Tag: "the voice"

After weeks of blind auditions and battle rounds, The Voice finally reached the part of the season where things really start heating up: the live shows. Monday night’s show pitted Team Christina and Team Blake against their own, each contestant hoping to move on to be their coach’s final five.

Unlike other singing competition shows, the live rounds of The Voice pull out all the stops, making each performance an awards show-caliber number. That means dancers, mimes, lasers and fog machines are all fair game. All of that included, though, Monday night’s performances still left something to be desired. Was it nerves, or just lackluster vocals? It’s hard to tell. Some people were straight-up awful (we can’t wait to see RaeLynn get the boot), and others just seemed terrified to be on live TV (Lindsay Paveo looked ready to puke).

In the end, we thought only three artists out of the twelve truly stood out. We were particularly impressed with the energy of Jermaine Paul on “Livin’ on a Prayer,” the emotional performance of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Chris Mann and the smooth sounds of Jesse Campbell on “What A Wonderful World.” Watch Jermaine’s performance in the player below and tune in to NBC tonight at 9PM to see which two artists will be eliminated.

It’s no secret that this season of The Voice is full of amazing talent. We’ve been blown away time and time again by the likes of Jesse Campbell, Juliet Simms, Katrina Parker and Jamar Rodgers, just to name a few. However, Monday night’s episode was a Voice rarity: a show so dull, it barely got us to look up from our computers.

From pitchiness to bad song choices to generally lackluster performances, Monday’s episode may go down as the worst in The Voice‘s short history. It seemed as even the coaches were stunned with how their teams performed, with words like “generic,” “let down,” “missed notes” and “pitch things” being thrown around right and left.

There was one battle that stood out from the rest, though, because of the odd match-up and energetic performances. Country duo The LiNE and Moses Stone, the show’s first-ever MC, were both out of their element on the Rolling Stones classic “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Though The LiNE may have out-sung Moses—who admitted that he isn’t the strongest vocalist—the rapper put on an entertaining and versatile performance that led coach Christina Aguilera to crown him the winner. By the way, we loved her little speech on what it means to be “the voice.” Check it out after the battle in the player below, and tune in next Monday for the first round of live shows!

The boys have brought an insane amount of energy, passion and skill to this season of The Voice. From Jesse Campbell and Anthony Evans, Jr., to Pip and Tony Lucca, Season 2 has been ripe with talent from a fresh crop of male vocalists.

Last night’s episode, however, was all about the ladies. Sure, there were still some solid performances from the guys (Jonathas and Jermaine Paul both tore it up), but we were extremely impressed by the matchups of Katrina Parker and Angel Taylor on Leona Lewis’ “Bleeding Love” and Erin Willett and Gwen Sebastian on Pat Benatar’s “We Belong.”

Continue reading ‘“The Voice”: Ladies’ Night’

Last night, The Voice brought us back to the battleground for the next round of intense and emotional vocal warfare.

The night kicked off with a battle as epic as last week’s final matchup between Anthony Evans, Jr. and Jesse Campbell. Sera Hill and Geoff McBride both brought their soulful and powerful voices to the stage for Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools,” in a battle that either one could have walked away from victorious. Sera’s vocal acrobatics were a perfect compliment to Geoff’s unbelievable tenor, but she ultimately took home the win.

The next jaw-dropping battle came between seasoned rocker Juliet Simms and androgynous folk singer Sarah Golden. Juliet, whose audition left the coaches fighting over her, seemed to have the upper hand from the beginning, as the pair were assigned a song by rock legend Rod Stewart. Sarah’s smooth and rustic tone made her a sharp contrast to Juliet’s dynamic, raspy growl, but—to paraphrase Christina Aguilera—Juliet was the “no-brainer” winner.

Indie rockers Lindsey Pavao and Lee Koch performed a sleepy and “creepy” (Adam Levine’s words, not ours) version of Nirvana’s “Heart-Shaped Box.” Their performance really didn’t give us any reason to look up from writing this post…but Blake Shelton’s comment about never having hearing the original, did. No, he wasn’t kidding. Kurt is rolling in his grave…

Thankfully, the night ended on a literal high note, with Jamar Rodgers taking on good friend Jamie Lono on Foreigner’s “I Wanna Know What Love Is.” Jamie’s nerves got the best of him and caused his voice to crack, but Jamar picked up the slack and murdered the song on his own.

Next week, we’re promised “a shocking battle round first.” We can’t wait to see what goes down!

After several weeks of blind audition shows, battle rounds on The Voice finally began on Monday night…and they didn’t disappoint. For those of you unfamiliar with the structure of this show, each team has twelve members after blind auditions. The coaches then create six one-on-one battles, for which they also choose the song and celebrity mentor to help train the contestants. The contestants sing the song as a duet, with the coach choosing the winner immediately afterwards.

It’s always interesting to see how the judges match up their battle pairings. More often than not, they’ll choose two artists with very similar styles in order to make their final set of six as strong and diverse as possible. Other times, though, it kind of seems like they just picked names out of a hat. On Monday night, we saw a little of both… Continue reading ‘“The Voice”: Let The Games Begin’

Five-time Grammy award winner. Producer, solo artist, and member of both Gnarls Barkley and the Goodie Mob. Current judge for The Voice. Well, it looks like Cee Lo Green is adding “author” to his list of accomplishments, with a memoir set to be published in 2013. The book is reportedly co-written by Rolling Stone contributing editor David Wild, with insights from rapper Big Gipp.

“He dresses in sequined capes, performs with the Muppets and Madonna, and does 360° flips with a grand piano at his fingertips,” says Grand Central Publishing executive Beth de Guzman. “Imagine all that outrageously unique and creative talent channeled into a book.”

Give us a second…ok, there it is, we’re imagining it. Wow, this is outrageous. Still, it’s got nothing on Crüe’s The Dirt.

Last night, we saw the fifth and final installment of blind auditions on The Voice. As always, we met a wide array of performers, from blues artists to belting divas to that one dude who sang opera and beatboxed (more on that, later). With the audition segment of the season coming to a close, it only seemed appropriate to pay tribute to a few who got away…

Adorable, down-to-earth OurStage artist David Dunn, a self-proclaimed “black sheep of the family,” channeled his inner-Script on stage in round 5. The girls in the audience seemed to squeal with delight at this soulful pop singer, but none of the judges were wowed enough to press that darn button. Hey David, we’ll watch you sing any time!

Armed with a guitar and a set of experienced pipes, sixty-four-year-old Memphis native Preston Shannon, a.k.a. The King of Beale Street, brought the house down with his bluesy performance. Preston’s rustic tone had all of the judges nodding their heads with approval, but unfortunately, none of them made the move to claim him for their team. We could definitely see why they call him “The King!”

Finally, Cameron “Novackaine” Novack made us all scratch our heads when he busted out opera and rap within ten seconds of his introduction. Novack was incredibly confident that he was about to be begged to join at least one coach’s team, but his performance of “You Oughta Know” seemed to confuse more than impress. Cee-Lo immediately regretted his decision, though, and even asked if it would be possible to bend the rules, just this once. Ultimately, though, Novack had to shuffle off the stage and move on to the next opera hall…or rap show. Whichever.

Sadly, The Voice is a numbers game. All of the coaches said that they would be much pickier with performances in the final round, since the spots left on their teams were limited. We can’t help but wonder: Would these singers have made it through to the battle rounds if they had gotten to perform earlier in the show? Maybe. All we can do now is hope that America was paying attention, because many of the rejected vocalists on The Voice still represent some of the best undiscovered talent.

One of the coolest things about The Voice is that it can give contestants a second chance at stardom. While some of these performers have only sung for friends and family, more and more vocalists armed with impressive resumes are coming to The Voice for their chance to really make it big.

Last season, there was Dia Frampton, one half of indie rock sister duo Meg & Dia (we even interviewed her, back in the day!). Their band had been a part of the Vans Warped Tour, was signed to a label and had a loving fan base, but they just couldn’t break into the mainstream. After soaring straight to the No. 2 spot on The Voice, Dia released her first solo album and has recently been on tour with her band, opening for her coach, Blake Shelton. Of course, season one winner Javier Colon had also been around the business; he had previously been signed to Capitol Records for four years, but never caught his big break.

Is "The Voice" a second chance for Charlotte Sometimes?

We’re just a few episodes into this season and we’ve already seen experienced talents like emo-alt rocker Juliet Simms and Alicia Keys’ backup singer Jermaine Paul. Last night’s episode added two more music vets to the mix with Charlotte Sometimes and Tony Vincent. Sometimes was signed to Crush Management at the tender age of sixteen, was featured on VH1 and, like Frampton and Simms, is a Vans Warped Tour alum. As she recounted in her backstory segment, she was diagnosed with a degenerative bone disease that had her battling for her ability to sing for years. Now fully recovered, Sometimes blew all four of the judges away with her take on One Republic’s “Apologize” before committing to Team Blake.

Despite the creepy makeup (ditch the lip gloss, please!), contestant Tony Vincent made quite the impression on The Voice last night when he sang “We Are The Champions.” Though ambitious, the song choice was not at all surprising, as Vincent had just recounted his time in Queen’s musical We Will Rock You. Vincent had also previously performed in Green Day’s American Idiot, Rent and more. Vincent brought down the house and ended up on Team Cee-Lo. We’re definitely excited to see what he does next.

Here’s to hoping the second time’s the charm, guys!