“American Idol” viewers found out Thursday night that Kent’s Stefano Langone advanced to the top 10 and a spot on the summer tour.
Langone, 22, actually will be one of 11 contestants on the tour who survived the elimination round Thursday night.
The judges used their one save card to keep Casey Abrams in the competition even though voters had eliminated him with the fewest number of votes. Langone was in the bottom three in the vote tally.
Two contestants will be eliminated next week.
Langone, the former Kentwood High School and Bellevue College student sang the Lionel Richie song “Hello” on Wednesday night’s show on Fox. The 11 remaining contestants were required to sing a Motown hit.
Judges Randy Jackson, Jennifer Lopez and Steven Tyler didn’t voice their usual support for Langone on Wednesday night compared to the previous week when they loved his rendition of Simply Red’s “If You Don’t Know Me by Now.” They wanted Langone to show more emotion.
“I don’t want the intensity to come from you wanting to do well,” Lopez said. “I want the intensity to come because your heart is breaking. That’s what I need from you. Once you do that, you’re going to fly right out of this building. But you’ve got to make that connection.”
Jackson agreed with Lopez.
“You sounded good but there was no real connection,” Jackson said. “You can definitely sing. You are one of the better singers we have here. Hitting high notes at will or whatever, but there was no real emotion for us in that.”
Despite the criticism, Lopez still demonstrated her support of Langone.
“I just love you anyway,” she said before Langone departed the stage.
The critic on Americanidolnet.com disagreed with the judges and gave Langone an A-plus.
“I’m not sure what the judges saw because I picked up on a lot of emotion in his performance,” according to americanidolnet.com. “While Jennifer Lopez was getting goosebumps from Naima (Adedapo), I was getting them from Stefano. And those goosebumps weren’t just the first of the night, they were the first of the season. I thought it was flawless.”
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