The American Idol Top 6 girls and Top 6 guys were announced yesterday with no huge surprises, but there were plenty of drama and tears amongst the contestants.

2010 American Idol Top 6 Girls

Paige Miles, Didi Benami, Lacey Brown, Siobhan Magnus, Crystal Bowersox and Katie Stevens managed to go through to the top 12 contestants.

2010 American Idol Top 6 Guys

Mike Lynche (Big Mike), Tim Urban, Casey James, Lee Dewyze, Aaron Kelly and Andrew Garcia.

The contestants that went home were Katelyn Epperly, Lilly Scott, Todrick Hall and Alex Lambert.

The evening started of with a group performance of all the top 16 contestants singing Michael Buble’s “Just Haven’t Met You Yet.”

American Idol Season 8′s Matt Giraud and Scott MacIntyre also performed on the show with MacIntyre promoting his new 2010 album Heartstrings.

New father “Big Mike” Lynche was very much liked by the judges with his performance of “This Woman’s Work” which made judge Kara DioGuardi burst into tears.

Andrew Garcia’s performance this week was better then the past few weeks but is still far away from his show stopping version of Paula Abduls “Straight Up”.

American Idol Andrew Garcia top 8 guys Video

American Idol Tim Urban top 8 guys Video

A surprise performance came from Tim Urban who was totally whacked by the judges in the first week of the live shows but managed to wow them all singing “Hallelujah”.

The womens performance had all the usual suspects as Cyrstal Bowersox again had a very strong performance along with Siobhan Magnus.

Didi Benami was one of the contestants that could have gone home last night but her improvement from last week was obviously seen by the judges.

American Idol Didi Benami top 8 Girls Video

American Idol Cyrstal Bowersox top 8 Girls Video

Who will be the next American Idol: see our regular update on Nationalturk.com