Blog Posts by Lyndsey Parker

Jason Brock brings his "glitter explosion" to the live showsWhen "The X Factor" Season 2's first live competitive show aired Wednesday night, most viewers surely expected the unexpected from newbie judge Britney Spears, who for the first time this season would have to perform without a net, or from inexperienced new emcee Khloe Kardashian, who had the potential to make "X Factor" fans yearn for the days of fired Season 1 host Steve Jones.

But instead, Britney mostly held it together by just sticking to her own script and calling everyone "amazing," and Khloe was surprisingly adept and proved once and for all that she is the least annoying Kardashian. Instead, the unpredictability of "The X Factor" Season 2's first live episode totally came courtesy of one of the top 16 contestants, Jason "Mr. Entertainment" Brock.

Happy Halloween, everyone! Except, it's not such a happy Halloween today for me and my "The Day After" co-host, Matt Whitfield, despite the awesomely D.I.Y. Melanie Martinez costume I'm wearing. Honestly, Matt and I are both feeling as murderous as Jason Voorhees today, because last night during "The Voice's" part 2 Knockout Rounds, another cool Season 3 girl, Suzanna Choffel, was horrifyingly eliminated by her coach, true villain Blake Shelton.

But that wasn't the only scream-inducing decision of the night: Many other worthy contenders (Aquile, MarissaAnn, Chevonne) also got the axe from both Blake and Christina Aguilera. It was a real bloodbath. And it was no thriller.

Poor Randy Jackson can't catch a break. His over-reliance on hackneyed '90s catchphrases, and embarrassing '80s photos from his Journey days, have already made him a joke on "American Idol." And apparently now he's a laughingstock on "Idol's" rival show, "The Voice," as well.

On Tuesday's "Voice" episode, coach Cee Lo Green shockingly mocked The Dawg with a semi-convincing (and semi-mean-spirited) Randy impression. Talk about a "F#@$ you"! But maybe he was just trying to go as Randy Jackson for Halloween?

After Adam Levine and Cee Lo Green slashed their teams in half on Monday night's "Voice" Knockout Rounds, on Tuesday it was time for Blake Shelton and Christina Aguilera to do similar damage with their teams. For two hours, Team Xtina and Team Blake's contestants sang songs of their own choosing in last-ditch and sometimes desperate efforts to convince their coaches that they deserved to advance to next week's live rounds, and by the evening's end, we knew the full list of 20 singers (five contestants from each of the four teams) who'd made it through.

Were they the right 20? Well, yes and no. And in the case of Blake's final choice...a big, whopping, all-caps, italicized NO.

Last night, the first episode of "The Voice" Season 3's new Knockout Rounds aired, with Team Adam and Team Cee Lo being reduced from 10 to five singers each. And while this phase of the competition wasn't so different from the Battle Rounds we'd been watching for the past three weeks (it was, after all, two hours of singers battling), and there were some very controversial decisions made by Adam and Cee Lo, in the end it was still a fantastic episode--perhaps one of the best in "Voice" history. So today, my "The Day After" co-host Matt Whitfield and I have much to discuss.

This week, "The Voice" introduced yet another new Season 3 twist, the Knockout Rounds. Duh-duh-duh-dummmmm. Surely no two words have ever struck so much cold fear straight into any "Voice" contender's heart--or "Voice" blogger's heart, for that matter. Why? Because at the start of Monday's episode, there were 40 singers standing...but by Tuesday, only 20 of them (five from each team) would be moving on to the live shows.

But would they be the right singers? Well, yes and no, based on a few of the controversial outcomes of the Knockouts between Adam Levine and Cee Lo Green's contestants, who sang on Monday. Some of the frontrunners of the season did make it through, but a few others shockingly did not--and while sometimes Adam and Cee Lo's decisions to go with unexpected underdog contestants were surprising in a good way, there were other times when the coaches made absolutely the wrong calls.

Ugh. Why can't the Knockout Rounds have Steals, too?

Astro, aka Brian Bradley, aka "The X Factor" Season 1's Astronomical Kid, first made a splash rapping about his mother, when he auditioned last year with his instantly viral hit, "Stop Looking At My Mom." And now the seventh-place "X Factor" finalist, who's currently signed to L.A Reid's Epic Records, is back with another old-skool-style potential hit that boasts a parental theme. But while "Stop Looking" celebrated Astro's mom's gawkable beauty, "Dead Beat" is a much darker, much less celebratory song, all about an absentee dad.

The Darkness's Justin Hawkins is one of the top rock songwriters of the 2000s, not only penning such Darkness classics as "Love On The Rocks With No Ice," "Get Your Hands Off My Woman," "Knockers," "Dinner Lady Arms," and "Everybody Have A Good Time," and his other band Hot Leg's "Gay In The '80s" and "I've Met Jesus" (the man never disappoints with his song titles), but also anthems for fellow rock gods Foxy Shazam and Meat Loaf, and even many commercial jingles. Justin also famously wrote one of my all-time favorite Adam Lambert tunes, "Music Again," a song that once caused me to lose my dang mind. Well, it's time for me to lose my mind all over again, because in a recent exclusive interview with Yahoo! Music, Justin amazingly reveals that he has submitted a song to another "American Idol" star, Kelly Clarkson. Cue squeeing now.

Unfortunately, the song has one lyric that needs altering before Kelly can consider it...