White is eliminated from 'Idol'

She overcame her own inability to stop talking. She survived becoming the first "American Idol" contestant ever to stop in midsong and start over when she forgot the lyrics.

But Brooke White could not overcome what judge Simon Cowell called a "nightmare" performance of Neil Diamond's "I'm a Believer" on Tuesday. When the more than 45 million votes cast by viewers were counted and the results announced on Wednesday's show, White's "Idol" hopes were over.

Never at a loss for words, White sometimes argued with and made excuses to the judges. At other times, she agreed rather freely with their harshest criticisms.

But when host Ryan Seacrest announced that she had been eliminated, she could only manage to say a quiet, "Yup" as she burst into tears. And she cried her way through her final performance, an encore of "I Am ... I Said" — flubbing the lyrics, somewhat ironically.

"Can I just say thank you? It's going to be terrible for me right now, but thank you," said the self-described "beauty school dropout" from Mesa, Ariz., who has family ties to Utah.

White's elimination leaves 17-year-old David Archuleta of Murray as the only member of the LDS Church remaining in this year's competition.

Joining him in the top four are David Cook, Jason Castro — despite another week of weak performances — and the only remaining woman, Syesha Mercado.

Seen as a young Carly Simon or Carole King, White at times accompanied herself on the piano, at other times played the guitar. She acknowledged that she struggled with her confidence and her emotions were often close to the surface. She wept uncontrollably the first time she was relegated to the "bottom three" contestants in the viewers' voting.

A weak performance of "I'm a Believer" during Neil Diamond week on the show may have sealed her fate. The judges agreed that White's second song on Tuesday, "I Am ... I Said," was a vast improvement over her first, but it was too little, too late.

"I really, really hated the first song because it was sort of like girls' night out at the karaoke bar, wasn't it?" Cowell said. "But this ... is the Brooke we like ... It wasn't incredible, but it was a million times better than the first song. Well done."