Last night on "American Idol," Jacob Lusk went home in fifth place, which wasn't that much of a surprise. What was more surprising was the revelation this morning, on Jacob's post-elimination press conference call, that he'd been wrongly depicted on the show, possibly even thrown under the bus by liberty-taking editors. Equally surprising: Lauren Alaina's meltdown last night when she found out she was in the bottom two for the first time, indicating that she may be cracking under pressure as this competition gets serious.

I expect there are many more surprises ahead--not only because the mercurial Lady Gaga will be guest-mentoring next week (gawd knows what she's going to do with sweet Scotty McCreery, who will probably be skerred to death of her), but because, really, at least one spot in the finale is totally up for grabs. (I'd say Scotty is the only top 4 contestant who's a shoo-in.) So in today's episode of "The Day After," my Yahoo! Entertainment colleague Matt Whitfield and I

Last night, the top 5 "American Idol" contestants performed a mix of songs from the past and present, with mixed results. And in today's episode of "The Day After," my Yahoo! Entertainment colleague Matt Whitfield and I have mixed opinions on all of the performances.

Did Haley Reinhart have an unfair advantage by getting to sing a special unreleased Lady Gaga song, or did the tune's unfamiliarity hurt her chances? Was Jacob Lusk, like, totally insane to try to sing a duet all by himself? Did Lauren Alaina step it up, or was her somewhat emotionless "Unchained Melody" not unchained enough? And speaking of emotional displays, did James Durbin's blubbering help win him sympathy, even as he lost his way vocally? And...who's IN IT TO WIN IT? We debate all this and more.

Check out our convo below--and be sure to join in by posting your comments, too!

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Wednesday's theme on "American Idol's" top five night was "Now & Then," meaning the contestants each warbled one modern-day tune and one '60s/'70s classic. Among the "Now" songs were a couple of hits by former "Idol" winners and a somewhat leftfield emo rocker, but the most leftfield choice was by Haley Reinhart, who boldly took the "Now" motif truly to heart and performed a song so very now, it hasn't even been commercially released yet.

Yes, in an "Idol" first, a major-label recording star, Lady Gaga, allowed an unreleased tune to be performed by one of the contestants...and Haley did such an excellent job with it, now it's Gaga who may have to worry about "making the song her own" once her version is finally on iTunes. But was it too much of a risk for Haley to do an unknown tune, on such a mainstream show (on which Paul McDonald once got chewed out for covering the semi-obscure Ryan Adams)? The judges seemed to think so, but considering that the contestants are constantly being

WATCH PART 1 OF DAVID'S INTERVIEW HERE

In the second instalmment of Reality Rocks' excellent two-part interview with Season 7 "American Idol" champ David Cook, he goes into further detail about his long-awaited new album, This Loud Morning (piano! sitars! orchestral arrangements! theremin! "cinematic moments"! writing credits on every song!), as well as the two-and-a-half-year wait for the follow-up to 2008's David Cook.

"I took the time to get this album right," he says. "It would've been really easy to get a bunch of writers to submit songs and have another album out in four months and be done, but I didn't want to do that because I felt it shortchanged not only myself but my fans. They've been extremely patient, but I think they've been really understanding of why....Now June 28th [the album's release date] can't come soon enough!"

But more importantly, David addresses media-perpetrated fallacies that he's not actually that successful. Despite selling 1.4 million albums and more