The Philippine Online Chronicles

"I woke up yesterday morning and had the strangest feeling that I was going home," Lacey Brown said to reporters during a Thursday (early Friday morning, Manila time) afternoon conference call, after the 24-year-old was the first to be eliminated in this year's round of 12 on American Idol.

Her prescience was par for the course for a lot of West Coast viewers of the results showed that aired locally here on Wednesday night. Thanks to the logistics of filming a show live for the East Coast, followers of Ryan Seacrest's Twitter page got the news early that she had been voted off, in a status update that read "...got tonight's voted-off Idol Lacey Brown." Perhaps as a direct result, that episode brought in the show's lowest ratings in the key 18-49 age demographic, reports the Washington Post.

Should Lacey have been the first one to go? Not according to USA Today's Idol Meter, which adopts a "pseudoscientific fast-track formula to gauge each singer's momentum." Despite after-results movement placing the ousted Brown at 0 (to contrast, Siobhan Magnus is at 75), the Meter has Tim Urban at -25. No doubt, that's got to have Vote for the Worst in a good mood, considering how they've been furiously campaigning to have him survive each week, so that he can torment audiences again with his faux-Jason Castro shtick.

But who is Lacey Brown? Brown, 24, currently works as a Christian venue director and values teacher to college-aged people. She is perhaps best known as "the come-back girl" as she had previously tried out for American Idol but was cut in the Top 54 Hollywood round during last season's show.

This season, she auditioned in Orlando, Florida, in front of Simon, Randy, Kara, and then-guest judge Kristin Chenowith, singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" from the movie "The Wizard of Oz." She was not featured during the first two Hollywood round episodes, but was seen later on when contestants had to give their second solo, singing "What a Wonderful World."

During the Top 24, she sang "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac and was declared safe. Based on a suggestion by Kara during the previous week, Brown opted to sing "Kiss Me" by Sixpence None the Richer in the Top 20. While judges were not sufficiently impressed, Leigh Nash, the lead singer of the band that originally sang "Kiss Me" was. In an interview, Nash also commented that Brown's Top 16 performance, a cover of Brandi Carlile's "The Story," gave her chills, saying, "If she made a whole record of original songs where she relayed the kind of mood that she did, I would totally buy that record."

After advancing to the Final 12, USA Today ran a feature that said that Brown would win "if she somehow convinces viewers she's more likable than Didi, more sympathetic than Crystal and cooler than Siobhan Magnus," but noted that she would lose if "the vocal instability that marred her "Landslide" performance during the semifinals becomes a weekly issue." Ultimately, the paper predicted that she would finish in the bottom third.

Given the task of singing a song by the Rolling Stones in the round of 12, Brown chose "Ruby Tuesday," which the Idolator blog described as "soft, subtle" but "not amazing." The A.V. Club's T.V. Club wrote that "it was [a] little sleepy and it sounded a bit out of her range." Ellen commented that she was distracted by the timing of Brown's standing and sitting on stage. Simon correctly pointed out that Brown performed like an actress, concentrating too much on where the camera was and not on the singing. During elimination night, Brown chose to reprise "The Story" in an effort to convince the judges to use the Judges' Save on her. Unfortunately it didn't work, and Brown became the first to be eliminated on the big stage.

The earlier weeks in the round of 12 are not usually a nail-biter. From past experience, there are always two or three whom the audience knows have no shot of going all the way. It's really just a case of seeing who goes out first. Even the judges know this, as seen several times through out the elimination night. In particular, Kara's flat-out "yikes, guys. It wasn't good" comment directed at both Tim Urban and Andrew Garcia (who didn't even get called to the Bottom Three) and Ellen's excessive hemming and hawing before reluctantly blurting out "Yesssss?" seemingly against her better judgment, seemed to crystallize the fact that there is still some chaff that needs to be separated from the wheat.

Next week, the 11 remaining contestants will have to change gears from rocking out late at night to coming home before curfew and remembering to do homework as the theme shifts from The Rolling Stones to Teen Idols. This could be the chance for singers like Aaron Kelly, Tim Urban, Katie Stevens and Paige Miles to gain some ground and do something more in their comfort zone, while others like Crystal Bowersox, Casey James, Siobhan Magnus and Michael Lynche will have to show their more playful side.

And someone better keep Andrew Garcia from doing a Britney Spears cover.