When Nicki Minaj said she wanted Janelle Arthur's cowboy boots, she evidently meant she wanted to keep them.
After the judge admired the rhinestone-covered pair that her little marshmallow Janelle Arthur sported during her performance of Billy Joel's "You May Be Right," a crew member rushed to remove them from the country sweetheart's feet and place them on the rapper's during a commercial break. By the time Janelle made it backstage to talk to reporters after Wednesday's rock-themed Top 7 show, she was still missing her boots.
"Nicki better give me my boots back!" Janelled told us. Especially because they aren't just any old pair: "A lady made them for me, like a lady who does boots for Miss Texas USA. She saw me on the show, and I think she knew people who knew me so she contacted them and [was] like, 'I want to make boots for Janelle.'"
While the Tennessee native doesn't blame Nicki for coveting her "hot" cowgirl kicks, she vowed to stand up to Idol's most critical judge the next time she sees her. "I'll be like, 'Girl, give me my boots back!'" Janelle exclaimed. "Because you know, she'll probably be mean to me. She can't be nice to me for more than one show!"
Other Idol gals were in too much pain to console Janelle: As revealed during the show, two season-12 frontrunners--Candice Glover and Kree Harrison--were battling injuries. (What has Idol become? Dancing With the Stars?!) Kree, contending with a pinched nerve, stayed to chat for only a couple of minutes before heading off to soak in a hot bath, but it was long enough to give us the scoop on her condition.
"I've always had a bad back," she said. "And [this past week] it got to the point where it was affecting my posture and my performance, so I went to a physical therapist and realized that I pinched a nerve. So now I can barely lift my right arm. I just pray that people will vote for me and next week, I will be pain-free. [Because] literally, it's like somebody's stabbing me right now." (We're betting after her killer take on Janis Joplin's "PIece of My Heart," voters will send her sailing through to the Top 6.)
Candice wasn't feeling much better. After conspiring with buddy Burnell Taylor to pull an April Fools' prank on Lazaro Arbos (they tried to convince him that the house they're staying in was on fire), "I was running in excitement and like ran full-on into the door and broke my pinky toe on my right foot," Candice told us. Though it seems she only got the official word Wednesday before taking on the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction": "I figured it was just a stubbed toe...but there's a doctor on set, and he looked at it right before I performed and said, 'Yeah, it's broken.'"
And it seems that, despite her best intentions, Angie Miller--who was revealed during the show to be the most excitable of this year's contestants--was only making the situation worse. "Angie would hug Kree, and she'd be like, 'Ow, ow, ow!'" Candice said. "And Angie would do the excited [clapping] thing that Angie does and then she'd step on my toe. She stepped on it twice! And I'm like, 'Angie, stop! You're killing me and Kree!'"
That's one way to deal with the competition.