Did Katharine McPhee deserve that apology?

So on last night’s American Idol results show, Simon Cowell back-tracked on his stinging critique of Katharine McPhee’s, um, revealing Tuesday-night performance of ”I Have Nothing.” But after watching it back several times on my DVR, and listening to the MP3 posted at Rickey.org, I’m still finding her vocal awfully shrill (Exhibit A: that first ”my aaaarms” after the octave change), and in a few places, she’s noticeably short of breath and off-key (Exhibit B: ”I’ll never change…”). And don’t even get me started on the lameness of McPhee trotting out a tune that was covered in the finals of Idol‘s second, third, and fourth seasons. Of course, the beauty of Idol (and of music in general) is that all of us can listen to the same thing and hear something different. So check out this here audio clip and decide for yourself.

Am I right, or do I need a new box of Q-Tips?