Brooke White's You've Got a Friend a Song to Nap to

I had high hopes for Brooke White as I sat in front of my television and turned on American Idol last night. Surely, she was going to find a song that she could connect to and sing it with grace and feeling. She was due.

Brooke chose the song "You've Got a Friend." Immediately, I became nervous. While that's a good song, it's also a song that's stuck in its time period, and it's not exactly the type of song that's going to overwhelm the audience with amazement.

I watched as Brooke did her best to infuse real emotion into the song. Her face creased and strained, and lines formed on her brow. To me, it looked as if she was in a stage play and overacting a bit. Brooke was trying so hard to sell her performance that she forgot to actually feel her performance.

Her pitch was on, and her voice was full and rich. That's really the best thing I can say about the performance. As usual, Brooke proved she can hit the notes. Unfortunately, that's all she showed. She didn't show a different side of Brooke White, which is something the audience has been craving. She also didn't show an exceptional performance as she sang her usual material. Instead, she made a nice backdrop. I enjoyed hearing the music in the background as I talked to others and thought about what I was going to do the next day. There was nothing about the performance that drew me in and made me want to focus on every note.

This may be the week that Brooke faces a real threat of going home. She failed to show us anything different, and on a night when so many performers went above and beyond, that may be a problem. She is allowing herself to get stuck in the land of easy listening, and that doesn't play too well on television..