Idols West Africa - Uche is out!

Uche Ume, the 24 year old contestant with the most unique male voice in the Idols West Africa competition is out! This announcement came as a great shocker to lots of people (including me) because he really has talent. Uche was one of the two (the other was Omodele) who got the "wild card" votes from the judges. He might have been done in by his choice of song ("Lonely no more" by Rob Thomas) which didn't do justice to his voice and performance abilities. It was also a very short performance - the shortest in this week's performances. Coupled with the fact that he was the last on stage ... many excuses could be made up for him that night. Unfortunately this was his last chance to impress the voters. He had this to say during his exit interview "Thank you so much for voting for me and believing in my dream." I still believe in his dream, and I hope he doesn't let it die.

Performances this week were quite better than last week as the performers selected songs from the New Age. The best performances were Timi, Timi (yes, Timi twice) and Jodie. Timi took the audience some place else with his extraordinary performance and vocal skills. Singing "Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me" and sporting a stylish Microphone holder, he created an uproar in the hall with a "knee sliding" stunt delivered just at the peak of the song. Jodie's performance of "This Words" by Natasha Beddingfield was great as usual. I believe that girl can sing for 5 hours straight maintaining the tempo and the feel of whatever song she sings. She sings with a strength that seems to come from within. The crowd seemed to agree with me as they cheered vigorously at the end of her performance.

Coming close behind the best performances were Mercy and Omawumi. Mercy did "If I ain't got you" by Alicia Keys. She added a few twists here and there but the highlight was towards the end when she did some extraordinary pitching. I think this is her best performance so far and she really used her voice well. Omawumi was the first on stage this week. She started her song ("Cry" by Faith Hill) kind of weakly but she built up the feel along the song. She maintained a constant high pitch towards the end. She seems to be sticking more to the slow songs now and I was impressed with her performance this week.

Idols "Fine Boy" Eric's performance was a bit weak this week and kind of just normal. The strength in his voice was not felt during his performance of Craig David's "I'm walking away", however, he took the song to a new level by including a modulation. His performance was still better than a few people though, and he deserved to stay. Jerilyn came dressed the part as she took Beyonce's "Work it out". Her vocals were much better this week than previous weeks. She seems to be using all she's got to try to stay in the competition and that included her dressing and her provocative dance moves. Somewhere along the line though, she went off-key. Temitayo's rendition of Christina Aguilera's "I turn to you" was just OK. The modulation wasn't too smooth but her transitions between falsetto and her normal voice range helped her and worked well for her. Another lifesaver for her are her great performance skills.

Two unusual guests showed up at the performances this week in persons of Cobhams Asuquo (Music Producer Extraordinaire) and Denrele (TV & Music Show producer). They both agreed that the Idols West Africa show is made up of extraordinary talents. Cobhams' least impressive singers were Jerilyn and Temitayo and his top performer was Jodie!!! (with three exclamation marks as he put it).

There was not much hype about the show this week due to the gubernatorial elections that took place in Nigeria on Saturday, and lots of people I spoke to (including me) did not watch the performances. However, the videos clips of the performances can be downloaded from the Idols West Africa website available at this link and that's where I headed to watch the clips. So now we are down from 8 performers to 7. We'll see what happens next week.