Maybe they form a bond with some of the artists and it clouds their judgement.
Because they’re human. Reading some random review columns, I see many times a reviewer will slam someone and America will rate them highly, or the reviewer will root for someone and America will not keep them. Just look at the comments linked in this thread already. It happens to everyone that we have our favorites and the quirks that we like and don’t like, the personal taste.
The thing with America voting is that all those things average out. It’s an example of the Wisdom of the Crowd. Any one individual may be wildly wrong in their guesses, opinions, etc, but polling everyone and averaging their answers gives a much more accurate answer than any individual expert achieves.
There are several reasons why their opinions can be different than America’s.
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They’re listening to the performance live. The audience is hearing it processed through numerous filters and on average probably through a cheap TV audio system. That can make a huge difference. And I’m sure it affects different singers in different ways: A singer who has a deep resonant voice probably won’t sound as impressive through a 5" TV speaker as they would live. Likewise, some singers have more stage presence than others, and that doesn’t always come through on TV.
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They see the rehearsals too. Sometimes a performer will just kill in rehearsal, then get nerves on the live show and turn in a mediocre performance. But the judges know what they heard before, and therefore what the singer is capable of.
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The judges generally know a lot more about music than the audience. They have a better understanding of what’s easy and what’s hard, what takes real talent and what doesn’t.
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Their opinion may be colored by their knowledge of the singer as a person, or by hearing the person singing or jamming off camera. They have a fuller picture of the artist than we do.
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PAYOLA!!! (kidding)
I’m not sure how to feel about tonight’s show. Did Blake really tweet out Adam’s phone number? Reading the articles, Blake did tweet out a number. Whether or not it was real, it really took away from the performances.
And the performances were baffling in themselves without the added drama.
In the order of my preferences:
Delvin: I really liked this performance. It was him. I like the stunt at the end. I didn’t think he’d make it this far. Good for him.
Audra: Last week’s performance had me wondering a bit. I liked this one. She held out some good notes. I liked her articulation better than last week.
Sisaundra: Just a nice song with her signature note-holding at the end. It worked for me.
Jake: He had a few wobbles in the beginning, but I’m still a fan. I wasn’t so sure about that “little people” comment though.
Josh: After last week’s success, I was hoping to really be moved. It was a good performance. I just wasn’t moved in the same way that I was last week.
Christina: I’m a fan, but my favorite song of hers was in the blinds and in the playoff. Last week, I liked a bit less and this week even less. I keep hoping that she’ll get great again.
Kat: I didn’t like this week’s performance anywhere near as much as last week. It’s odd. My complaint about her before was that she was a belter. She didn’t do that this week, but I still didn’t really care for it.
Kristen: I don’t see the difference between her doing country and her not. She sounds the same. She’s consistent in her sound and she always does a solid performance. She’s still not memorable for me, except for the mic failing thing.
Bria: I felt sorry for Bria tonight. Usher gave her a song that was outside her normal genre. I really like the song. She did a decent job with it. But it was baffling. Was that her style or was that other style really her? I didn’t like the screaming style, so I liked this style better, but she’s not exceptionally good in this style at this level of competition. Even so, I was a little surprised at the negative comment that Adam gave her. It almost seemed like he was mad at Blake’s prank and took it out on her or something. That’s not the kind of comments that the coaches generally make. I was also surprised that Usher didn’t stand up for her. Watching her hold back tears was heart-breaking. I may not be fond of her style but she’s a 17 year-old girl getting shredded on live TV. That was tough to watch.
Tess: I’m not even sure why I don’t like her performances. I didn’t like the songs she picked before. I didn’t like that she had to remind us that she was only human and that she had a dark side. But with this song, I can’t even pinpoint what I don’t like about it. It just doesn’t seem to connect with me.
Damn, I normally try to be the first to post…grumble grumble:mad:
OK, seriously, artists listed from best to worse in my opinion.
Delvin “Bright Lights” - Loved the performance, loved the fake-out, loved everything.
Kristen “Let her Go” - Never heard the song before and was surprised it wasn’t a country song, but it sounded like one when she sang it.
Sisaundra “Oh Sherry” - Over did it a bit at the beginning, and throughout the song I think she hit some notes just a tad too hard, but over-all pretty good.
Kat “Landslide” - Kind of sounded like Stevie Nicks a little, but at a slightly higher pitch.
Christina “Hold on we’re going home”- Did OK
Audra “You Lie” - OK, but kind of boring for some reason.
Josh “This is it” - I now know that I don’t like it when he sings softly. I’m the only one, I know, but it’s too quiet and a tad too high pitch for me. When he starts singing louder he sings fine.
Bria “I’m with You” - Seemed a little shaky.
Jake “Run” - Seemed to have a bad start to me. Did he start off key, or off pitch? Something was off about the start of the song. And after that, I don’t know, his performance didn’t seem that great to me.
Tess “Ain’t it Fun” - She sang OK, but everything else was horrible. The music, background vocals, all of it. I tried to separate her out from everything, but I still didn’t see this as a good performance.
So it seems for ranking the singers Heffalump and Roo and I agree on Delvin, Sisaundra, and Tess.
This week was overall really good. A personal top 4 is starting to form and I hope they go further.
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Delvin- Helluva performance. He was great. He beat Josh in the battle round, it will be interesting to see how far he goes. Unchained Melody was okay, but Bright Lights he just tore it up. I also loved his battle Signed Sealed Delivered with Josh, and I thought going into that Josh was going to take it.
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Josh- He is consistently strong, but there is something about how he modulates that he needs to pay attention to. Not as great as last week, but as long as he is consistently top 3 he will get to the finals.
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Kat I just love her voice. I think she is as good as any big voice they have had on the show Landslide was gorgeous, with maybe a breathy low note off the top, that didnt flow, but this was great, very Stevie rather than Dixie Chicks inspired.
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Kristen Oh yeah, this girl delivers. What a sensitive rendition of Let Her Go. I think she is the best of the country singers but I guess Blake didnt take her because she is too LGBT for that country boy.
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Sissaundra Sure a great voice, but I felt it a bit strained in the performance, a little unsure at the beginning, but she took everyone to church once she got settled. Also, Cherry… unless she’s LGBT I thought the lyrics were just a wee bit strange for her to really convey.
5.Christina Well I liked her change up of Drakes Just Hold On and she does have some nice phrasing- but I liked the original more and kept singing it in my head.
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Bria The Avril Lavigne song just didnt suit her. I think she has a Dolores ORiordan quality to her sound but the song choices are wackadoodle for her. Get her to sing Zombie, I think she could kill it.
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Jake well this is the reason I dont like Country. The song was horrible and he was flat through most of it. Note the judges did not talk about the performance just that he was a nice guy…ouch
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Tess This girl has been seriously over pimped because she fills out a dress. There is honestly nothing special about her sound.
10 Audra…oops I forgot, maybe because the song was forgettable
Now that I know where the iTunes download information is kept, I couldn’t help but take a peek.
Since it’s generally the way the rankings go, I’m going to spoiler the link and my comments of the rankings. It takes a bit of the suspense out of the show tonight, but I couldn’t help my curiosity about it.
[spoiler]It looks like the people who weighed in on this thread after last night will be surprised at how America voted. Delvin was third to last on the list. I sure didn’t anticipate that. Bria and Tess are on the bottom. That’s probably less of a surprise.
The other surprise for me is Christina Grimmie being on top with a number 4 ranking, higher than Josh’s number 5 ranking from last week. I had no idea that song would be that popular. She has a big youtube following, but where were they last week if this is the same people? But I’m a fan of Christina, so I’m good with the ranking. Anyone in the top 10 in iTunes gets their votes multiplied by 5.
Link to the iTunes downloads for the top 10
There’s always a chance that the results won’t go this way, but I’d really be surprised if the results were vastly different, although I haven’t seen how they played out in the past.[/spoiler]
Not bad. Well, I only paid attention to who was safe and the last three last chance songs. In my opinion:
Kat - Best of the three, although in the beginning she was holding her notes just a tad too long.
Bria - Sang a little too deep I think.
Tess - Needed a louder mic or to sing louder. I could hardly hear her for the first half of the song.
I might be missing a joke here since this is the second reference to LGBT and country music, but IIRC correctly, Blake didn’t turn for Kristen so he didn’t know what she looked like when she sang in the blinds. Kristen has been on Shakira’s team since the beginning.
On tonight’s results, I haven’t watched the show except for the last 3 minutes. I just wanted to add that I’m glad that the results didn’t match the iTunes downloads. That adds more mystery to the whole thing for me. And I’m also glad that it wasn’t Delvin in the bottom 3. That would have been sadder for me since I thought he did great last night.
Had to play catch up tonight…
Delvin, “Bright Lights”: I wasn’t thrilled with this song, but Delvin gave a great performance. He delivered it well. The fake at the end went a little too long, Carson almost started talking.
Kristen, “Let her Go”: Nice song, nice performance. Very good.
Sisaundra, “Oh Sherry”: Good performance, very much her style. There were maybe one or too points overdone a bit, but still awesome.
Kat, “Landslide”: I thought it was a great performance. I thought she delivered well. I think the one complaint has got to be that she mimics the style of the original too much. Doing Heart last week she was very cued up to Ann Wilson, this week she sounded very much like Stevie Nicks.
I’m not a singer, so this show has taught me some things. My original impression is that they would pick a song that they sing like to show what they are like. But as the show has progressed, I’ve realized some of the best performances are when they rework somebody else’s song and sound completely different. Dia Frampton did it first in season 1, and some great songs have come out of that. So now the challenge is to figure out how to pick a song that fits their style but not an artist that they sound just like, you don’t want to copy too much. I think Kat is hitting too “karaoke”.
Christina, “Hold on we’re going home”: I liked this rendition, I liked her performance. I think this is one of her better performances.
Audra, “You Lie”: Very good.
Josh, “This is it”: Overall it was good, but it wasn’t as spectacular as he’s been.
Bria, “I’m with You”: Overall she gave a good delivery. I did peg a couple pitchy spots in the lower tones. I like the song and think she did in a way to not sound like Avril and really sound like Bria. It just had a couple rough spots.
And I didn’t like the background with the fast-forward of people moving about. It was distracting, kept pulling my attention away from her.
Jake, “Run”: Okay, I wasn’t thrilled with this performance. Even ignoring that it’s country, he had a lot of pitch problems throughout the song. It just wasn’t great. I would have put him in bottom three for this performance.
Tess, “Ain’t it Fun”: I thought she did okay, but everyone is pretty good, so okay isn’t going to cut it. I’m not sure why America isn’t connecting with her. I like that she sings in a lower voice than many pop females. She’s not a Christina Aguilera or Whitney Houston or Amy Lee (Evanescence), but she does sing well. But for whatever reason, her performances don’t pop to the audiences.
I’m not really surprised to see Tess or Bria in the bottom three. I was a bit surprised to see Kat there, I thought her performance was better than that, but maybe the karaoke thing coming out. However, she did get the save fairly strongly, so there’s hope.
I agree with your list.
I didn’t call it, but it appears to be real. What a giant dick move. He dropped the idea and then Carson put it in play and it felt like Carson almost egged him into doing it with Adam saying “He wouldn’t do that” almost feeling to him like a challenge. Still, giant dick move, and I hated that Carson kept going to that. First trying to have him take a call live on the show? Come on.
Now Adam basically has to get a new number and then send a message to all his contacts with the new number. Giant pain in the ass.
I’m also getting a bit tired with the Blake and Adam back and forth. Blake made another comment about his contestant making him look smart, and Adam jumping in. They turn that into a Blake and Adam insultathon instead of focusing on the contestant and the performance. I was right with Shakira telling them to get back on track. Shut the fuck up Adam.
She sung this non-country song but in a countryish manner. She sounded like Kristen. I think she sings well and has a good tone.
It was a bit out of place. The judges have typically not been very harsh in these reviews, because their comments can affect how the audience feels. “Now that you said that, I see what you mean.”
Tonight I can tell what you mean by sounding breathy when singing softly.
Blake addressed that in the practice sessions when he said that he likes when singers and doing crossover songs that they sing it like the original. It’s a tribute to the original thing, rather than trying to change up the lyrics to fit the gender.
I didn’t really think about it before, but that is so true.
And doing some Googling, it turns out Blake did tweet out Adam’s real number. Wow, what a dick. Unsurprisingly that number is now no longer in service.
I agree with you, but this is the one that doesn’t translate for me. Just because it’s hard to do doesn’t mean it’s nice to listen to. I think that’s what happened with Sarah. The coaches kept cheering her on because she could do those elements in her voice, the raspy high notes and the delicate soft notes. They kept saying how technically difficult that was. But it got old and wasn’t attractive in every song. This season, Sisaundra can hold out high notes better than anyone, but it has to have a reason for it to sound good. It seems like the coaches are realizing that the voting audience aren’t as impressed with technical proficiency as the coaches are when there doesn’t seem to be a reason for it.
I did a bit more Googling also and found this:
I still don’t know if it’s true, but I’d be a little more surprised if Carson went along with a prank that could harm Adam than I would be surprised that Blake would do an ill-advised prank. I tend to think it was a set up.
I’ve been thinking about this and want to explore it further. I’ve been thinking about the people who have used a great deal of artistic license to change the song and others who haven’t and how well they’ve done. I’m not sure if that’s what you meant, but I used it as a jumping off point.
Christina Grimme did great last week taking a song and reworking it to her great advantage. Her rendition didn’t sound anything like the original. Her version was much more melodic and less rap. I wasn’t that excited about it, but apparently the voting audience liked it.
Melanie Martinez also had great success using artistic license to change songs a lot. I didn’t care for her voice or her multiple off-key moments, but this strategy of reworking a song got her further than I would have imagined.
On the other hand, Judith Hill had an exceptional voice. When she reworked one of the songs to something that was different than the original from a song that wasn’t mainstream, people didn’t vote for it, and she got booted.
Also, people who have sounded a lot like the original have gone far. Amanda Brown’s “Dream On” rendition wasn’t too far from the original. It had a few original moments, but she didn’t stray too far from the original sound. And that great duet between Trevin and Amanda was mostly a copy of the original song.
Most of Danielle Bradbery’s songs didn’t take much creative license. They were largely just her voice singing the same song in the same style and singing very similarly.
I think Adam feels like he wants his contestants to be “artists” and really rework songs. Blake is less about that, although both have had success and misses with both strategies.
It’s interesting to watch the strategies that the coaches take in response to a particular success. They seem to overcompensate in one direction until the strategy doesn’t work with someone or there’s another success in something else.
For instance, after the success of Melanie Martinez, Adam was all about creativity and artistic license until the miss with Judith Hill. After the success of Danielle Bradbery, Adam was all about taking unproven talent and trying to create a huge improvement curve. That strategy didn’t work this season with Jake and Morgan that Adam stole from Usher. Delvin and Jake Worthington seem to be doing well, but they’re not really pushing on the huge improvement angle because although both didn’t make the cut last season, they’re not on a steady rise either.
Blake’s strategy that he used to advantage with Danielle is to create a likeable picture of the person instead of focusing on their voice. He’s been doing that a lot with his team this year.
To win, all Blake needs to do is keep giving Sisaundra good songs to sing. I really believe she’s the one to beat. She didn’t do as well this week, and I believe it’s because of the song choice, but I’m positive she’ll make it into the final three.
When the show first started I half jokingly called her a ringer, because of all her time and experience with Celine Dion. But her performance in general is what I was talking about. She’s usually put on last, which is a spot for the best, or who they think is going to be the best. And despite not doing quite as great as usual, I think she’ll bounce back.
And that worries me. I honestly don’t want to see Blake win yet another season. I wouldn’t mind Adam winning, but then I would want to see Blake and Adam go away for a season or two and give the other coaches a chance to win.
It was hard to get a read on Sisaundra’s mother after the first song. She looked like a baseball team manager that is deciding whether or not to pull a pitcher off the mound. I guess that means she wasn’t exactly happy.
Yeah, I wasn’t sure what to make of her either.
Anyway, my rankings.
1 Delvin “I Believe I can Fly” and Christina “How to Love”
2 Sisaundra “River Deep, Mountain High”
3 Josh “I can’t Make you Love Me” - Although I’m still not a fan of his soft singing, I don’t think he did anything technically wrong, and I liked this performance better than most of his others.
4 Kristin “I Drove Your Truck” - Was her mic volume low or did she sing a little too quietly? and Audra “Forgive”
5 Jake “Hillbilly Deluxe”
6 Kat “Get Lucky” - So loud it hurt my ears.
So if I had it my way, the unfortunate three getting voted off would be Jake, Kat, and Audra. I know I tied her with Kristin, but over-all (despite being a country artist:D) I’ve enjoyed Kristin and it just feels like she had an off night.
Really. She gave a tiny smile when they announced her, but she didn’t look too happy. I wonder if that will affect Sisaundra going forward.
My favorites had a great night.
Christina did great. I’m not sure it was a great song choice strategy to do the same thing as last week. But she did well with it.
Sisaundra had a great moment with the whole mom thing. Her singing was great as usual.
Delvin had a great moment when he broke down in rehearsals and showed everyone that he was really into this. He did a great performance.
Jake had his best performance so far, IMO. It was surprising since he mentioned that he was under the weather but his performance didn’t seem to suffer from it. His joviality at the end wasn’t there when he was talking to the coaches though.
I still like Audra, but her enunciation could stand some improvement. It would be nice to understand her words better.
Josh had a good Josh performance. I don’t think he ever captured another moment like the first live performance but he’s pretty solid.
I’m still not a Kristen fan. Going back to what Irishman was commenting on earlier, I think she’s too karaoke for me.
Kat went back to her screaming. I’m not a fan of that. For my tastes, Adam won’t make good on his promise to keep her around to the end.
Three go home tomorrow night. I’m guessing that one of my favorites will be leaving, so I can’t call it. For me, it might be Kat, Kristen and Audra. But I know that the votes for Kristen have been much higher, so that seems unlikely.
I really liked Pharrell’s performance. I remember him helping out Cee Lo before. I hope he makes a good coach next season. I don’t know much about Gwen Stefani. She sounds excited about the show.
She’s been around for about 20 years. Mainly as the singer for No Doubt. She hasn’t done anything in the past few years that I’m aware of. I think she took a break to start a family.
Had to add one more comment.
Adam Levine’s hair.
'nuff said.