Afterward, Randy tells her she's peaking at the right time, and gets to name-drop his old Journey bandmates, which demonstrates what a canny choice on Hollie's part this song actually was. Jennifer's also impressed, saying it was beautiful. Steven is gross about Hollie's creativity being a delicate flower and how you make it bloom. Stop talking to teenagers that way, Steven. Ryan asks her about how she said she wanted to "go into character" for the song, and she yammers about how she tried to understand its true meaning. And then Ryan lets Randy give her even more compliments on her performance, I guess because he used to perform it live. The privileges of experience.

Steven Tyler selling "crispy chicken strips" for Burger King is a little too much like an animal mascot hawking fried versions of itself.

Coming back, Ryan reminds us of the finale coming up in two weeks, and then there's a segment of Jason Derulo and his sparkly neck brace working in the studio on the song that he's apparently cowriting with the entire country. And which will be performed by him on the finale. I've been trying to forget about that.

A couple of minutes of that get us to the half-hour point, so it's time to introduce Joshua, who's singing a song that he's dedicating to his dad. We get a flashback to Joshua's season ten audition (at which time both he and Randy had more facial hair, which looked gross on both of them), and the inspiring story of how Joshua's participation in Idol forced not only himself, but his whole family to overcome their fear of flying. Finally Josh starts singing "You Raise Me Up" by Josh Groban, who I have to assume is from California or this theme officially has no meaning whatsoever any more. It's a standard Joshua Ledet performance, starting low and slow until the gospel choir comes in halfway through... and then the key change... and the gradual cranking up of the voice -- and then the cheesy cherry on top of the sundae of cheese: the pedestal he's standing on literally raises him up.