Wednesday, May 09, 2007

The Battle of "To Love Somebody"

Poor Barry Gibbs seems not to have heard Clay's rendition of "To Love Somebody" since he said Jordin Sparks' version was the best he has heard. *g* At least his brother Robin who was guest judge during AI2 knew the best version when he heard it. I doubt Jordin would have changed his mind.

Judge for yourselves:

~Clay Aiken~
<

~Jordin Sparks~


I rest my case.


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12 Comments:

At 8:54 AM, Blogger Dianne Barbee said...

EE,

IMO, Robin was a much better judge of this AI song.

Jordin's version, though stylistically interesting in places, was very pitchy to this musician's ear.

Clay's vocals, on the other hand, are always spot on -- pitch, style, tone quality, presentation.

Thnx for providing the comparison. Have a great day!

Caro

 
At 11:48 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm soooo glad someone mentioned this. I like Jordin, I really do, but there is absolutely no comparison at all!

 
At 1:46 PM, Blogger Unknown said...

Hey, did you guys realize Too Much which almost has the exact same colour and layout as you guys posted almost the exact same blog on their blog... kind of funny seeing deja vu!

http://toooomuch.blogspot.com/2007/05/too-good.html

 
At 2:20 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Although I think Jordin has an amazing voice, I think the difference is "Clarity."

Clay's version is more distinctive in vocalization and styling.

They gave Clay his due that night. He received two "brilliants" from Randy and Robin and Simon said one of the best performances he had every heard on AI or Pop Idol.

 
At 4:57 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

One sounded somewhat pitchy, lacking clarity and confidence. The other was powerful, bold and stylish. Hmmmm....wonder which is which.
There really is only one CLAY AIKEN! Good thing too, cause me wittle hawrt could'nt handle two ;)

 
At 8:48 AM, Blogger happyseason said...

Yah yah.....i love jordin but i definitely love clay's version of TO love Somebody much much much more...in fact, that my fave CLay's performance in AI2.
Thanks for the report~

 
At 11:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Clay sang it well and the arrangement was great but I'm giving this one to Jordin. For her age she is outstanding.

And how can Robin be a better judge? He's giving his opinion and Barry's giving his.

Yes, I'm a Clay fan but I can accept others that can sing as well or better than him.

 
At 3:09 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sniff, getting all nostalgic here, Clay's voice is so beautiful.

 
At 3:24 PM, Blogger Allegra said...

Who said people who like Clay's version better than Jordin's can't accept that other can sing better than Clay? Not me. I'm a fan of Jordin's. I think she is awesome for 17, but she had some pitch problems on TLS, and overall her voice gets away from her once in awhile. She still needs a few years of vocal maturity to reach her peak. Clay sings in the center of his notes, and his TLS is outstanding. He was seven years older at the time, and he should have been, and was better IMO. Apparently the judges' weren't crazy about Jordin's version and they like her. Unlike Clay who only got grudging compliments when there was absolutely nothing to criticize.

 
At 9:15 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jordin sang this song very nicely, on the other hand Clay sang it brilliantly. It's one of my all time favorite American Idol performances. He just out sings most of the other contestants every time they have him on the AI stage in any season. I look forward to an appearance, suprise or not, by him every year. Just love them.

 
At 9:18 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jordin sang this song very nicely, on the other hand Clay sang it brilliantly. It's one of my all time favorite American Idol performances. He just out sings most of the other contestants every time they have him on the AI stage in any season. I look forward to an appearance, suprise or not, by him every year. Just love them.

 
At 5:13 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

According to our comprehensive database of Internet AI performances (which will be online this summer), this is no contest. Clay's version of "To Love Somebody" received a substantially higher approval rating than Jordin's.

Three of us have been working on this project for a couple of years. Every AI episode from the semifinals on is rated on a scale of 0-100 based on a wide sampling of Internet reviews from bloggers, forums, chat rooms, critics' roundtables, and professional reviewers. (Our opinions are not counted, nor are the AI judges.) A rating of 50 signifies a median performance. We avoid subjective terms such as "good" or "bad", just "higher-rated" or "lower-rated". If you think most AI performances are pretty good, then a 30 might be OK, 50 good, 70 very good, and 90 exceptional. If you think the typical performance is poor, your interpretation will be different. Very few performances rate out at either 90+ or 10-, but the handful that do are memorable in one way or another. The top-rated performance so far was a 96 (hint: it came in AI4), the lowest (an infamous semifinal performance in AI2) rated to a 2. We're a bit short on data for Season 1 and are unsure whether we'll publish numbers for it when we open the site, but the other 5 seasons are fully tallied.

At any rate, Clay's "TLS" rated near 90, placing it among the top 5% rated performances ever. Jordin's final number isn't in the books yet (it takes us a few weeks to collect reviews from the search engines) but it looks like it might approach 70 -- better than most, but well behind Clay. In fact, Josh Gracin also sang "To Love Somebody" during the same AI2 episode, and his version will probably wind up not far behind Jordin.

"TLS" will become one of the very, very few songs to have been performed three or more times on American Idol and score 50 or above each time. Coincidentally, Jordin contributed towards one of the others: "A Broken Wing".

Hope you found this interesting and that you'll visit our database when it's up. Yours is one of the many excellent AI blogs we use regularly for data.

 

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