Nashville Star: Week Six Recap

Love is in the air on Nashville Star this week — and it’s not just because, after last week’s double elimination, only one act will be going home at episode’s end. The theme this week is love songs. A week after Pearl Heart was unjustly voted off the show, are we ready to love again? Well, since Ashlee Hewitt is up first, sure.

Ashlee is singing “Cowboy Take Me Away” by Dixie Chicks, and she’s singing it to her future cowboy who might be out there watching in TV land. At the moment she says that, about a million guys in the audience think she’s talking about them. Ashlee has improved dramatically as a performer throughout the competition, now rivaling Coffey in the stage presence department. Her vocals, as Jewel notes, are refreshingly understated — and she’s just so darned cute. Hopefully her strong performance tonight makes last week’s surprising appearance in the Bottom 2 a one-time deal. Our rating: 4 stars

Gabe Garcia is up next, and he’s not singing to any future cowboys. He’s singing to his ex-girlfriend, whom he left behind to pursue his dream of a career in country music. Apparently “Must Be Doin’ Something Right” by Billy Currington was their song, and by singing it tonight, he wants her to know that he’s thinking of her. If Gabe’s ex is watching and wants him back, she’d better hurry her butt over to Nashville quick, because John Rich points out that Jewel has got a pretty big crush of her own on Gabe. That could be why she keeps telling Gabe to flirt with the audience each week. We’re not sure he does that this week, but he does sing the song extremely well — even breaking out some falsetto, which we haven’t heard from him before. He also sports a pretty nice belt buckle, given to him by Jewel’s bullrider boyfriend Ty Murray. Our rating: 4 stars

Coffey is also safe this week, meaning that either Laura & Sophie and Shawn Mayer will make up the Bottom 2, or Melissa Lawson is in for one hell of a wake-up call. Jewel finally gets her wish this week, as Coffey is singing a ballad. And what a ballad. He’s chosen Tim McGraw and Faith Hill’s “It’s Your Love,” which reminds him of his late mother. It’s an emotional song for Coffey, and it shows when he’s too choked up to sing a few of the lyrics. On American Idol, that would cost him, but on Nashville Star, that kind of emotion is a good thing. It’s a raw, vulnerable performance that’s shocking in its simplicity compared to Coffey’s usual over-the-top showmanship. While the judges point to some pitchy patches in the song, they can’t question Coffey’s country cred this week. This performance wasn’t perfect, but it was special. Our rating: 5 stars

Melissa Lawson won’t be getting that wake-up call after all, but maybe she could use one. Her status as frontrunner has remained fairly safe in recent weeks, despite the improvement of Ashlee and Gabe. She might be getting a little complacent, because she seems content to just belt out her songs, such as Martina McBride’s “My Baby Loves Me” this week. We’re getting to the point of the elimination process where pretty much everyone is strong vocally, so the performance aspect of the competition is going to be magnified. And while nobody can question her voice, onstage Melissa moves around like … well, a housewife and mother of five. If she’s going to become a legitimate country music superstar, she’s going to have to work on her dance moves and her facial expressions. As for her vocals this week, we tend to agree with John Rich and Jeffrey Steele, who thought she oversang a little – a comment that leads to an amusing moment when Melissa says she thought she “killed” it and Jeffrey responds that she “overkilled it.” Our rating: 3 stars

On to the Bottom 2, Laura & Sophie are singing “Picture to Burn” by Week One’s guest performer Taylor Swift. While a few contestants have shown marked improvement throughout the competition, Laura & Sophie have progressively gotten worse, really showing their lack of polish after a strong start the first three weeks. Jeffrey Steele thinks the Taylor Swift song is a good choice because it reflects Laura & Sophie’s youth. The problem is, it makes them seem like high-school talent show contestants. John Rich refuses to even comment on the performance, instead choosing to chastise the girls for rolling their eyes last week at Jewel’s critique. But he has already said all that needs to be said about the duo in past weeks — they’re just not ready for the big time at this point in their lives. As much as we dislike Shawn Mayer, this seems like the right time for Laura & Sophie to bow out of the competition. Our rating: 2 stars

We’ve basically given Shawn Mayer a free pass by suggesting that she should survive another week before she even performs. How does she repay us? With her version of Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats,” a song she says is about love gone bad. Unfortunately, love’s not the only thing that goes bad. Is it just us, or does Shawn always look miserable onstage, regardless of the song she’s singing? She can’t hold a candle to Carrie Underwood, or even really hold a note. Somehow the judges think Shawn was great this week, suggesting that the Shawn sounded a lot better in person than she did on our TV. Jeffrey Steele says she “killed it.” We agree, but not in a good way. Our rating: 2 stars

Laura & Sophie join Shawn onstage, and after the usual dramatic pause, they are told they’ll be going home. Like we wrote earlier, this is probably the best result for both the girls and the competition. Sure, it means Shawn sticks around for another week, but given her company in the final five, we can’t imagine she makes it much further.