Superstar USA, Episode 7: The Hoax Revealed

It’s the big finale of Superstar USA. There is a $100,000 advance and a recording contract at stake! Frankly, I can’t imagine that there will be a mad rush to buy the winner’s album, but okay. Only three remain, and they are all bad: Mario, Jamie, and Rosa. Personally, I think Mario has what it takes to be the Superstar USA, but Rosa could easily beat him out. Rosa is bad – bad bad bad bad bad. Mario, though, is entertaining bad. He’s so totally out of the loop of being good that he’s funny. Jamie, of course, is as well, but I just don’t think she quite compares. Let’s see if I’m right!

Brian McFayden is back in front of the live audience. He introduces the judges and Briggs gets booed again – as if anybody there even knows who he is. He tells Brian that he’s always been misunderstood. OK, move along.

Briggs says it’s going to be a tough call as to who will win. Rosa has a consistent ability to not deliver any of the notes or the lyrics. Mario has been entertaining from the beginning. Jamie believes she is the next pop diva despite the fact that she has butchered every song they’ve given her. He says it’s just too close to call.

Before their final performances, each of the final three were sent to a recording studio for some vocal training. Kathleen Wirt owns a Santa Monica studio and she’s here to help the contestants on their vocal performances and to bring out some personal style.

Kathleen tells Jamie that she will be singing “Respect.” We see Jamie practicing with headphones on while Kathleen wishes she had headphones – to block out the sound of Jamie’s horrible shouting. Kathleen says Jamie is cute and fun, and “she can almost sing.” Heh. I beg to differ.

Mario will be doing Aerosmith’s “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing” – which he says he sang once doing karaoke. Oh. My. God. He’s screeching horrible notes that almost crack my glasses – and they have plastic lenses! Kathleen says Mario has an underdog quality and a sweetness. His “voice may be unconventional.” Um. Yeah. That’s one way to say it. She adds that he might not dance like Justin Timberlake, but he’s got something special and he’s a superstar in his own mind, so if you think you’re one, then you are. Hmmm. Ooookay.

Rosa is doing “Bootylicious” (I think I got that right, but hell, even if I’m wrong, I’m closer than Rosa will ever be). Kathleen says kindly that Rosa had the most original thing going and she doesn’t even know what to call it. She’s dumbstruck and has never heard anything like her before and doesn’t know if she ever will again (probably code for, “and I hope I never do again”).

Jamie is first with “Respect.” She is dressed in a way that, well, makes me respect her body if not anything else about her. Briggs looks happy with it. Then she starts singing. Well, shouting. Yelling. Screeching. Really, everybody but singing. In fact, she’s not even in time with the music. Not even close.

Tone Loc says she got his respect by the way she sang that song, and that he likes how she took Aretha Franklin’s song and made it her own. Well nobody else would ever claim it, that’s for sure. Briggs says a real superstar connects with the audience naturally and she has that. But he adds that there can only be one winner.

Time for Jamie to chat with Brian. She tells him that she gave the performance of a lifetime and feels great. She says it felt so right. Good, ‘cus it sounded so wrong.

Mario is next with his Aerosmith song. I can feel it in my bones – this is going to be scary. And my bones are right – he misses every possible note, and then some. When he tries to go for high notes, it gets particularly scary. In fact, he sends me physically sprawling away from the TV set at one particularly bad note in the chorus. Ouch.

Briggs says power ballads are tough – you need to be sensitive and please the headbangers. Mario, he says, did both. He had the sex appeal of Steven Tyler minus the lips that look like butt cheeks. Tone says he didn’t know that Mario could rock the mike so tough and has a pent-up caged animal type of thing going. Er. Yeah, if the animal is a goldfish. Vitamin C says it blew her mind (not to mention her eardrums, I’m sure). She says she swore she wasn’t going to cry, but she feels like the two of them have had some really special moments and if felt like he was singing to her. She ends by blowing him a kiss.