weeks of American Idol to see what happens, and if America votes as it should.