American Idol judge Harry Connick Jr. let loose on Top 10 finalist Jessica Meuse over her performance of “Pumped Up Kicks” last night. In one of the harshest criticisms of the night, Harry chastised Jessica for smiling through the song and not connecting to the seriousness of the lyrics.
Jessica Meuse, however, disagreed strongly with Harry’s interpretation of her delivery of the song, which references a school shooting. American Idol judges Keith Urban and Jennifer Lopez both sided with Jess for the most part, despite Harry’s apparent adamant dislike of how she performed the controversial song.
While we do get Jessica’s point in the video above that Foster The People used clever lyrics and a witty delivery to address a provocative subject, we still feel like she didn’t really give off the right vibe with her performance of the song. Perhaps it was just the wrong song choice in general to sing about kids shooting other kids on a family-oriented reality TV singing competition show.