Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Each member of The Voice Top 5 will perform twice Monday night on the final performance show of Season 18.

Still in the running for The Voice Season 18 title are Todd Tilghman and Toneisha Harris of Team Blake, Micah Iverson of Team Kelly, Thunderstorm Artis of Team Nick and CammWess of Team Legend.

They’ll each perform one new cover song — remotely, of course — during Monday’s 8 p.m. show.

But they’ll also be performing an original, working with mentors from NBC’s “Songland” — Ryan Tedder, Shane McAnally and Ester Dean — to produce songs for each remaining artist.

No word on whether those songs will be available on Apple Music, but Apple Music voting is not part of The Voice process this season.

You can vote by the Voice app, online at the Voice website or through Xfinity and voting will open when Monday’s show starts.

Finalists have typically performed a duet with their coaches as well during the performance finale.

But with five artists in the finale instead of the normal four, those performance have been moved to the Tuesday night season finale.

Under the Season 18 format, Voice fans will be selecting a winner based on just seven performances, the fewest in the show’s history.

The previous fewest was the nine performances Season 16 finalists logged before the finale. In Season 17, finalists performed 11 times before a winner was announced.

Monday will also mark just the third voting show of Season 18, a schedule announced before the season premiere and unaffected by the pandemic.

Disclaimer:
Producers, coaches, judges and hosts on American Idol and The Voice will pretend they are hosting a legitimate singing competition this week and next. Having blogged about singing shows for more than a decade, I can assure you they are not.

You cannot go from a Top 20 to a winner in four weeks (American Idol) or a Top 17 to a winner in three weeks (The Voice) and call it a fair and legitimate singing competition.

So have fun watching. Vote if you want. Put very little stock in the results because they will mean virtually nothing.

Most of all, support the singers when their time on the show ends. They deserved a better showcase for their talent.