The song choice is vital in competitions like this. Anyone given a bad song is put in danger

With regard to Patience:
I always hated the song, and thought it was a joke when I first heard it played on the radio. Silly me, though, it ended up doing hugely well. But then so did Crazy Frog, "My Humps" and that song about ketchup. I loathe the "ridiculous" cat-wailing chorus that even Gary Barlow couldn't pull off convincingly, in my opinion.

What's more, Anthony said he'd never actually sung in falsetto range before they asked him to do this song. They dropped him right in it, expecting him to sing fairly masterfully in a range he was completely uncomfortable with, whilst on the same night people like Craig and Ben (can't believe they got as far as they did...) even sounded rubbish in ranges they were comfortable with.

I think you're missing my point when you talk about "other people doing their songs better". My point is: how do we know Anthony wouldn't have done better than them if given the song they were given? How do we know they would have done better than Anthony if they had been giving the silly falsetto range to sing in and out of? We don't - it's an unfair test. Not everyone is given an equally challenging song to perform each week, so there are weeks when some people get an easy ride and come off looking impressive, and weeks where some people are given something more difficult and challenging and are trounced if they don't manage to pull it off.

I'll admit that Keisha wasn't striking this week, but she definitely was last week, and I think already she's been asked to show more versatility than any of the others. Fair enough that other people have managed to do more interesting renditions of the song, but I think Keisha's performance didn't work for a number of reasons, a lot of them not her own fault (arrangement slightly too low, bad choreography, etc.).

She could have done better, I admit, but I think she was definitely more challenged than a lot of the other girls were this evening. I just hope she gets another chance over someone like Tara, who even strained on a KT Tunstall number...

For me, I don't like Keisha because of the way she comes across. In all honesty I thought she was great week one, and poor weak two but even on a great week I wouldn't vote for her because, to me, she always appears somewhat conceited, so I kind of think in general the portrayal of her character on the show screws her over.

However if I completely remove any feelings I have about her as a person, I still think she had a very good week on week one, and just lacked that oomph in her performance that she had initially on week two. So perhaps she wasn't awarded a great song week two, but I don't really think this was the reason for her being in the bottom two, more likely because she just didn't cut it.

Totally agree with all of this Aleksis. I did feel that Anthony, who I really liked and was superb in the group numbers was thrown under the bus with Patience last year. There were maybe two of the Joes who could have done a better job on this song. That said, I don't think he was thrown under the bus deliberately. It was early on in the competition and I think it was just a poorly thought out song choice, which he suffered for.

Much later in the competition, they gave Ben the similarly challenging Crying and he made a complete shambles of it (and this is a Ben fan speaking ). At that point, there were lots of excuses made about the difficulty of the song and how the part of Joseph didn't actually require anything like that kind of range. It's a pity that the same points weren't raised in defence of Anthony.

About Keisha, I loved her in week one, hated her performance in week two, but I'm really not sure that any of the rest of them could have pulled that one off. You would need to sing this with massive exhuberance and total lack of self consciousness in order to pull it off. I'm not sure if any of them could have done that. Maybe Jessie, maybe Rachel, but it would have been a big challenge for any of them. I will be very interested to see how she fares on Saturday, with a different song.

Completely see what you mean here. I didn't particularly like Anthony last year, but I thought he was totally dropped in it with this song. I understand that it is difficult to give every contestant an equally difficult song every week, but would it have been impossible to have given them all a song with a falsetto part in it? The only two who would have had the ability and experience to cope, imo, were Daniel and Lee. (Not sure if you were thinking of the same two LaurieMarlow!) I daren't say anything about Ben in case Twingle is listening, but can you imagine how Craig would have sounded? (This is not meant to be unkind, he just didn't have the experience at this stage).

The only thing I don't agree with you about is your comment that it wasn't deliberate.........with all the highly experienced people involved in the show, couldn't they have thought things through more carefully?

As for Keisha - I say again to other posters: don't take too much notice of these little clips they show of the girls inbetween performances - they can give a totally distorted view of what they are really like.

Keisha will have to improve remarkably tonight if she wishes to stay in the show.
However, with ALW you never know.

It was annoying that Keisha was not given the Shirley Bassey version to sing, instead given yhe Pink version. She would have done much better with the former.