Thursday, April 30, 2015

The Voice S8: Confessions/Musings 'n Such

In this post, I'll be doing the Diet Coke version of bitching about S8 of The Voice; "musing"/"reflecting" 'n such stuffs. This is mainly to justify my case of being the loudest voice in a fairly extreme minority.
Remember, I started this blog and my recaps of the show back in S4 after Judith Hill AKA HRFH [Her Royal Fucking Highness] was getting way too much praise on the show and from esteemed critics such as Lyndsey Parker, Michael Slezak & the rotating list of Entertainment Weekly people.


So, after the jump, read some musings I have over how Season 8 of the NBC Program with Ratings has been in my indignant 4-eyes.





Contestants left: this is a first since S3; two of my favorites have made it past the Top 8 [Amanda Brown and Melanie Martinez from S3 and now India Carney and Koryn Hawthorne from S8].
I'm hoping India pulls a bigger upset and sends Kimberly Nichole home. Koryn is this season's dark horse/sleeping giant especially considering Sawyer Fredericks is STILL here despite him singing worse than...well he and Kimberly are equally atrocious singers.

Meghan Linsey: is still a bittersweet remaining contestant, because prior to that goddamn mistake Pharrell made of keeping Paul Pfau and her in turn picking Blake as her new coach...she really was someone I wanted to win.
Leaving country behind to do a better genre of music, especially soul? I was so in favor of her until she picked Blake. I've harped and have pretty much rebuked Meghan since then, but this is why I haven't supported or voted for her once so far...
In her audition, she said she saw herself as a soul artist and with her audition, I believed that. Blake didn't even turn for her in the Blinds and that's when I was like "YES! She isn't going to end up country whatsoever now!"

Pharrell's strategy of trying to screw Adam out of Paul was ever so misguided when he was supposed to keep Blake away from Meghan at all costs. -_- Right then I think I stopped following him on Twitter (Oh gurl, I know he doesn't give a fisherman's fuck about losing one follower.)
I mean, he did screw Xtina out of Caitlin Caporale but in the end, he saved Koryn which was the right thing to do but ended up showing that Pharrell's strategy in this competition sucks.

India's tenure: Apart from her audition of "New York State of Mind", her Battle Round song of "Stay" and her Playoff of "Hurt", her tenure is defined by bad song choices made mostly by Xtina who I'm still convinced is doing this to sabotage her in favor of Kimberly.
I love India's singing; vibrato and all, but she needs to take two righteous hits for picking a Jessie J song and "Over the Rainbow" to perform in the Knockouts and Top 8 respectively. I sometimes wonder if either she or Xtina know who Kelis is because that's who India should be singing/aspiring to be.

Both her and Kelis possess an unmistakably unique tone to them and aren't one to latch on to a genre of music. Instead of even entertaining this thought, Xtina feels it necessary to give her bad songs in the bullshit theory that India needs to "dirty" up or show more "personality" than she exudes.

2 things: 1. If her personality wasn't "showing" in her singing [since apparently that matters], how the fuck did she end up with 4 chairs? Answer is, because her singing was THAT. DAMN. GOOD the way it was.
2. So why is it India that needs to show improvement, but you and the coaches have gushed over terrible contestants like Judith Hill, Sarah Simmons, Tessanne Chin, Josh Kaufman, Kimberly and a litany of other contestants that actually needed improvement?

Koryn's Tenure: I'm amazed at the fact that Koryn not only became a favorite of mine after Blinds and Battles uncertainty, but at the fact that she in 2 weeks after "How Great Thou Art", fucking killed it with "Make it Rain".
In that short a time to give one of the few flawless vocals on the show, Koryn forever earns my respect.


What may end up happening is that she will be knocked aside for Sawyer and I hate that. She's giving unique tone to her performances and per usual coaches and critics alike assume Sawyer can do no wrong when "sorry" critics; he's given some of the most unbearable live vocals on the show (Nowhere near Nic Hawk bad, but good GOD is Sawyer unbearable).

Sawyer: Still hate his singing, but he has shown artistic muscle at least once before. Back in the knockouts, he was the one to take initiative and ditch his guitar for his performance. I thought to myself, "He's vocally flawed but showing so much savvy artistic choices I bet he doesn't get credit for in his life."

Joshua Davis: Winner of the "Last Leg" award for Team Adam. He's musical Nyquil but I suppose "good for him for having rabid Twitter fans save him instead of the superior Deanna."


General Voice Complaints: Song choices, coach decisions and the usual suspects of Live Results fuckery show up here. Let's dissect this, shall we?

Guest performances: So apparently, the show really wants Matt McAndrew to become a thing. BOO. Yes, I voted for Craig Wayne Boyd to win mainly as a message of "Dear Adam, your team was so pitiful I voted and enabled Blake's win-boner"; still, enough with acting like he and Cassadee Pope are the only goddamn Voice contestants that need to pimp themselves on your show?

How about a shout-out to Amanda Brown for being featured on the Identity Thief soundtrack?! Yeah, as in a movie soundtrack for a movie people have heard of?! (Apparently, the show thinks it's more dignified to have that Kelly Clarkson impersonator Cassadee instead of ever acknowledge Amanda.)

How about having more Voice alumni than S2's Gwen Sebastian for a Blake Shelton gig perform in between performances? We the viewers know we can't get them to do results (because we haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaave to have "musical talent" such as Nick Jonas, Rozzi Crane, Jason Derulo, Ella Henderson and soooooooooooooooooooooo many others that there's just no "room" to feature Voice alumni not named Cassadee, Danielle Bradbery showing off a tattoo, Gwen and Matt.) [Reminder, italic font in rant form = sarcasm here.]

How about a shout-out to Melanie Martinez for having the promo/theme song to a show of questionable quality but that people watch, i.e. the American Horror Story: Freak Show promo/theme song?! Also, shout-out her, Michelle Chamuel and even Luke Wade for performing at SXSW [South by Southwest], i.e. a legitimate music festival people have heard of?!

In very personal terms, can the show get around to working around Cody Belew's schedule and have him perform on the show? For the love of GOD, have him be a S3 alum not named Cassadee perform on the show.


Song Choice: Coaches and contestants alike are idiots in most weeks for some of the crap they pick to sing.
"Over the Rainbow", "Creep", "Chains", "Jealous", "Ain't No Sunshine", "House of the Rising Sun", "Imagine", "Iris", "Take Me to Church", "Rude", "Run to You" and a litany of others must be axed from being performed ever again.

Coach Screen-time for NAUGHT: Over the course of 8 viewing seasons and 5 recapping seasons I have discovered that apart from very fluke moments on the show, coaches on this show cannot critique a contestant for jack. shit.
If you're going to have a disproportionate amount of screen-time for coaches, can you at least prod them to call out contestants on bad nights? Seriously, enough is enough with 4 Paula Abduls saying to contestants "That was great"/"That was wonderful"/"OMG UR ***FLAWLESS"/"Ur a truuuu artist; I LUHH u so much, kisses!"

It couldn't hurt to have coaches...oh I don't know...COACH and tell artists if they were actually good or if they need to work on things.


Since the chance for impact is relatively minimal, I at least got all this off my chest and have another blog post.

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