'American Idol' Season 11, Episode 34 Recap - Who Went Home from the Top 5?

With the shocking elimination of Colton Dixon, it seemed a certain curse may have been lifted: could it be that the legions of teenage girls who just vote for the cutest boy on "American Idol" had finally lost their power? Seacrest was even hopeful on Wednesday's performance night (which included 1960's songs and Brit pop), pondering out loud whether one of the trio of remaining girls would be the first female "Idol" winner in the past half a decade.

Tonight's voting dimmed those hopes a bit.

Before we get to the results, it's worth mentioning in all this that Carrie Underwood, one of the few female "Idol" winners in the show's history, performed on the stage. Coldplay later performed their latest hit "Paradise" as well, their first appearance on the "American Idol" stage (and probably the 50th to use a neon graffiti background. It's been done, people!). The band also returned later for "Every Teardrop is a Waterfall."

The Results:

Joshua was the first to hear his fate, and Jimmy called his performance of "To Love Somebody" the best performance EVER on the show. That might be a reach, but not much of one. It was pretty fantastic. Joshua was named safe and quickly sent back to the couches.

Phillip and Hollie were the next to take the stage. Jimmy had mostly positive feedback for Hollie, saying that her Tina Turner attempt was solid, but giving her second performance a decisive "meh." Phillip, on the other hand, got some sharp criticism, with Jimmy saying that he was "coasting" and that he did some bland music.

Yet, as we have seen so many times before, boyish good looks won out and Phillip was safe, while Hollie was placed in the bottom two.

That left Skylar and Jessica, and thankfully there is some justice in the world as Jessica was safe. That sent Skylar to the bottom two, which is surprising but not totally unexpected.

That left Skylar up against Hollie in the bottom two, and that's where things got really interesting: Hollie was named safe, while Skylar was eliminated. True, Hollie had two of her better performances last night, but Skylar has been consistently good the whole competition. Where is the huge base of country fans that placed Scotty and Lauren in the all-country final last year?

The surprised look on Hollie's face pretty much says it all. If she didn't see it coming, how could we?

It will be interesting to see for whom this causes backlash next week. Will Phillip lose support with Skylar's fans voting elsewhere? If anything, it seems that country fans would flock to Phillip instead (he's closer to country than any of the other contestants, and is from the South), which means that Hollie is all but toast next week. Then again, I've been saying that Hollie is toast for weeks now.

Eliminated: Skylar Laine