Gutsy "American Idol" contestant Jessica Sanchez took on Whitney Houston's biggest hit, delivering a performance that awed the show's judges. 
 
 In this March 1, 2012 image released by Fox, the remaining 13 contestants from the singing competition series, "American Idol," are shown in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Fox, Michael Becker) (Associated Press) 
 
 When host Ryan Seacrest asked the panel to name Wednesday night's top two singers among the 13 finalists, Steven Tyler was ready. 
 
 "Jessica Sanchez and Jessica Sanchez," Tyler said. 
 
 The 16-year-old San Diego high school student's assured version of "I Will Always Love You" was "just amazing. I don't even know what to say," Jennifer Lopez exclaimed during the performance show. 
 
 "Jessica, you may be the one. You just made 40 million people cry," Tyler said (adding a dose of hyperbole by roughly doubling the show's biggest Wednesday night audience for the season so far). 
 
 Randy Jackson didn't hold back either, calling Sanchez "one of the best talents in the whole country." 
 
 On the Fox show's 400th episode, the men tackled Stevie Wonder's catalogue and the women choose from Houston's hits, a tribute to the singer who died Feb. 11, on the eve of the Grammy Awards, at age 48. 
 
 "I Will Always Love You" was played at the conclusion of Houston's New Jersey church funeral last month. 
 
 The "American Idol" finalists performed as the Fox show marked its 400th episode. In a twist, the male and female singers who rank lowest in the audience vote will be announced Thursday and the judges will decide which of the two will be bounced. 
 
 Others who impressed the judges included Joshua Ledet, 19, of Westlake, La., with his version of "I Wish"; Hollie Cavanaugh, 18, of McKinney, Texas, with "All the Man I Need," Colton Dixon, 20, of Murfreesboro, Tenn., with "Lately," and Phillip Phillips, 21, of Leesburg, Ga., with "Superstition." 
 
 Areosmith frontman Tyler offered Phillips an intriguingly enigmatic review. 
 
 "You're a very interesting character, man. You got a lot of `fuhgeddaboutit' in your voice. There's no words for it. You just are. You know what I'm saying," Tyler said. 
 
 Skylar Laine's version of "Where Do Broken Hearts Go" was another standout. 
 
 "You're a country girl .... But what you just proved, you can sing any song," Jackson told the 18-year-old from Brandon, Miss. 
 
 The judges were not uniformly kind. 
 
 Elise Testone, 28, of Charleston, S.C., who performed "I'm Your Baby Tonight," fell short with the panel, which praised her talent but not what Lopez called her "unsure" performance. 
 
 Shannon Magrane, 16, of Tampa, Fla., let her nerves get in the way on "I Have Nothing," Jackson said, and Tyler suggested she might be in trouble in the audience vote. 
 
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 http://www.americanidol.com ||||| You know how every year at the end of American Idol, the finalists get the chance to perform with some random artist who may or not may be their musical hero? That's now going to be an entire TV show. In another sign that TV's musical competition arms race is not abating, ABC today will take the wraps off of Duets, a talent hunt in which established stars Kelly Clarkson, Robin Thicke, Lionel Richie, and Jennifer Nettles of country group Sugarland crisscross the country in search of musical mates. These won't be random hookups, however: The goal of Duets seems to be finding a pairing of celeb and amateur actually capable of selling records. 
 
 According to ABC, the four star singers "will individually set out on a journey across America looking for undiscovered talent worthy to be their protégés." The hunt will culminate with each star picking two finalists as their duet partners, resulting in eight pairings that will be put to the test weekly via live performance shows. Presumably, audiences will decide which celeb-amateur combos will move forward each week, leaving one duo as the ultimate winner of a contract with Disney-owned Hollywood Records (and perhaps a hit single). ABC says it's fast-tracking the project to debut this summer, perhaps in time to quash whatever small chance the CW's just-announced Queen Latifah–led musical star search had of finding an audience. 
 
 
 
 This is not the first time the networks have played around with the idea of duets in a reality format. Six years ago, Simon Cowell produced the short-lived Fox series Celebrity Duets; that show, however, was more like Dancing With the Stars, with B-level figures randomly singing off-key with a slightly better known professional singer (such as Lucy Lawless and Richard Marx). A couple of years later, CMT tried connecting amateurs with other amateurs on the only slightly more successful Can You Duet?, which lasted two seasons before it was axed. 
 
 
 
 So could ABC's Duets be a contender? Well, unlike past duet shows, it's the first major broadcast network series to try the pro-amateur approach. ABC has also found a respectable celeb foursome to mentor its contestants, giving the show a healthy amount of credibility. (Clarkson, by the way, seems to be going out of her way to dis alma mater American Idol: She's currently helping coach contestants on NBC's The Voice.) On the other hand, with Idol and Voice plus Fox's The X Factor and NBC's heavy-on-music America's Got Talent, it's worth wondering whether or not we're reaching a saturation point in terms of music competition shows. CBS is now the only broadcaster without a performance-based reality series — though perhaps it's not too late to hope for a season of Big Brother in which all of the houseguests dream of musical superstardom!
– Sixteen-year-old Jessica Sanchez "made 40 million people cry" last night when she performed Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" on American Idol, judge Steven Tyler told her. The San Diego high school student enjoyed a standing ovation after her performance and reaped praise from all three judges; Randy Jackson called her "one of the best talents in the whole country." Last night's Idol featured Stevie Wonder songs for the male contestants and Houston songs for the females, the AP notes. In other Idol news, Vulture notes that first-season winner Kelly Clarkson has signed on to "ABC's version of Idol," a talent competition called Duets that involves famous singers searching the country for amateur musical partners.