Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Kirk Jay has repeatedly performing near the end of Season 15 voting shows on The Voice. (NBC Photo)

We’ve come to watch singing shows in the same manner.

They build to what are supposed to be the night’s best performances.

Knowing that, singer show producers have long had a habit of having their favorites take the stage late in a two-hour performance show.

And Voice producers appear to have been working overtime to make sure Kirk Jay goes over big with fans in Season 15.

Not only did the show’s coaches start talking about Kirk as a potential Season 15 champ early on, he’s gotten easily the best performance placement of any singer who made the Top 8.

Check out the chart below. Based on the premise that performing late in the show is best. it demonstrates how favorably producers have treated Kirk since fan voting began. The numbers indicate where each singer performed, with 1 meaning first, etc.

* Six singers performed for each team in the live playoffs; the number reflects where the singer performed among his or her team members.

Now, to be sure, Kirk Jay isn’t the first performer on The Voice to enjoy this sort of treatment.

After putting the chart above together, I took a close look at performance order in Season 14 and Season 13.

Britton Buchanan wound up performing late in the show quite often in the former; Addison Agen in the latter.

And back in Season 9, The Voice’s pimping of Jordan Smith was absolutely off the charts. The show decided he was going to win before the blind auditions aired and set about doing everything possible to ensure that happened.

But back to Season 15. In Kirk’s case, he not only got the pimp spot for Team Blake in the live playoffs and again in this week’s semifinals, but sang next to last in two of the other three live shows.

Meanwhile, a couple of his Top 8 counterparts have never enjoyed the advantage of performing near the end of the show.

After the live playoffs, Kymberli Joye was stuck performing fourth three straight weeks, then delivered the third solo on Top 8 night.

And Chris Kroeze’s latest performance in any show was his Top 8 night duet with Sarah Grace, when they took the stage third from last in a performance that didn’t count for voting purposes.

Each member of the Top 4 — Kirk, Chris, Chevel Shepherd and Kennedy Holmes — will perform three times Monday night.

Let’s see if the favoritism continues or if The Voice — contrary to anything we’ve seen in recent seasons — decides to play fair for a change.