TVSquad

We're getting down to the wire now. Twenty contestants have gone home leaving us with just four remaining contenders. Who will win American Idol? And more importantly, what will they sing during the finale?

After receiving thousands of songs from aspiring songwriters in this year's first ever American Idol Songwriter Contest, a "team of experts has finalized a shortlist of the top 20 strongest and most suitable songs for American Idol," according to the official website.

If you want to help determine this year's winning song you'd better scoot on over to American Idol and vote soon -- the contest ends tomorrow, May 8, 2007.

I went over to the site, listened to the songs and rated them, hoping to find something spectacular or completely different from the sappy, generic-sounding songs of American Idol's past. Sorry to say, there's nothing groundbreaking here. Instead, we get just a lot of forgettable melodies, and predictable lyrics that include Idol-friendly phrases such as, "this moment" and "because of you" and "my dreams came true."

While voting, I tried to imagine what each song might sound like if Melinda, Jordin, LaKisha, or Blake were singing it. I think the ladies could easily belt out many of these songs. However, I couldn't really imagine Blake singing any of them, at least not without some major tinkering on the computer.

Maybe next year the producers should just let the finalists write their own songs based on their Idol experience. Maybe then the songs would be more personal and less generic. And maybe we'd be able to get a glimpse of the contestant's true artistic potential.