American Idol Season 11 Rankings - Week 5





Week 5 of American Idol 2012 is now in the books. With DeAndre’s departure, which I accurately predicted a week ago, we are now down to 7 contestants. Colton Dixon was the big mover this week, up 3 spots to #3 in the overall rankings, following his unique version of Cindy Lauper’s “Time After Time”. Joshua Ledet takes over the top spot, which I think most of us saw coming. He is bar none the most consistent performer on this year’s show. Does anyone think he sounds a little bit like Seal, with a more soulful sound?

Skylar Laine’s performance was much better this week, but with only 7 contestants left in the competition, she ends up ranked at the bottom of those still alive. I tweaked the algorithm last week to make the more recent shows “count” more, meaning that performing better or worse later in the season has a more dramatic impact on a performer’s overall rating. So I’m actually surprised to see Skylar in that position this week. It may be that she is still being dragged down by last week’s performance.

I started making predictions about who will be eliminated two weeks ago and so far my record is 2-0. I accurately predicted the departure of both Heejun and DeAndre. We’ll see if I’m right this coming week. Based on my “Compughter” rankings below, I’m predicting Skylar Laine, Hollie Cavanagh, and Elise Testone to be next week’s bottom 3. Note that I actually have Elise ranked ahead of Phillip, but my gut tells me (based on all of Phillip’s screaming fans) that Phillip will outlast Elise. So I am NOT predicting Phillip to be in the bottom 3 next week.

Right now, the “Compughter” predicts Skylar will go home next week. But, despite my own algorithm, I’m going to predict that Elise will be packing it up.

What do YOU think?

Rank	Contestant	Rating	Status	Movement
1	Joshua Ledet	100.000	Alive	+1
2	Jessica Sanchez	98.397	Alive	-1
3	Colton Dixon	96.503	Alive	+3
4	Elise Testone	96.199	Alive	-1
5	Phillip Phillips	95.862	Alive	-1
6	Hollie Cavanagh	95.785	Alive	-1
7	Skylar Laine	93.949	Alive	+1
8	DeAndre Brackensick	78.857	Eliminated	-1
9	Erika Van Pelt	70.616	Eliminated
10	Heejun Han	70.600	Eliminated
11	Shannon Magrane	65.785	Eliminated
12	Jeremy Rosado	60.744	Eliminated
13	Jermaine Jones	60.000	Eliminated