The Voice: Season 6 thread

Cafe Society
81

I’m with Irishman for two of the top three. My ranking from best to worse is Bria, Melissa, TJ & Josh tied, Stevie. For reasons why:

Bria “Wild Horses” - Great range, great rasp, no complaints.

Melissa “Halo” - Some parts it seemed like she ran out of breath and then quickly had to keep going to keep from dropping off in the middle of a word, but over-all I thought it was a great performance. I was surprised she didn’t make it.

TJ “Tell Me Something Good” - For R&B I wish his voice was smoother. Otherwise he was pretty good.

Josh “It Will Rain” - Beginning falsetto wasn’t that great, and I found his performance uneven. Parts were great, but not the whole thing.

Stevie “The Thrill is Gone” - He seemed to connect OK emotionally to the song, but I couldn’t connect to his performance for some reason.

82

I’m impressed that Usher picked Josh. He was clearly better to me, but Usher seems (to me) to pick his favorites and sticks with them. I think he wanted to go with TJ, Bria and Stevie Jo. I could see the pain on his face when he was watching Josh because he knew he couldn’t justify doing that.

For me, Josh was the best, then Bria, then TJ, then Melissa, then Stevie Jo.
**
Irishman** totally changed my liking of Stevie Jo that I had in the beginning (darn you, Irishman :stuck_out_tongue: ) after he mentioned the likeness to Jonny Gray. I didn’t see the likeness at first and was about to ask about it here. Then I watched Stevie Jo again and couldn’t unsee it after that. The stringy haired guy pumping his fist and prancing around stage look.

As I’ve noted before, I don’t like Bria’s voice. It still sounds like screaming to me. At least the screaming is on pitch.

My favorites for the live rounds are all of Blake’s team, Sisaundra, Audra and Jake and Christina Grimmie from Adam’s team. I like Delvin also but am not sure how far he can go. He’s missing the big moments that the others seem to capture.

I can’t think of anyone on Shakira’s or Usher’s teams that stand out for me.

83

Weird, I’m the only one who had problems with Josh. I just re-watched the clip a couple more times and I like his performance better than when I first saw it. I guess, after giving it more analysis, my main complaint isn’t with his falsetto after all. It’s when he sings softly his voice sounds a little too breathy for my taste.

84

Which is amusing, because both Blake and Christina have done just that. Blake in season 1 picked the inexperienced Xenia and the quirky Dia over the two guys who were more developed and skilled, on the grounds that he could have a bigger effect on their development. Christina booted a guy in season 2 inexplicably.

85

Live Rounds 1

First, I’m so tired of Adam saying he’s stupid. Find a new way to praise an artist.

Second, because there were so many who I liked, but didn’t have anything specific to say, I’ll just first list who I think should go home, followed by the artists where I did have something to say.

My choices for the two who I think should go home are:

Jake “Anymore” - Kind of lackluster. He did say he choked up when he say his mother, so I guess that’s it. Also, I have a question. Someone else watching thought he started off key. I’m not sure, did he?

Bria “Rolling in the Deep” - The best I can say about this performance is that she’s good at holding notes. But then so are a lot of contestants. Even though I don’t go to bars I was thinking bar band performance. Maybe good for a bar or county fair, but not good enough for a record deal and singing in arenas and coliseums in my opinion.

Everyone else I had an opinion on:

Audra “Angel of the Morning” - The way Blake said he enjoyed working with her, it sounded like he thinks she won’t make it through. I’m sure he didn’t mean it that way, but that’s how it sounded.

T.J. “Waiting on the World to Change” - Great singing. He and Usher kept going on and on about how it was a modern song, but then they gave it a 70’s-ish beat.

Christina “Dark Horse” - A little loud on the long notes. In fact, it felt closer to shouting than singing.

Sisaundra “Don’t Let the Sun go Down on Me” - My only complaint is that her voice sounds a little too deep for this particular song, but other than that she did a great job singing it.

Kristin “Stay” - Wow, what a pro. I think she’s ready for a record contract.

Kat “Magic Man” - She reminded me of Ann Wilson, that’s for sure, but other than that I don’t think she did a very good job. For me she was borderline stay/go home.

Tess “I’ll be There for You” - I like Bon Jovi, but not that song. I wanted to avoid this performance and forced myself to listen. She did a great job on what I consider a bad song.

86

I didn’t see season 1, but I think you’re talking about Christina booting Jesse Campbell in season 2. I was outraged over that.

Tonight for lives, my favorites are still my favorites, but a couple people that I didn’t care for before stood out for me. I really liked Kat’s performance. I felt like she was a belter before, but I liked tonight’s performance.

I always thought Josh was good, and he’s been consistent, but I didn’t think he could keep it up. He did a good job tonight.

My favorites were all of Blake’s team and Christina. I really liked Christina and Sisaundra. Jake and Audra were good, but not as special as I would have liked.

If I had to rank my favorites for tonight, I’d say:
Christina
Sisaundra
Josh
Kat
Audra
Jake
Delvin
TJ
Dani, Bria, Tess and Kristen

Bummer about Kristen losing the mike like that. Seems pretty unfair that she might get cut off because there wasn’t enough to judge. The clip on Hulu shows the whole song with just a blank of sound for those last seconds, just like it was on the show. Hopefully, they’ll come up with a fair way to compensate for that.

For me, the show started off slow because my favorites weren’t up until the end.

I’m happy that Christina got through battles because she shines when she’s by herself. I like her dynamics and the little ways she makes the song her own.

Sisaundra did a song straight up without the vocal acrobatics and crazy high note moments. I really enjoyed it. I liked the high note moments in the other songs, but not in every song.

Josh’s performance had a good energy that I liked.

Kat’s song reminded me of Amanda Brown in the staging and the flirting with the band members.

The coaches seem to like Bria and Tess a lot more than I do, so I’ll be interested to see how America votes. They seem like crowd favorites as well.

On preview: (I was composing this as Nobody was posting). So interesting to see a different point of view. I do agree that I think Jake was off-pitch in the beginning. I don’t know that song, but it didn’t sound right to me. I’m pretty surprised (and glad) that someone else isn’t praising Bria as much as the coaches.

87

Live rounds 1:

First, let me say that tonight I don’t think anyone was bad or had a horrible performance. Everyone was solid. Second, I think I enjoyed every song choice tonight - even the country ones were decent.

Given the caliber of performances, I think it’s going to come down to personal preferences over any real technical merit differences. That said, I’ll note what I spotted. With 12 performers this good, I found it really tough to rank them. I’ve got some better than others, but some are fairly even.

Bria Kelly, “Rolling In The Deep” - I really liked this performance. It was distinct enough that she didn’t sound like she was trying to be Adele. I liked her tone and her connection and delivery. I put her at the top for a while, and she’s one of my top 3. My one complaint about her performance was her wearing her guitar around for no reason. She played like three chords the entire time. It just looked stupid.

Delvin Choice, “Unchained Melody” - classic song, smooth delivery. It was very good. There was one note where I think he lost breath, on the big note. But otherwise it was great.

Dani Moz, “Just Give Me a Reason” - I was less thrilled with this performance. There was something about her delivery that wasn’t working for me. But the big spot in my mind was I agreed with Adam she never had that big moment, though I’m not sure this arrangement really gave her one. But the one she took didn’t work for me, she held a note just a bit long and it interrupted the flow. She ended up in the bottom ranks on this.

Audra McLaughlin, “Angel of the Morning” - I liked this song, I liked her delivery, she conveyed the emotion and feeling well. I put her above Dani and somewhere around Delvin.

TJ Wilkins, “Waiting For the World To Change” - This performance was just okay. It didn’t really excite me. I don’t know if it was the song or the music style or just TJ as a performer, but this is probably my least favorite of the night.

Christina Grimmie, “Dark Horse” - This song annoys me on the radio because of the male backing lines, they sound dreadful in tone and style and autotune and it bugs the crap out of me, so I haven’t paid as much attention to this song on the radio to know it well. This version really played that down, so that was a major plus. I think Christina worked this song pretty well. There might have been a pitch issue in there, but overall I liked the performance and put her above Dani.

Sisaundra Lewis, “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down On Me” - Sisaundra is a Diva, she delivered once again, and reined it in enough to make it elegant. I think this was tops of the night, and she’s the leader for winning.

Kristen Merlin, “Stay” - What a kick in the pants, her microphone going out and the music dropping completely from the TV. She was singing very well. She handled it like a pro and about as well as anyone could, and she gave enough to see she was doing great. Sucks, I’d like to have heard it all. I’m sure she’ll be safe.

Kat Perkins, “Magic Man” - Damn, Ann Wilson is a challenge to match, but if anyone could do it, I think it’s Kat. She overall had a good performance, but one thing bugged the shit out of me. She seemed to be holding notes just a fraction of a beat too long. I don’t know if this is my familiarity with the original getting in the way, but that long hold note effect hurt my enjoyment of what should have been awesome. I guess I’d have to give this the third worst for that reason, which is a shame because I like Kat.

Jake Worthington, “Anymore” - a country song, so I didn’t know it, and it felt like he had a couple pitchy moments, but it’s hard to tell with country. But a heartfelt performance and it was pretty good.

Tess Boyer, “I’ll Be There For You” - is this song enough of a classic to stand up? It was an interesting approach, and Tess sang it loud and proud.

Josh Kaufman, “Stay With Me” - once again, a smooth and elegant performance. He’s in top 3.

So my top picks are
Sisaundra
Josh, Bria, and Kristen

Middle is
Delvin, Christina, Tess, Audra, Jake

Bottom
Kat
Dani
TJ

Not that America will agree with me.

[QUOTE=Nobody]
First, I’m so tired of Adam saying he’s stupid. Find a new way to praise an artist.
[/QUOTE]

It is getting old, and anything that becomes a go-to line starts to sound insincere. Blake’s “I’d buy your album” is the same way.

[QUOTE=Heffalump and Roo]
I didn’t see season 1, but I think you’re talking about Christina booting Jesse Campbell in season 2. I was outraged over that.
[/QUOTE]

Yes, I didn’t feel like looking up wikipedia to dig up the name. I personally didn’t like him, a bit smug and the religious angle bugged me, but he was clearly the best performer on her team and got dumped over whimsy. Note that Christina didn’t win. (Neither did Blake on Season 1 when he dumped the better performers.)

88

I just saw a report that Gwen Stefani will be taking Christina Aguilera’s spot for season 7. Nobody was right that they won’t start taping the next season until June, and he was right in picking the right gender of the new coach also.

In one of the reports, there was a rumor that Adam Levine will take a break for season 7, but that was supposedly at his discretion and not confirmed anywhere.

89

If Adam does take a break, I could see his slot going to Chris Martin.

90

They were guesses on my part, but educated guesses.

I think that would be awesome.

I held out on ranking tonight’s performance, because there were so many that I thought did equally well, but what the heck. My best to worst list:

Dani, T.J., Sisaundra, Kristin
Audra
Delvin
Christina, Josh
Kat, Tess
Jake
Bria

91

I agree that Chris Martin as a coach would be awesome.

I’m going to list the order of the Hulu clips today. I just want to see if they have any meaning in the voting. My guess is that the Hulu clips go in the order of most to least watched. I’m guessing that based on the order of the clips in the past.

The order is changing all the time, but right now, the order is:
Kristen, Christina, Sisaundra, Bria, Josh, Delvin, Audra, Dani, Tess, Jake, Kat, TJ

If America votes the bottom people off the list, the order might be correlated.

I’ve been searching to see if any of the reports have the singers listed in a ranking, and I found one. If I’m reading his listing right (he goes backwards), he has Josh picked to win with Sisaundra next and Jake third, after the playoffs. He has Kristen as last and Bria as next to last. I really like this reporter’s comments. He notes that Dani is at the whim of Shakira’s wacky song choices. I agree with him. Shakira’s choices are usually a mystery to me.

This season, the opinions seem to be all over the map.

92

Results are in, I called it, TJ and Dani got the boot. The third bottom was Tess, which I can sort of see. I know I underrated Kat’s performance.

Interesting they got a last chance performance before the twitter save. TJ did well, I thought Dani had a couple pitchy moments. Tess did well, too.

Then they gave us a status on the Twitter voting, and Tess was ahead.

One thing did bug me, how Carson kept saying we might dramatically change the results. Um, you’ve got the bottom three on only one can be saved. There’s not that much room for a “dramatic change” in the results.

He didn’t match up with America. First off, even though Kristen got the early double montage, her performance last night was great even with the mic snafu. Second, he had Dani above Bria, Kat, and Audra, and she’s gone and they’re still in.

93

I don’t like the Twitter save. The Western part of the country isn’t even able to vote in it as the show isn’t live in the Mountain and Western time zones. All of the South gets to see it live, so I expect the country singers to get saved and the small butch blonde woman to get eliminated if she finds herself in the last three.

94

Sure they can, they just have to pay attention to twitter to know who the three are and vote. Of course, that ruins watching the show play out.

Yeah, time zones make live voting suck.

95

Standard hype. Would you care about voting if he said, “You can make a mild difference in the outcome. Maybe.”? :smiley:

As for tonight’s ‘save me’ performances, I ranked them
Tess
T.J.
Dani

So Tess was the only person I thought should be in the bottom three who was. So 1 out of 3, ouch. But at least I was right on her being saved.

I am a little surprised about T.J. being on the bottom. My only guess is that there are too many singers that sound like him and America wants a voice that’s slightly more unique. Or maybe there were lots of flaws in his performances that I missed.

I’m really surprised about Dani. I thought she did great last night.

96

I found a list of the iTunes downloads at the end of the voting session. I’m fascinated by the results.

Josh, Kristen, Jake, Christina, Kat, Sisaundra, Audra, Delvin, Bria, Tess, TJ, Dani

They give the rankings which are also really amazing to me. Why would so many people be downloading Kristen’s song when it has a huge silent gap on it? She must have a huge loyal following for people to do that.

I gave a bit of thought to why I put her on the bottom of my list. Until the mic incident, she was pretty forgettable to me. She’s singing a country song in a pop style. She just doesn’t stick out in my memory. I thought it a bit odd that she was worried about her image. I thought she might do more with her image to stand out more.

I’m really surprised that Jake is doing so well and that Sisaundra is doing so poorly.

The Hulu clip list wasn’t very well correlated to the iTunes list, so that obviously isn’t showing America’s votes.

The same guy that did the previous list I posted, also posted a list after the lives. His picks also didn’t match the results. He listed Bria on the bottom and slated to go home. The comment section on his blog post about the results had some serious Bria hate going on. One of the commenters mentioned that Bria has a following from her America’s Got Talent performance.

In that comment section, there was quite a stir about Shakira’s lip-synching on the show. I really like that song. I don’t see how she could have done it live with all the electronic stuff they did to her voice. I’m amazed how much I like her songs because I really don’t like her voice. In one show, she said that someone told her that her voice sounds like a goat. It really does to me. But she’s still able to create songs with it that are really captivating to me.

I also don’t care for the Twitter save. It’s not that I don’t like it. I just don’t see the purpose. In most cases I recall, the person saved just gets eliminated the following week. It’s hard to get over the confidence-shaking that fighting for a spot does, I would guess. It doesn’t seem to do anything except show the next person slated to go.

Without even seeing the show next week, I’m picking Bria and Tess to be in the bottom three.

97

I don’t think he has any real flaws in his performance. He doesn’t seem to have glaring pitch issues or tempo problems. He just doesn’t seem exciting.

Does the download version have a huge silent gap? I thought the download versions were performances recorded separately?

One reason she didn’t stick out was she got montaged through both Battle rounds. She was the one contestant they didn’t do the repeated back story and give examples of their being coached and hearing the performances. So yeah, she remained forgettable.

As for her image, she’s a butch lesbian marketing to country music crowd that tends to be conservative, Republican.

I’m not a country music fan, but even I can tell Jake is a star. Sure, he may have a few pitch issues, but they don’t impede his performances, and don’t hurt as bad in his genre.

The intent is to build more hype into the voting process by giving real time control to America. Except the whole timezone thing makes realtime voting on a “live” finals show a pain because most of the country isn’t watching it live, it’s on tape delay. Arrg. But I have to agree with you, it seems more hype than worthwhile. At least we had new performances for the Twitter saves to work with this time. But yes, it does seem to play out that it just tells us who is first on the list eliminated the following week. It would take something extra special to jump from the bottom of the pack one week to the top of the heap the following week. America kinda already has favorites. If they haven’t wowed by now, are they really going to break out in the live shows to be the top performer?

98

Ah, you’re right. I forgot about that. Thanks. That makes more sense now. Maybe they’re downloading the recorded version to see what it would have sounded like if her mic hadn’t gone out and to vote for her as well.

I don’t know that much about country singers, so I’ll have to take your word on that. But it seems to me that if she wants to be accepted into the country crowd that she sound more country. She sings in a very pop style, which is what makes her fade into the background for me. There are better pop singers in the group, for my taste.

You don’t have to convince me about Jake. I’m a Jake fan. I was willing to overlook the pitch issues. But I’m surprised that the rest of America didn’t penalize him for the pitch issues.

I just saw TJ Wilken’s exit interview, and I’m re-thinking my stance on the Twitter save. TJ noted that he was calm during the night because he knew that there was a good chance he would be leaving that night. He didn’t say this part, but they all see the iTunes download numbers like everyone else. And I remember a couple seasons ago when one of the contestants said that they’re told that the iTunes downloads don’t really reflect the rankings, but they almost always do. So really, there’s not much mystery to who is staying and who is going. Sure, the bottom 5 need to sweat it out, but the top 5 don’t. If people look up the iTunes download numbers earlier in the day, they already know with a fairly high degree of certainty how the ranking will play out. Given that, the Twitter save does add a bit of suspense to the show that it doesn’t already have. It just doesn’t add much to the overall change in the rankings.

99

I’m just glad it’s America, or part of America anyway, that chooses and not the coaches.

100

I have been surprised at how often the coaches see the contestants differently than America sees them.

For instance, the coaches couldn’t seem to praise Sarah (from a couple seasons ago) enough. This season, they couldn’t praise Tess enough. But America didn’t see it that way. Sarah lasted for a while but not to the end. And Tess is on the bottom of the bunch at the moment. Shakira seems pretty surprised by it. It was only one round ago that the coaches were predicting that Tess would make it to the end.

Like you, I’m happy that America chooses instead of the coaches. It does make me wonder why the coaches see things so differently sometimes.