VOICE OVER: Coaches Pile the Praise on the Elite Eight

Monday night, November 26, began week four of the live shows on NBC's The Voice, getting down to the best of the best. Three from Team CeeLo Green, two from Teams Adam Levine and Blake Shelton, and only one from Team Christina all performed tonight in groups and individually, hoping to make it to the top six. They sang their hearts out, knowing that their journey could end this week. Meanwhile, the coaches seem to have abandoned the notion that following the performanes, their job is to critique, but their philosophy seems to be, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." And this rang true throughout this whole episode.

Make sure to click here and check out the previous recaps to get a reminder about who all is still in the competition!

The evening started with a highly-anticipated world premiere: “My Life,” featuring 50 Cent and Adam Levine. This was a great performance, and had he been in the competition, I would have voted Adam through to the next round.

The coaches discussed how many contestants they each had left, so CeeLo told Carson Daly the key to keeping so many of his artists, “It’s a matter of continually making the right song choices and making sure that they connect and they show their true personality.” Christina completely struck gold when Dez chose her, because he is probably the most popular contestant on this show, and with him, Christina actually has a chance to win.“Dez is my last man standing, and I’m rooting for him all the way; he’s just a phenomenal talent. The key is to make sure he keeps changing it up, and we don’t pigeon-hole him to one style because he really can do it all.”

Amanda Brown, one of the all-stars from Team Adam, sang Adele’s hit, “Someone Like You,” but as is so characteristic of Adam Levine, he wanted to switch it up a bit to fit Amanda specifically. “We’re doing a very bold version of a very simple song. We’re trying to go the rock version. I think we’ve got something very explosive.” And yet again, this was a wise choice on Adam’s part. At this point, I am totally convinced that Amanda can do no wrong, and it seems as if Adam thought the same thing as he clapped profusely for her performance,. As usual, the coaches had absolutely nothing constructive to say, but they lavished on the encouragement, which was clearly very appreciated. Her coach told her, “I’m hard on people for doing Adele songs, because there’s a lot about Adele that doesn’t need to be touched. It’s a risk to do a song that’s so adored by so many people, but this didn’t resemble that in any way. But you took that risk. I’ve never seen anyone do it how you did it. And it became this massive power ballad. You knocked it out of the park.”

CeeLo’s Cody Belew sang Queen’s “Somebody to Love,” to, “Show off that big beautiful voice of his,” as CeeLo put it. The only difference was that Cody wanted to put a certain spin on it, trying to emulate his inspiration, Freddie Mercury. For the second week in a row, Cody had a backup gospel choir. I suppose one can never have too many of those, and let’s face it: this song wouldn’t be complete without one of those or maybe a struggling Glee club in the background. The coaches agreed that Cody really expressed his emotion and took risks through this performance. CeeLo had lots to tell him, “What a wonderful, wonderful job! I’m just so very proud of how you’ve grown at such an accelerated rate. You are strutting through here with so much poise and confidence, and there are so many people who want to live vicariously through you.”