I’m with you on that. Good point about the professional experience.
And I’m with you about Javier’s song. (He was also previously signed before The Voice. So was Dia I think.)
Ugh. Seriously, good on Juliette, but otherwise… ugh. Tony is okay but not as good as Katrina. Jermaine bores the everloving crap out of me (although to be fair the songs chosen for him have been so consistently awful that I suppose he never had a chance to win me over). Chris Mann is not going to win a contest for pop singers. Ugh.
And even though I like Juliette, goddamit I prefer Jamar. I hatehatehate that the two best singers can’t both go to finals.
Yeah, when I mentioned Juliet to my wife she said something like, “It’s not called the amateur voice.” It kinds of reminds me of last comic standing. Some of the comedians I’ve seen regularly on Comedy Central.
But since most of them have professional experience I find it kind of funny that a lot of them suck, in my opinion.
Oh well. I’m on the west coast, so I still have about 45 minutes before the show starts for me.
I wonder if leaving pop was something he seriously considered, or if he was just saying that, but didn’t really mean it. First he only chooses pop songs he can sing operatically, then on Monday he sings an opera song. I think it’s obvious that opera is where his heart is.
I wonder what his deal is. Opera is its own world with its own pecking order. Is he already a washout from that world, or did he even try? Is he truly a great operatic voice or more like a pseudo-talent like Groban? In any case, I really don’t think what he does is appropriate for the show. His win was a ripoff, in my view. The viewers were probably impressed with his operatic singing but are not really qualified to judge him on that basis. And a genuine talent who had a theoretical shot at the win, Lindsey, gets sent packing. By the way I was wrong before when I said that she would never be given a chance to present her coffee shop vibe. That’s exactly what she did, and she was awesome.
This should have read: “I wonder if leaving opera”
Recap of this weeks Voice. Glad that Juliet,Jermaine and Tony got through. Not a big fan of Opera guy. I’d like to see Juliet win it. However, Jermaine may be unbeatable. I think it will be between those two for the win.
Making the transition from pure Opera to Classical pop is very, very tough. Katherine Jenkins has been the most successful at it. Her first two or three albums were just too Opera for my taste. But, she found an American producer for her album Believe and it has some very good Classical Pop on it. I think Chris Mann wants to do something similar. But, so far he hasn’t found that sweet spot between Opera and Classical like Katherine did.
I am really wondering what Chris will sing. What song can he operize™ this time?
Andrea Bocelli is a Tenor that’s had similar success as Katherine. Chris Mann could have a career but he has to find the right producer that knows how to make it work.
That’s the mistake Chris is making. You don’t “Operize” a pop song. Instead you embrace the pop style and add a few Opera techniques to it.
Check out Katherine Jenkins covering “I Believe”
Through the show on Monday night, I kept thinking that if Christina had kept Jesse Campbell, it might have been a more interesting show. As it was, no one on her team has a chance of winning, IMO. If Christina had a contender, it might have been more interesting to watch the battle between Jamar/Juliette and Jesse.
When I first started watching the show, I googled for people’s backgrounds and found that many of them had professional backgrounds. I also found commentary from Adam and some articles saying that The Voice was different from other talent shows because they were giving artists second chances and not insisting that the contestants be amateurs.
Post results recap: YES, Juliette won! Yea for Cee Lo, Yea for America! They both liked Juliette’s performance better. Actually, I didn’t agree with Cee Lo that Jamar’s performance didn’t connect, I liked it a lot and thought he did excellent, and liked the way he made it original. I just liked hers better.
What I noticed last year was the coaches mostly going 50:50, wasting their contribution at this stage. I can understand the sentiments of Blake and Christina: “I’ve dedicated so much to both of these, I want both to do well, I’m tired of being the bad guy having to choose, so I’ll let America make the call and support both to the best of my ability.” I can respect that, if realize that it does negate their role at that point.
I can also respect that Cee Lo and Adam have a preference at this stage and since they have a mechanism, they wanted to influence the results. Arguably, if Adam really wanted to cement his answer on Tony he could have skewed the numbers even higher. Split 90:10 and there’s no way America is catching that up. I did think it was a little premature for Adam to be wishing Katrina well before America’s numbers were in. They rated her slightly better than Tony, but not enough to offset the 20 point split (10 high for one = 10 low for the other).
The thing is, for the blind auditions they pick people in the order they hear them, so they may end up with a few that the perked up on for something and then were more impressed with others later, so they are less thrilled with earlier choices. I think Katrina fit into this pattern for Adam. But overall I think he has been fair to her, helping to guide and shape her to the best of his ability and giving her the best chance to succeed. He even picked her once over one of the contestants he originally liked better IIRC. Ultimately, the finale is where Adam is finally competing against the other coaches, so he needs the competitor he feels he can guide the best to do the best in that round. I don’t think Tony is going to beat out Jermaine or Juliette, but then neither would Katrina, so the end result is moot.
Erin was just outclassed and outperformed by Jermaine, and America’s numbers agree with me. She wasn’t as quirky as some of the other ladies, but just didn’t have the merit for the final legs of this show. Jermaine should do well, but he’s got a hard fight to overcome Juliette. If she nails another performance like the last one or Roxanne, she’ll win.
Chris Mann’s problem is that he doesn’t know what he wants to do in pop music. There may be room for an operetic trained singer to make a niche in pop music. Last season of America’s Got Talent had a female opera singer who did very well singing opera, something you wouldn’t expect succeeding on a pop culture entertainment competition against magic shows, pole dancing routines, motorcycle jumps, and rock and country singers, and dance troupes. She made it interesting to the broader audience that maybe hadn’t considered opera.
On the blind audition when Chris was trying to choose his coach, he asked the question, “What would you do with my voice?” That’s the wrong question! You’re putting the shoe on the wrong foot. It’s not the coach’s job to guess what you want to do, it’s your job to decide what you want musically and let them help you find that voice. That’s been the biggest problem for him this whole time, not knowing how to use the range and skill of his voice to find a niche in pop music.
It’s like Aeshines’ point about Lindsay needing to be able to hit her coffee shop vibe. Having a big, loud production number out of her just doesn’t work. Or putting MC whatshisname in this competition. There may be a place for a rap competition show, but it just isn’t The Voice. It’s okay that Chris needs help to find what he can do with his voice, but maybe it’s not the best place to cover that in a competition show. At least not this one?
As for amateur vs professional, what constitutes professional experience? Tony Lucca has been making a living in music for a long time, starting in the Mickey Mouse Club. Jermaine was a professional singer, just backup singer instead of front man. Naia Kete was a performer with her family street band. Many of them have some level of singing for pay in their experience column.
Yes, Juliette mentioned early on that she’s been signed before, but it didn’t work out. She was getting pushed, like to be in a “girl band”. Sarah what’s her name was almost signed a couple times, but they wanted her to change her look and probably style a bit. Jordis Unga had previously competed on INXS: Rockstar, and wasn’t Jamar a previous contestant on American Idol?
It does make for a broader musical base, everything from someone who has come close but not broken out to the person who used to sing quietly in their bedroom alone and only recently started letting anyone hear them at all (last season’s Xenia).
Irishman, you had many excellent points:
Yeah, they both deserved to be in the finals. I think the show should definitely allow “interleague play” in the future and not guarantee each coach a person in the finals.
I found Cee Lo’s comments about Jamar’s performance pretty hard to decipher, but the best I could come up with was, “I let you do what you wanted to do in terms of arrangement, but it kinda sucked, and I’m punishing you for that.” I somewhat have to agree with that sentiment. His performance was OK, but I hate that song, and the arrangement was pretty limp.
My dream finals would have been Juliet, Jamar, James, and Lindsey. The other competitor I liked was RaeLynn. The rest haven’t done much for me.
I think this is another poorly designed aspect of the show. Since the coach has the power to assign 100 points, s/he has complete power over who wins (since “America” is never going to vote 100% for someone). So what does it mean to vote 60/40? “I just kinda wanna ensure that you win–but not totally guarantee it”? If I were a coach, I would probably vote 51/49 just to make a small statement about who I thought was better but leave it basically up to the at-home voters.
I agree, but that’s why I think the noble thing would have been to leave it up to the voters. Katrina would have won. How is it in any way fair that she doesn’t get to be in the finals?
One actual benefit of the coaches’ power to eliminate and influence at various stages is that, for the most part, The Voice avoids the curse that seems to afflict most reality shows: someone who is not very good almost always slips through the cracks and makes it to the finals. Usually this happens simply for statistical reasons. Someone who does B+ work consistently is hard to eliminate. Erin was such a person. She seems nice, she is a genuinely good singer, but she just has (as far as I can see) nothing new or special to offer the pop world.
He is a borderline B-plus-er. Maybe an A-minus-er. Christina, as much as she pissed off people with the elimination of Jesse, was actually thinking rather wisely: she was nixing the generic “good singer.” Indeed, last year’s winner, Javier, seems to fall in this category. Jermaine is good, but he is dull. That’s why he has been a background singer.
And she will… and she will. In truth, she is one of the best female rock vocalists I’ve ever heard. She’s like at the Janis Joplin level.
Yeah, I find him totally lame. I think he and Jermaine have the same basic problem: I just don’t see any ideas from those two.
I dunno, I think that people who have already had their shot aren’t the best candidates for a show like this. I think the conceit of such musical reality shows is that they have the potential to make an unknown popular and famous. The subtext is that the industry is not particularly meritocratic and that, even if someone has incredible talent, they won’t automatically be discovered and become popular. Shows like these have the power to give that chance to a deserving someone. I think that unspoken narrative becomes compromised when someone with plenty of connections and opportunities competes. Take Tony Lucca. He knows famous people and is still friends with Justin Timberlake. If is really good, why didn’t he just go out and rev up that career using what he already has?
I entirely and utterly disagree with your last point. The music business isn’t meritocratic. The music business, as it happens, is completely fucking random as far as I can tell. Tony Lucca may not be as talented as Justin or Christina, but he’s more talented than Britney. As previously mentioned, Juliette has already been signed and had it fall through. Is she undeserving?
Jermaine. I do not get the Jermaine thing at all. I didn’t love Jesse because he was fairly generic and annoyingly smug, but damn he could saaaaaaaaaaaang. Jermaine is generic and smug and his voice is a wistful joke about a shadow of a ghost of Jesse.
I’m so disappointed in Adam Levine. I’m sure Tony Lucca is a nice person and all, but can’t hold a candle to the other finalists and semi-finalists really. So bromance or not, Levine threw the win to a “bud” rather than staying out of it (by voting 50/50). I can only assume he thought Tony (who seems to have been given support for a variety of reasons, not all having to do with his singing ability) that Adam felt Tony had a better chance of winning than Katrina. If he wins because of this, I can only imagine the win would be a bit hollow.
Theoretically, I like the idea that the coaches get some extra power on this show. It was supposed to keep the results from being all about how many young girls would vote, over and over again, for a lesser talent because he was “cute”. However, it seems the judges (or at least Adam) are subject to the same biases. And, on the other hand, even when it works out that the judge bias doesn’t change the outcome like in the case of Jamar/Juliet, it feels a bit like an extra slap in the face. “Sorry, you didn’t win, and oh btw, I didn’t want you to win anyway”.
Oh well, I guess no system is perfect. If Tony Lucca wins this it will be about something other than talent and The Voice will have lost this fan, just as American Idol did years ago.
I hate how the judges go on and on praising their team members, especially Cee Lo, because half the time it doesn’t feel genuine. And with Cee Lo I always get the feeling when he goes on and on it’s because he thinks he being so profound. And also I think he likes hearing the sound of his own voice.
Contemplate for a moment what this show might be like if it actually were a competition between coaches. The Blind Auditions could go off exactly like they are. This part already is competition. The coaches listen for something they like, and then select the singer. If two coaches select a singer, the coaches compete to convince the singer to pick them.
The second round is battle rounds, two singers singing the same song together. I kinda like this aspect of the show, even if it does sometimes produce nail-biters where you can’t pick between the two, and it’s a real challenge to blend two diverse artists into one performance that is fair to both (think The Line vs Rapper guy, or Sarah vs … wasn’t it Juliette that beat her?) This might be harder if you had to pair competitors from different teams, with two different coaches selecting the style and such. So I might leave this aspect alone, for team development time.
But when it comes time for the individual performances, this is where I would do it differently. Instead of having the coaches pick from their own performers who to keep, I would mix some sort of bracket system where the coaches would assign one of their team members to compete against one of someone else’s team.
Each coach would offer up one competitor to make 4 brackets. Then each coach would be assigned one of the other coaches bracket’s, and assign one of their team members as the competitor. And rotate through. Or have some other system to pair competitors between teams, or compete in brackets of 4, one from each team, and take the top 2 or 3. Something like that.
Then each wave the coaches are responsible for developing and coaching their team members the best they can, but the competition is between the teams and the decision is the audience vote.
That way, you never run into a coach having to pick which one they like better. You don’t get situations where Christina’s final team is two losers and Cee Lo has two that should be in the final but one has to be eliminated. Or whatever.
But that’s not the strategy The Voice has chosen. They’ve decided a lot of drama revolves around the coach having to decide between his one team members, or the coach getting the opportunity to offset the audience with saves and voting.
I liked the song and I liked the arrangement. But I can understand Cee Lo having his own opinion and picking on that basis.
Well, that’s the thing. I think the 60/40 vote was Adam trying to force the answer he wanted, but to not go so overwhelming against Katrina to say “You suck”. I think the intent of that is to say “You’re good, I just think I can use him better.” Or something like that. It’s an attempt to cushion the blow of “I like him better”. Does it work? shrug
That kind of a vote is not a “you did this well” like a 5 out of 10 vs 8 out of 10 system would be. It’s more of a “I like this one better”. Doesn’t really say anything about the merit of the performance, more about the connection the judge had.
How is it in any way fair that Jamar doesn’t get to be in the finals? How is it fair that Jordis Unga doesn’t get to be in the finals, or Sera Hill, or Jesse? They were all excluded by whims of the show rather than merit. Okay, Jordis was a bit hit and miss, but her hits were hits, her misses weren’t as bad as, say, Erin Martin’s entire run on the show, and her final exclusion was Blake negating his own prior save and bowing to the will of the audience from the previous round.
It’s as fair as anything where the measure is the subjective “who did you like better?”
I don’t get smug from Jermaine at all. Jesse reeked of it with his “I go where I’m needed thing” in the blind auditions interview, but I don’t get anything like that off of Jermaine. And I agree Jesse was probably the better singer overall. I think Jermaine has a pretty good voice, but has the curse of not being music I listen to. He hasn’t seemed to show any creativity or originality, nothing to bring out his personality to make his music different than any other music. “Generic” fits. Jamar is a dynamic performer with a great voice, and he was trying to inflect a bit of himself in the shape of the performances, from song choices to style changes on the last round. I applaud him for that.
Overall I liked him over Katrina. I liked him better from the get go, and I liked his rendition of In Your Eyes, and I enjoyed his Britney cover. I would certainly take him over Chris Mann or Lindsay, or even Erin Willette. I think it would have been hard for him to beat Jamar, and I think he will be unlikely to beat Juliette, and he’s probably going to be outdone by Jermaine. But he’s had more creativity and input than Jermaine, and I like what he’s done.
Why? If he wins, it’s because his coach had faith in him, and in the end he has to beat two other great performers and a third talented singer in the audience votes category. The judge’s don’t get a vote in the finals. I wouldn’t feel hollow at all, I would feel great that my coach had such faith in me even when the audience questioned it.
Agreed.
One other comment: we already saw that all four finalists from last year have gotten record deals out of it. It’s a certainty that Raelynn is going to get something out of this, even if not directly from The Voice. Just her connections with Blake will get his backing to the industry.
Even though there’s only one prize of a guaranteed contract and the money, it’s very likely that once again all 4 finalists will get something out of this, and it’s possible that semifinalists can use the connections to go somewhere. Just being on this show is something, and the farther they made it, the more they can use this to their advantage.
Keep that in mind for Katrina. It may be that Adam finds a way to give her career an extra push after all is said and done.
^To each his own. I find him to be a far inferior vocalist. I’m sure there are others who like him better but is it because he’s a stronger singer? He’s a good performer, obviously has some extra experience in that area, but I find his voice unmemorable.
^Because even Adam didn’t think he had a superior singing voice. He said he thought Tony and Katrina were equally talented. His vote was because of his bromance connection. The show is called “The Voice” and a lot of what they do does seem to stay true to that, but Adam clearly threw his extra support to Tony because of something other than his voice.
Perhaps Adam, like so many other people, just wants to watch Christina’s head explode.
In amusing Voice-related news, a friend who was (rightfully) peeved about Killing Me Softly being repeatedly referred to as a Lauren Hill song then proceeded to call If You Don’t Know Me a Simply Red song.
My personal love for Jamar notwithstanding (because I like Juliette as well) I think CeeLo’s vote kind of sucks because of Jamar’s deep and abiding worship of CeeLo. It sucks enough to lose without feeling like you got stomped by your idol. Of course, one would think that CeeLo will help him out regardless, and if anyone can get you signed with a phone call it’s CeeLo.
^LOL, thanks for that. It gave me a giggle and you know, that just might be his reasoning.
^I’m really curious how involved the coaches get in the future prospects of their eliminated singers. It’s clear Blake does and I applaud him for that. And of course the exposure of the show alone is enough to help launch someone’s career, but I’d like to know if the other coaches step up, as they say they will, and help out the ones who don’t win the whole package.