American Idol 9 - Top 12 Girls Perform

Finally! The competition got under way tonight on “American Idol” with the Top 12 girls performing for your votes. For the next three weeks, the bottom two boys and two girls will be eliminated in a quick purge to reach the Top 12.

After Miss Seacrest opened with the usual dramatic overstatement about the winner being vaulted to superstardom (yeah, ask Taylor Hicks and Kris Allen how that’s working for them), we were “entertained” by a skit of Simon supposedly feeling Ellen up under the judge’s table. That was supposed to explain why they were sitting at opposite ends of the table, but rumor has it they aren’t getting along. Ellen, sadly, had very little to add tonight.

We’ll be mercifully spared theme nights until the Top 12, so that means for the next three weeks the contestants can sing songs from any era of the Billboard chart. That’s more than 50 years of music for the hopefuls to slaughter.

Simon has stated publicly that he believes a girl will win this season, but judging by these performances, I’m not so sure. It was a bunch of girls trying to be Adele, Duffy, Norah, Lily, insert-retro-singer-name-here.

Read the rest of the recap at Project Q Atlanta now!