Idol Chatter & Voice Views

You won’t find too many contestants who are critical of NBC’s The Voice.

From all reports, the show creates a very nurturing environment for its singers.

But Season 7 contestant Rebekah Samarin took a couple of public swipes at the show earlier this month. And for a very good reason.

You don’t remember Rebekah?

Little wonder. She made it through three phases of the competition. And we never really got to hear her sing.

Her blind audition was part of a montage package.

Her battle round was montaged.

And her knockout round — when she was eliminated from the show in a Team Adam match with Matt McAndrew — was also montaged.

We got to hear a snippet of Matt’s performance. Our only glimpse of Rebekah was a camera shot of her smiling while watching Matt perform.

So Rebekah took to Twitter, with the clever hashtag #forevermontaged. Here’s what she had to say:

“My last performance on @nbcthevoice and also my favorite performance. I am truly upset I couldn’t share my experience with you all. I still do not understand why The Voice decided to treat me so poorly. Onto bigger and better things. To all of my friends on the show, I could not be more excited for you.”

And, in a separate post:

I honestly have no words to describe my emotions at the moment. I feel honored and privileged to have been a part of such an incredible adventure. I will forever cherish the relationships I have made, and the opportunity to learn from Adam Levine along with the other coaches. While I am appreciative of the experience, I am baffled by The Voice’s blatant disregard and disrespect of my time and efforts.

“I’m finding it difficult to end this journey amicably, however I want to thank the staff, the coaches, and my fellow artists that supported me. Also, a huge thank you to all the friends and family that have been with me every step of the way, even when my performances continued to be montaged. This experience has let me more motivated than ever before.”

Congrats to Rebekah, a student at the Berklee College of Music, for being diplomat in her criticism.

Shame on The Voice for giving her a legitimate reason for being upset. In seven seasons, she’s the first contestant to make it so far on the show without having a single performance air on national TV.

What truly baffles me is that, to a certain extent, this would be so, so easy to mitigate. All the time, The Voice is encouraging viewers to check out its website or its Facebook page or its YouTube channel for more on the show. Now, there’s even an app for that.

Why in the world couldn’t the show post full-length versions of all of those montaged performances on those sites? I mean, clearly, they were recorded. Would it take that much effort to edit them and post them so fans could see what they missed? Wouldn’t that be a wonderful way to entice even more people to check out the website, the Facebook page and the YouTube channel?

would still have reason to gripe; in my mind, no one should advance that far in the competition, devote that much time to the process and not have a single performance shown on TV. But it would undoubtedly soften the blow if her fans could at least head to YouTube or The Voice website to see how well she did.

Instead, she’s taken to her own Facebook page to post a cover of Jim Morrison’s “You Give Me Something,” one of the songs we didn’t get to hear her sing on the show.

And we’ll be getting music from Rebekah in the future. When I interviewed her last month, she said she and boyfriend Adam Halliday were working on an EP. They call themselves NOVI, which means new in Russian. For updates on that, you can follow @noviproductions on Twitter.