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Ace Young, in the bottom three two of the last three weeks, needs something big. He needs to quit trying to impress us and go back to doing the stuff that makes him feel good. Kenny Rogers sees the same qualities in Ace that we do (well, okay, Kenny never called him hot), and says he's a passionate singer who sings with heart. And tonight Ace hits the first home run he's had since Father Figure, as he sings Keith Urban's I Wanna Cry. It's not just his drop-dead gorgeousness that gets to us. It's that he can leave us quaking with the emotions he can put into his singing. He becomes vulnerable. And a hot guy that can be vulnerable? Wow.

Randy doesn't see any of that, calls Ace's performance boring, but liked that he brought the falsetto in at the end. Paula totally disagrees, and says Ace has a knack for picking the right song. Ummm, where have you been Paula? He hasn't done that for weeks. She then says something unintelligible about his falsetto and singing a contemporary song. I repeated it on the TIVO, and I still can't make heads or tails out of it. Simon floors us all as he agrees with Paula and disagrees with Randy. He tells Ace he did good tonight. Ryan wants to add in an FYI to us that Ace is officially single. I thought he was dating that actress, so this is news to me. I hope it's not news to her.

To me, though, in the end, the only standout performances are Chris and Ace. I think they owned the night, and if Ace ends up in bottom three again, I will be completely shocked. Who will end up there I'm not sure, but my prediction goes to three of the following five, not based entirely on tonight – Taylor, Elliott, Paris, Katharine, and Bucky. Although I think Taylor is the biggest longshot for that bunch. The main reason I see it this way is they just aren't connecting with the audience as a whole, other than Taylor, as much as the others. It's hard at this point, as we have just gotten rid of the three we thought wouldn't make it that far. Now we need to delve into the people we feel are truly great, and pick from them. It could be a shocker tonight, but I don't think it will be.