It’s out! American Idol Season 5 Encores! Get it from iTunes:

Does anyone expect Taylor not to win, after last night’s performance? Watching him reminded me of why I loved him in the first place- he loves music and you can tell. Even with a ho-hum song like that original one (don’t remember the title, do you?) becomes interesting when Taylor sings it.

Predictably, the men rocked tonight- with Chris Daughtry’s A Little Less Conversation as my personal favorite performance of the night. Elliott was very good. Taylor was adorable. Katherine struggled, but I honestly didn’t think she did too badly.

photo from Rickey.

What a great night: Bocelli was amazing, Chris Daughtry was in the top two (with Kat McPhee), and Kellie Pickler finally went home. Yes, finally.

I’m loving Elliott right now, and would have been very upset if he left tonight. Paris needs to wow us next week, or she’s in trouble. And apparently even negative Simon comments can’t darken Kat McPhee’s star.

Okay, 21st century night just sucked. The only performances I even remember are Taylor’s (which was SO much better than that frenzied dancing of his last week), Chris’ (because I love that song), and Elliott’s (because it brought back some fond Bo-Bice memories).

And then… shocker: the bottom three were Lisa, Ace and Katharine. The hell? And here I thought she was America’s sweetheart.

Lisa was out, of course. She’s been picking the wrong songs for the past couple of weeks now, so it was just time.