‘American Idol’ Power List: Pia Toscano Is On Top So Far

Robbie Daw | March 11, 2011 11:13 am

As we bid adios to Ashthon Jones, the first of the Top 13 American Idol hopefuls to be voted off, we’re now ready to unveil our Power List featuring the remaining contestants. Each week we’ll update the list based on our own assessment of the Wednesday night performances. (Catch our thoughts on how the Top 13 performed this week here.) Now, on with our rankings! As for how we tallied things up, it’s pretty simple! There are 12 remaining contestants now, so we gave 12 points to the one we felt did the best this week—in this case it’s Pia Toscano, who belted out a pretty awesome “All By Myself” on Wednesday.

We then put the next best performer (James Durbin) this week after Pia, giving him one less point (11), and so on. The catch is that if any contestant lands in the dreaded Bottom Three during the results show, we automatically dock them one point from our initial rating here on the list. So in the case of Haley Reinhart and Karen Rodriguez, they each got one less than they would have had they not been grouped with Ashton last night.

So congrats to Pia. From the current results in our poll in the right sidebar, it seems that the rest of you are thinking what we were thinking this week—she just might have what it takes to win this thing.

AMERICAN IDOL POWER LIST, WEEK #1 — TOP 12

1. Pia Toscano (12 points) 2. James Durbin (11) 3. Casey Abrams (10) 4. Scotty McCreery (9) 5. Lauren Alaina (8) 6. Jacob Lusk (7) 7. Stefano Langone (6) 8. Haley Reinhart (4, Bottom Three) 9. Thia Megia (4) 10. Naima Adedapo (3) 11. Paul McDonald (2) 12. Karen Rodriguez (0, Bottom Three)

Check back every Friday to see how the contestants rise or fall in our power rankings! And, of course, we welcome debate in the comments.