Nobody, this week I’m agreeing with you about Tess. She picked a good week to shine, IMO.
Unlike you, I really liked Will. Of all the performances tonight, I thought Will and Tess did a great job. Will seemed much more relaxed this week than any other week.
After that, James, Cole and Jacquie were all equally lackluster for me. I really like James and hope he makes it to the final, but I don’t think that was enough to overcome his last place last week. I didn’t like Jacquie and thought it was a really bad pick of a song for her, but I’m guessing she might make it.
My guess for elimination is James and Cole. My hope for elimination is Cole and Jacquie.
Just a stray tidbit that I found amusing. I was looking back at the blind auditions. In Cole’s blinds, Adam asked Cole if he was a bigger fan of Adam’s than of Blake’s and Cole said yes. After his blind, Blake joked that Cole was in Duck Dynasty. It’s ironic that Cole is now on Blake’s team and is his last man standing, and that Cole picked Blake over Adam in the knock-outs.
I guess I had the opposite reaction to most of the performances. I liked James and Jacqui best, then Tess, Will, and Cole.
Tess did a great job on Bridge over Troubled Water, but I’ve never liked hearing that song blasted as a big bombastic anthem like that. That’s my problem with Tess in general - everything she does seems to be a big bombastic anthem. I thought Jacqui’s performance showed more nuance and feeling, even though she has a tendency to belt it out as well.
I give James extra points for difficulty. I don’t think I’ve ever heard another singer come close to Bono singing that song, but James came really close. For a live performance that’s pretty good. And he got the emotional content of the song right.
Will and Cole were just forgettable to me. In fact, I can’t even remember what their songs were right now. Both delivered good performances, but nothing special jumped out at me.
But honestly, now I think we’re getting down to personal preferences, song choices, etc. All five of them are clearly amazing singers.
I’m not sure I agree with that. While Judith Hill looked to be the leader early on, we’ve seen that happen before with Trevin Hunte the previous season. Judith had a less than stellar performance on #thatPower. That episode had Danielle Bradberry (season winner) with “Grandpa”, Michelle Chamuel on “Grenade”, Amber Carrington doing “Grenade”, and Sasha Allen on “Without You”. There wasn’t a lot of room for a lackluster performance.
I don’t think “washed out early” is a fair description. Adam carried three contestants in the live rounds past week 2 and week 3, only to lose 2 in week 4. Usher and Shakira were already down to 1 contestant a piece by week 4, and only Blake also had three, which he kept and had two last to the finale.
Most of these contestants had great Blind Auditions. That is what they are picking by.
Yeah, the big personality was Kat Robichaud.
As for last night, there appear to be a variety of opinions.
I thought Tessanne was the clear winner. When they announced the song, I thought “Oh no, I’m going to hate this”, but it was great. She picked the soft and power and notes and tone right.
I thought James was the clear bottom performance. He was a bit shaky/off at the beginning, but warmed up for the end.
The other three are the hard calls. I think second goes to Jacquie. While I’ve criticized her tone and delivery some, I think this one she nailed. Christina finally gave her the coaching about changing the dynamic and power, and she did much better on finding the lows and highs. And her tone picks worked better this time, with her falsettos and all. I liked it.
I liked Cole doing “Shameless”. Even though I’m more familiar with the Billy Joel version, I know Garth Brooks made it a big hit. I think there was one (maybe 2) place where he struggled to hit the note, but he did it soulful and well.
First pass through, I was thinking Will might be the low man, but I went back through the performances a second time, and I was reminded how he opened that song. On second review, I bumped him higher.
I would rate it
Tessanne
Jacquie
Will
Cole
James
But I see there is plenty of room for disagreement. I can see Cole getting a bump from the country fans. I’d prefer to keep Will and lose Jacquie, but on those performances that would be difficult. I guess we will see how it plays out tonight.
I really really can’t stand anything Jacquie does because she and her voice is just far too immature for the material. She sings like she doesn’t know the first thing about what she’s singing about. There’s a huge vapid hole where there should be soul. Screetching out Angel was like nails on a chalkboard. Horrible.
Tessanne is the complete opposite. She sings like her heart has been ripped open and it resonates. Technically the best and soulfully the word.
Will; I have to say this about the song. He just didn’t announciate the words. What makes Nate Ruess so great is his ability to pronounce every single lyric clean, You never have to guess what Nate sings, he’s just the opposite of a rocker like say Mick Jagger who makes a living out of purposely making the lyric incomprehensible. He has to, some of the words especially back in the 60’s would have been totally censored. Will was “mumbles” last night. Thus, “Carry on” just didn’t translate as strongly as it could have.
James I thought his quiter moments were somewhat flat on that song, and it’s a Bono song so it’s damn easy to slide into that territory. Tough job when the arrangement is pretty much U2 to the letter. It would have been nice to hear a slightly different arrangement.
Cole is pretty consistent. He really hasn’t had a bad outing, but I’ve yet to get that chills moment from him, and I probably won’t. He’s not a bad singer at all, but for me, he’s just not The Voice.
Could be. The reason Cole gave when he picked Blake was that he was looking for his musical style and Blake offered to help him find it, which hit home with him.
More than any other season, I feel less emotionally invested in who wins. Unlike the season with Jesse Campbell where I was so annoyed that Chris Mann won over him that I was ready to stop watching, this season I’m pretty meh about the outcome.
I don’t feel like anyone is outshining anyone else to the point where one winning over the others would be unfair. I’d be a little disappointed if Jacquie won because she doesn’t have the dynamic abilities that the others do, but she has the cute appeal and the young person winning over older people appeal going for her.
Hopefully someone will really outshine everyone else in the finals.
It would be interesting though if Cole and Jacquie were eliminated tonight, then Adam would be the only coach left in the competition for the finals, just from an oddity standpoint.
I can’t say I disagree with that. I wasn’t really comparing her one performance to the others last season. I was more comparing her overall talent to the overall talent of the contestants this season. I’d put her up against anyone this season and I think she’d do a better job. I didn’t think her performance of #thatPower was awful. It just wasn’t a good pick for a voice competition like The Voice, especially what she did with it.
With Trevin, I think I disagree. I don’t think he got eliminated for a bad performance. People didn’t seem to like him (especially in this thread) for some reason. I was a fan.
So wrong.
Tessanne nailed her song and hitting notes like she did is not bombastic. Compare that to Jaquilee who has gotten a little better but under Chestina’s coaching just yells into the microphone. No nuance whatsoever. And James get points for difficulty but there was no emotion behind his singing.
I enjoyed The Swon Brothers much more than I did when they were contestants. Michelle Chamuel was also good. I didn’t like Cassadee Pope’s song or singing on it. Danielle Bradbery was good, as usual. She was on the Olympics commercial. She’s gotten really popular.
I really only paid attention to Michelle Chamuel’s performance and I think she was a lot better than when she was a contestant. Both in singing and in confidence.
huh. I disagree with most of you. The men are pitchy and flat way too often for me to like any of them. I liked James much better than Will, who is often pitchy and sings like he has rocks in his mouth. I love Jaquie. She’s adorable and she nails every note. She’s learning dynamics and I really feel the emotions in her performances. Just because she’s young doesn’t mean she can’t emote. Tessann is awesome. She’s almost perfect. the only weak performances have been bad song choices and not bad singing.
Jacquie’s been inconsistent for my tastes and the last two performances had too much power. But she has given great performances in the past. And I feel funny criticizing her about this, because usually I love power and feel that female artists are usually too soft and whisper-y.
I just looked at everything I posted for Will, and according to how I ranked him, he’s been fairly inconsistent too. I usually thought he was either in the top 3 or bottom 3 for me. But last week his two songs blew me away. If he can sing like that next week he could win.
Tess - Although I’m one of the few that like her, I really haven’t loved her, with one exception. I loved last week’s performance of “Redemption song”. Didn’t really hear or remember any of the lyrics, but everything about the way she sang it gave her performance a “wow factor” for me.
I wouldn’t go so far as saying she nails every note. Even the coaches commented on her bobble in the beginning of a song a few weeks ago. I would agree that her pitch is pretty good. And normally that counts for me a lot, but her constant belting bugs me after a while.
The Swon Brothers sounded pretty much like I expected them to sound. So did Michelle Chamuel - that was great. Danielle Bradberry also sounded like a star, and she’s getting the big publicity push that hasn’t materialized for Voice winners before. Olympics tie in - we may finally have the first offical Voice star.
Cassidy was the oddity to me. She’s singing country. sigh
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I really really can’t stand anything Jacquie does because she and her voice is just far too immature for the material. She sings like she doesn’t know the first thing about what she’s singing about.
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You seem to be the only one who thinks that way. The coaches go on about how much soul and emotion she has for such a young person. My problems with her voice have been pitch and tone, and to a lesser extent dynamic. Emotionally she seems to deliver.
I do agree Will has the tendency to mumble/garble a bit.
I think this is between Tess and Jacquie. I think Will’s coming in third. Anyway, this time I’m posting the songs and my opinions on them in the order in which they were sang.
Tess, “Try” - Not bad, but her voice needed more “Umph”.
Will, “Not Over You” - I liked it better than the first performance. I wish the mic was turned up though.
Jacquie, “Back to Black” - I felt conflicted. On the one hand, I wasn’t crazy about her style of singing. On the other, she did it very well.
Tess & Adam, “Let it Be” - Again, I thought Tess’s voice needed more “umph”. Also, I didn’t like the switch to reggae.
Jacquie & Christina, “We Remain” - Never heard that song before. I thought Jacquie did a great job, although over-shadowed by Christina.
Will with Adam, “Tiny Dancer” - Pretty good, but I wish they would have put their own spin on it.
Tess, “I have Nothing” - The best performance so far. I wish she would have sang like this for the other two songs.
Also, that wasn’t very cool of Adam to declare her the winner. If I was Will I’d going WTF???
Will, “Everything I do, I do it for You” - Very good, but no wow factor.
Jacquie, “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going” - Not really familiar with this song. Wow, Christina kept talking about a lot of power coming from a little body, and boy if this wasn’t the perfect example.
My opinion on each artist’s best song. Tess - “I Have Nothing” Will - “Not Over You” Jacquie - “And I’m Telling You I’m Not Going”
I predict Christina 's mini me will win. It’s scary how much that kid mirrors Christina. Especially since I remember listening to Christina when she was maybe a year or two older than Jacquie.
Exactly what I was thinking! I was hoping that Will would win just for that comment alone. But Adam was biased about Tessanne for the whole night. And I think Adam has been lukewarm to tepid in his comments for Will for most of the season.
My prediction would be for Tessanne to win. She has all of Jamaica behind her, and that song was well done.
Probably Jacquie for second place, but I hope Will gets it, again just for the spite Adam factor.
Yeah, I’ve been noticing for a while that Jacquie is singing like Christina. But it makes sense. Christina seems full of herself half the time, so who better to have Jacquie sing like than her?
Well his comment to Will about winning by just being in the final kind of gave the vibe of, “Holy shit, I can’t believe you made it this far.”:eek: So yeah, Will winning would be a shock to Adam.
Okay, I flubbed the recording last night, so I just watched the performances online. I’m in pretty close agreement with Nobody on the detailed comments. Where I differ:
I thought Will was doing the best on the first two performances. I especially liked his duet with Adam. They sounded very well balanced and meshed.
Then Tessanne did “I Have Nothing” and knocked it out of the park. I can understand why Adam felt that way about that performance, that was a killer performance and would have been hard for anyone to top. I do think it was a bit rude to drop “you’re the winner” on her and “I think you’ve won just by getting this far” on Will. He might could have been a bit smoother with “I don’t see how anyone is going to top that” to Tessanne, and then told Will “you gave a valiant effort and let’s see how America votes” or something.
On the other hand, I think Will flubbed it on his performance. Adam instructed him that the audience has strong expectations on the song and to remain true to the melody, and I think Will didn’t follow that advice. So even with the emotional turn to his wife and an otherwise solid performance, I think that didn’t work.
Jacquie just dropped her best performance. She was stunning. I didn’t have any nitpicks or flaws this time. The only comment I have is that there looked to be a couple glitches with the online feed - abrupt transitions or something. But she killed it.
I say all three had great final performances, with Will’s not quite fitting expectations. Given the other two were knockout performances, I’ve got to vote the winner on more of an overall performance rather than one shot final. On that score, I lean to Tessanne.
