The Voice

Beatles duets, not solos, but the question is still: Why?

1

John Legend with his two remaining singers on The Voice, Maelyn Jarmon and Shawn Sounds. (NBC Photo)

John Legend with his two remaining singers on The Voice, Maelyn Jarmon and Shawn Sounds. (NBC Photo)

In announcing its return for a seventeenth season, The Voice also cleared up the format for the upcoming Top 8 show.

That show will feature a solo by each member of the Top 8 plus four duets that will count for voting purposes.

It’s the duets — not the solos, apparently — that will be restricted to songs by The Beatles.

There’s still no excuse for a Beatles theme with a country-heavy cast that The Voice should have been able to predict would be country heavy three weeks ago.

And the format for Monday’s show could have and should have been much better.

With the shortened finals — from a Top 13 to a Top 8 to the finals in just three weeks — why not let each member of the Top 8 perform two solos Monday night.

You’re going to find out a lot more about whether a singer is Voice worthy from a solo than a duet.

And restricting the show to solos would remove any concerns about the show playing favorites, unfairness in the pairings or mismatched artists being forced to perform together.

I know I keep comparing The Voice to American Idol. It’s difficult not to when the seasons run simultaneously.

And I have to point out that heading into next week’s finals, we will have heard Idol’s top contestants perform 18 times. Idol, in fact, will have each member of its Top 5 perform three solos Sunday night.

We will have heard the Top singers on The Voice perform seven times. And two of those will have been duets.

Now which show do you think is providing a better showcase for its artists?




Related Posts

1 Comment

  1. MW May 12, 2019 at 1:27 am -  Reply

    On the morning of May 9, I read The Voice Official Voting Rules pertaining to Twitter voting for duet songs. Tonight, that entire section is missing. So sometime between Thursday morning and Saturday night, someone edited the rules to remove any mention of duets.

    The question remains the same. Why? Whether the duets actually count toward Season 16 vote totals or not, they still enable producer manipulation and have an influence on the audience.

    I prefer Mark’s idea. Let fans hear the Top 8 sing two solos. NBC has already shown it can be done. Both nights of Cross Battles featured sixteen performances, and 24 were packed into the April 29 episode. Contestant duets or group numbers should serve as filler for the finale results show instead.

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *