Lopez Blogs

Minnah Karlsson kicked off the evening with her version of "Ambitions". I believe Andreas Carlsson made some negative comments about her last week, which was a bit unfair. There wasn’t too much wrong with this vocally, but maybe it was a little too anonymous and lacked oomph.

Daniel Norberg took on one of the all-time Swedish classic hits, Andreas Johnson’s "Glorious" which was totally inappropriate for his voice and it completely fell apart at the end. He really shouldn’t be given any more rock songs, but he has quite a nice tone to his voice and if he gets the right songs over the next few weeks he could become a contender. Maybe some offbeat acoustic pop, in the Jason Mraz style?

You’ll know by now that I want the overrated Alice Hagenbrant out of the contest, as she is also pretty anonymous. She sang "Breakaway" well enough but that’s the only good thing I have to say about her this week.

I’m no fan of Andreas Weise either, but I’ll admit his vocals were very good on "Feel" although the song was a bit of a mis-match. His voice is more suited to musical theatre and I feel his future lies there, rather than as a pop idol.

Linnea Henriksson in red tights! My favourite girl in the contest did well with her version of The Knife’s "Heartbeats" (original of the Jose Gonzalez hit). Her voice cracked towards the end but she probably got away with it as she may not have a traditionally great voice but has that star quality which some of the other contestants lack.

Linda Varg learned from last week and kept her vocals under control for the always-popular "Iris" and again I probably liked her better this week than I used to.

Olle Hedberg sings Oskar Linnros! The prospect had me full of anticipation, yet sadly it all fell short for me which was probably due to the rubbishy backing-track (also noted by Aftonbladet) which didn’t do him any favours. Whilst I’m an Olle fan I disagree with the panel’s comments that he sang the song better than Oskar. Both singers have different styles and I prefer Olle in a more "raw" mode - hopefully he’ll get back to that next week.

Rock chick Elin Blom’s little niche is to be given songs by other singers with short blonde hair (!) Last week Robyn, this week Pink. I thought this was a very nice version of "I Don’t Believe You" which she sang very well indeed and she has gone up in my estimations.

Jay Smith didn’t exactly step out of the box - or should that be the "Heart Shaped Box" - why, they even had him styled like Kurt Cobain! Fair play to a singer like him daring to take part in a competition like this, where most potential rockstars would avoid it like the plague. But Jay clearly knows the value of Idol as a platform, a stepping stone to better things. Somewhere out there is a rock band out there crying out for a frontman, and he is it.

Finally, Geir Rönning’s version of "Rosanna" was pretty much faultless and note-perfect and very, very impressive, and now I can understand why the Aftonbladet columnist was so enthusiastic. But he is a professional with years of singing experience, which continues to put him at a very unfair disadvantage and I'm still quite uncomfortable with that.

Evicted: Minnah. Not too much of a surprise due to the running order and previously-noted lack of oomph.