Pop Hunter is re-capping the grotesque display of culture that is American Idol all season. Here’s what you need to know from the Stevie Wonder/Whitney Houston Rounds which aired March 7th 2012, and March 8th, 2012.

The talent has been narrowed to the Top 13, and we’re hitting that stage of American Idol where no one is really bad, and everyone is just varying levels of good. It’s not as funny as it was during the audition stage, but you find yourself seeking humour in Steven Tyler’s wrinkles, and in J-Lo’s tears. As long as you get creative with it, there are laughs to be had.

The guys group was given the challenge of singing Stevie Wonder, while the girls group were handed an unbelievable mountain to climb — they had to sing a song by Whitney Houston. It’s hard enough to pay tribute to a recently deceased icon, but it’s a well known fact that Houston’s songs are some of the hardest to sing in contemporary pop music. I’m just sayin’, I’d rather sing from the songbook of a blind icon than the songbook of a recently deceased icon.

Here are a couple of my favourite performances of the night. With the coaching help of Mary J. Blige, Joshua Ledet absolutely crushed out a flawless performance of Stevie Wonder’s uptempo hit “I Wish.” It almost made me forget that this song was ever ruined by Will Smith and Dru Hill’s reinvention of it on the Wild Wild West soundtrack.

When I found out that the girls group was going to have to take on a Whitney Houston song, I wondered who would be ballsy enough to take on her biggest song. Lucky for us, one of the best vocalists in the competition, 16 year-old San Diego native Jessica Sanchez stepped up to the plate. Here’s her version of “I Will Always Love You”:

Like I said, we’ve hit the stage of American Idol where everyone sounds pretty good. There are no real stinkers anymore. If the performances aren’t amazing, they’re prettay, prettay, prettay good, yet at the end of the day, they’re unremarkable. If any performance doesn’t stick with you at the end of the show, it’s at risk for elimination.

Ryan Seacrest revealed that the male and female contestants who received the fewest votes would be singled out on the elimination show, and the judges would have to pick which one went home. On the Thursday night elimination show, the contestants that received the lowest votes were…

Jeremy Rosado vs. Elise Testone

In the end, the judges decided to get rid of Jeremy Rosado. See you in the next life, Jer-Bear.