Ranking the Top 11 on The Voice

April 30, 2017 By Mark Franklin 0

The Top 11 on Season 12 of The Voice includes, from left, Hunter Plake, Aliyah Moulden, Stephanie Rice, Brennley Brown, Vanessa Ferguson, Lilli Passero, Chris Blue, Lauren Duski, TSoul, Mark Isaiah and Jesse Larson. (NBC Photo)

That was a pretty impressive first week of finals for The Voice Season 12.

Four singers cracked the Top 30 on the iTunes singles chart.

Seven cracked the Top 10 on a genre chart.

Heck, the singer eliminated — Troy Ramey — hit number one on the iTunes rock chart.

Like I said, pretty impressive.

Monday, the Top 11 perform. This week, they’ll apparently be without a key adviser.

Here are my rankings. The number in parenthesis represents last week’s ranking.

1. Brennley Brown (3, Team Gwen): Yep, I’m moving the show’s youngest singer into the top spot. Look, Danielle Bradbery and Jake Worthington made the finals with solid performances week after week. Brennley’s been outstanding for three straight weeks. And the 15-year-old brings a ton of charisma along with those stellar vocals.

2. Hunter Plake (1, Team Gwen): After three straight rounds of leading everyone on iTunes, Hunter slipped to third behind Brennley and Lauren Duski last week. Some slip. He was still an impressive number 16 on the iTunes singles chart. He needs another “Every Breath You Take” moment to re-establish himself as the show’s front-runner.

3. Lauren Duski (3, Team Blake): Nothing that happened last week changed my feeling that Lauren will be in the finals trying to bring Blake Shelton yet another title in Season 12. And Blake’s unlikely to make the sort of song choice mistake we’ve already witnessed some coaches making in the last two rounds.

4. Chris Blue (4, Team Alicia): His fun performance of “Love and Happiness” was absolutely one of the highlights from the opening night of the finals. And those dance moves. Wow. In my mind, someone is going to have to come on very strong to break up a final likely to feature Brennley, Lauren, Hunter and Chris.

5. Stephanie Rice (5, Team Alicia): During Carson Daly’s results night Q&A with contestants, he asked Stephanie what she’d like to do next on The Voice. She said she’d like a chance to rock out on stage. After a series of emotional performances, that might be just the ticket into the Top 10 and beyond.

6. Vanessa Ferguson (7, Team Alicia): Vanessa got the pimp spot, performing last on Top 12 night. And she made the most of it with a fabulous performance of “A Song for You.” But I still think — based on Voice fans’ voting history — she’s likely to be the singer most deserving of a spot in the finals who doesn’t make it.

7. Jesse Larson (8, Team Adam): Remember when Jesse turned just one chair — Adam’s — during the blind audition. Well, if Adam gloats a bit over that, he deserves to. Jesse is performing way beyond what you’d expect from someone just one coach turned for. Last week, he was forced to open the show and still breezed into the Top 11.

8. Lilli Passero (10, Team Adam): I was happy to see Lilli voted into the Top 11. She had no business singing a song as far out of her wheelhouse as that Shania Twain tune she was handed last week, let alone after she’d been sidelined by illness. Yet she made it work well enough to earn another week on the show.

9. Aliyah Moulden (9, Team Blake): Aliyah reminds me a lot of Tristan McIntosh from the final season of American Idol. They’re both lovely young ladies with tons of vocal talent who might have landed on national TV a couple of years before they were really ready to compete with the much more experienced singers they’re going up against.

10. TSoul (11, Team Blake): I was not a fan of TSoul’s reworking on the emotional Willie Nelson ballad “Always On My Mind.” In my mind, there were way too many embellishments. Oh, well, leave it to Blake Shelton to pick a country song that got TSoul into the Top 11 just the same.

11. Mark Isaiah (12, Team Adam): His save-me performance of “When I Was Your Man” marked a major step in the right direction. It was the best Mark has sounded in weeks. But he’ll need to build on that quickly. And he’ll need a very smart song choice from Adam to avoid another trip to the bottom two.