10 most unforgettable ‘Idol’ performances

Alaina Whitaker, 'Hopelessly Devoted To You' (singout)
Alaina's disintegration into a puddle of quivering tears when her number came up reminded everyone that she was a 16-year-old girl who had just been told on national television that she wasn't good enough to last more than two weeks. She attempted to waive her singout, but her former competitors wouldn't hear of it, determined as they were (possibly because she was no longer a threat) to give her a queen's farewell. So she reached into herself and found the strength not only to sing but to cover an entire emotional arc from humiliation and despair to triumph and celebration. Purely on that level, it may have been the greatest singout in "Idol" history.

Jason Castro, 'September Morn'
A performance so memorable that it impressed itself in Paula's mind before it even happened.

Kristy Lee Cook, 'Eight Days A Week'/'God Bless The U.S.A.'/'Forever' (singout)
It's a funny thing about Kristy Lee: for someone who quickly became the season's designated goat, she managed to keep her wits about her the entire time. She had a sense of humor about her role, but kept trying to learn and improve, rather than flipping the show the bird the way Sanjaya Malakar did last season.

In many ways, she's the only contestant who has ever viewed the show exactly how it deserves to be viewed, no better and no worse. As a result, Kristy Lee managed to offer up just about every type of memorable performance (except, alas, for a truly great vocal).

Her bluegrass "Eight Days A Week" was a trainwreck of epic proportions, with a beat that was too busy collapsing in on itself for the vocal to grab any kind of hold on it. "God Bless The U.S.A." was such blatant pandering by a contestant in trouble that Simon Cowell tipped his hat to her black-hearted cynicism immediately afterwards. And during her post-elimination singout of Mariah Carey's "Forever," Simon found himself staring down the business end of the girl he'd been using as a punching bag for weeks as she sang the lines "Those days of love are gone/Our time is through" directly to his face, and even he had to laugh along with everyone else in the studio. At that moment, it was clear that season seven, which was already on the verge of being the most boring yet, was about to become a lot less interesting.

Marc Hirsh is a writer in Somerville, Mass.

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