So far this year the American public have been right on the ball with their rejections, this week bidding goodbye to Alexis Grace after a searingly dirge-like performance of "Jolene." Mind you, this was Grand Ole Opry week, so whatever the contestants were singing was going to make your ears bleed. Or so I thought...

What actually happened was that those contestants for whom Country is not their natural genre, but who have some stage smarts, took an old and largely boring song and twisted it up to make it worth listening to.

Stand-outs were Adam Lambert (again!), Danny Gokey (again!), Lil Rounds (again!). Matt Giraud and a greatly improved Anoop Desai. The rest of them may as well not have been there, and Megan Joy in particular I was convinced was at risk, her delivery being every bit as painful as Alexis' despite garnering good comments from the judges. Maybe that was just me trying to hang on to my theory that the wild carders would all leave first, which has now been blown out by the loss of Alexis. I still think Megan is firmly at the bottom of the pile of the remaining singers though, along with Michael Sarver and Scott MacIntyre who this week delivered a bland and samey version of a song I'd forgotten almost before he stopped singing.

Poor old Simon just doesn't get Adam though does he? Time to step down from your seat at the popular music high table I think if you're getting so old that something new and fresh completely passes you by.

I still think Matt Giraud will suffer from comparison with Danny Gokey, even though he outsang him this week. Or maybe this is one of those dark horse scenarios where Danny will just carry on being Danny, and end up looking good, but not that good. We've seen it before, where someone comes in to the competition already as good as they're ever going to be, and at the start they look as though they're streets ahead of the pack. But in that pack are those who've perhaps not had the chance for much stage time, or lacked a bit of confidence, and over the weeks they grow and grow until they've overtaken the early front-runners and left them in the dust. That might be Matt Giraud this year. Might be.