Jennifer Holliday and Jessica Sanchez's bizarre American Idol duet

The original Dreamgirls star joins the Idol runner-up on Wednesday's finale, and delivers a series of wild facial contortions hailed as both ludicrous and brilliant

Jennifer Holliday's guest performance on "American Idol" Thursday night is all anyone can talk about, but it wasn't her voice that made the lasting impression.
(Image credit: Screen shot, AmericanIdol.com)

Phillip Phillips may have been crowned the next American Idol on Wednesday night's finale of the popular TV singing competition, but it's runner-up Jessica Sanchez who took part in the show's most talked about moment. The 16-year-old belter sang a duet of the behemoth ballad "And I'm Telling You I'm Not Going" from the Broadway musical Dreamgirls with Jennifer Holliday, the Tony-winning star who performed the song in the original 1981 production. (Watch the video below.) Holliday's wild facial contortions — she looked like she "just might eat" Sanchez, says Rolling Stone — upstaged the entire star-studded two-hour extravaganza. A flurry of mocking gifs quickly surfaced, and Buzzfeed helpfully screengrabbed the "many faces of Jennifer Holliday's American Idol finale performance." What should we make of this odd duet?

It was way over the top — in a good way: "Holliday's expressions ping-ponged from rage to elation to suspicion to defiance," says Michael Slezak at TV Line. And "I could not get enough." Her histrionics redefined over the top, but in turn managed to cajole rare depth out of the typically vanilla Sanchez, forcing her to finally stop leaning on her powerhouse vocals and dig deep for added soulfulness. It was the "performance of her young lifetime." Though she didn't win the Idol crown, she's taking home a greater prize: "One of the all-time greatest moments this show has ever given us."

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