On Tuesday (April 20), "American Idol" contestant Crystal Bowersox tore into a tearful version of "People Get Ready" as part of "Inspirational Week." In many ways, it was one of the best performances ever in the history of the show, as she not only performed it well (though there were a few missed notes), but it also showed raw emotion and poise in the face of stories that she has been trying to bail on the show. Her natural charisma survived the tears, and she came out looking like the inevitable champion.
In a poll taken yesterday, MTV News nominated a dozen performances as the greatest of all time. In the end, Bowersox took home the gold. However, there was a great deal of debate over the songs we nominated (apparently nobody remembers Trenyce — which is a shame, really). That is why we are presenting a second poll, made up entirely of nominees that came from superfans across the Internet. Sometimes we got the right performer but the wrong song (there are a lot of David Cook devotees, but they seem to prefer "Always Be My Baby" over "Billie Jean"), and sometimes there were just important moments we missed entirely — especially David Archuleta's take on John Lennon's "Imagine" and any number of Adam Lambert performances (though we decided to focus on "Mad World" despite the demands from several people that Lambert could fill the entire top 10).
So vote on your new favorite below. Since she won the first poll, we left Bowersox in to compete. Can she fend off the will of the fans? Vote below and let us know your thoughts in the comments!