Spoiler Alert! Recap and Review: Teams Gwen & Pharrell Perform on THE VOICE Live Playoffs Night Two; Full Reviews!
By: Matt Tamanini Nov. 11, 2014
With one night down in THE VOICE's Live Playoffs (read my review of last night's show here), the teams are taking shape, but, as of yet, no one has blown the doors off the joint. Tonight, rookie coaches Gwen Stefani and Pharrell Williams will send their singers to the stage to perform for a live national audience for the first time.
Tomorrow night, America's voting results will be revealed, saving the top-two vote getters from each team. Then each coach, Gwen, Pharrell, Adam Levine, and Blake Shelton, will select a third member from their teams to advance.
The first night of Playoffs, which had performances from Team Blake and Team Adam, showed a decent amount of talent, but no one that gave a standout performance. With their seasons of experience, it seemed like Adam and Blake were playing the odds and trying to garner the most votes, rather than allowing their contestants to be free and deliver extraordinary performances.
Hopefully the new coaches will be a little more creative in the way they allow their contestants to present themselves on stage. Based on the rumored song choices, I would say there is a decent chance that we could get some memorable performances.
Team Gwen
Anita Antoinette performing "All About That Bass"
Taylor John Williams performing "Stuck in the Middle with You"
Ricky Manning performing "Lay Me Down"
Ryan Sill performing "I Lived"
Bryana Salaz performing "Amnesia"
Team Pharrell
Elyjuh René performing "Latch"
DaNica Shirey performing "Help Me"
Luke Wade performing "Let's Get it On"
Sugar Joans performing "I Say A Little Prayer"
Jean Kelley performing "Piano in the Dark"
In yesterday's article, I listed my pre-Playoff favorites, we'll see if I still like them after tonight's show.
My Team Gwen Favorites:
Anita Antoinette
Bryana Sala
My Team Pharrell Favorites:
Sugar Joans
Jean Kelley
I will be here, live recapping all three episodes this week, so add your comments below, or hit me up on Twitter @BWWMatt. I will provide immediate reactions to each performance, and other such nonsense, and then after the episode concludes, I will add full performance reviews, and photos when NBC makes them available overnight.
Obligatory Coach Performance: Ummmm, I would much rather listen to Morgan James' "Hunter" than this song.
Wait, did THE LEFTOVER's Guilty Remnant take over THE VOICE's audience? There was a collection of women in the audience who sat stone-faced in white robes and sunglasses. If they start lighting up cigarettes, it would be the oddest cross-promotion in the history of TV.
Team Gwen
Ryan Sill
Song: "I Lived" by One Republic
Three-Word Review: Enough "Come on"s
Apparently Ryan thinks that to toughen up his robotic boy band image, he needs to repeat the phrase, "Come on" as many times as possible. I believe I counted six "Come on"s. Ok, we get it.
The vocals with Ryan have never been an issue, he has always had the pitch perfect tone and slick, mechanical delivery. His issue going forward is going to be whether or not he can sell a song and connect with the audience. I am not the target demo for a boy band style singer, but there just seems to be something distant in Ryan's performance. He keeps wanting us to "Come on", without giving any thought to coming to us.
Team Pharrell
Jean Kelley
Song: "Piano in the Dark" by Brenda Russell
Three-Word Review: Bit Too Much
One of reasons that I liked Jean, and above picked her as one of my favorites from Team Pharrell, is because she has always delivered truly connected, vocally perfect performances. This time however, I think the coaches were right; a little goes along way when it comes to high drama. I don't know this song very well, but it seemed to me that her acting forced her off tempo at times, making it difficult for the accompaniment to keep up with her. The result was a performance that showed incredible range, skill, and dynamics, but never felt cohesive.
If I were Pharrell (I could rock that hat!) I still think that I would save her if need be, but this was not her best moment on THE VOICE.
Team Pharrell
Elyjuh René
Song: "Latch" by Disclosure featuring Sam Smith
Three-Word Review: Best So Far
Without a doubt, that was the best performance of the 13 Live Playoff songs so far. Elyjuh was incredibly precise with his vocals and runs, and often that often annoys me, because it tends to eliminate the human vulnerability that music is designed to expose. But with this performance, I didn't even care. While it didn't blow me away emotionally, I was incredibly impressed with his technical prowess. I think that as times goes on, he will have to work on releasing his stranglehold on his performance, and be a little freer when he sings, but for now, he is in really good shape.
Team Gwen
Bryana Salaz
Song: "Amnesia" by 5 Seconds of Summer
Three-Word Review: That was Surprising!
Bryana has always had one of the better voices in the competition; she has a ridiculous belt and smooth tone. Despite that, I was really surprised by how emotionally believable her performance of this song was. She talked about how her experience as a military child connected her to the lyrics, but it is one thing to feel that, and another thing to communicate that through song.
As the coaches mentioned, Bryana seems to be growing by leaps and bounds with each performance. I think that she could be a contender if that trend continues.
Team Pharrell
Luke Wade
Song: "Let's Get it On" by Marvin Gaye
Three-Word Review: Solid, Soulful Professional
Luke is an incredible vocalist. He can just straight up "sang," and he completely commits to everything he does. The problem that I have had with him in the past was that he tends to overcommit. Often, I think he does too much, and I really thought that I was going to get more of the same from this song.
As Adam said, there was a distinct potential that this performance could have ended up in "Karaoketown," but Luke delivered a fully realized, unique version that took one of the most classic melodies in soul music and made it seem new and contemporary.
I didn't much care for his histrionics at the end cutting off the band, but that's who Luke is. You have to suffer through his dramatics to get his fantastic vocals.
Team Gwen
Anita Antoinette
Song: "All About That Bass" by Meghan Trainor
Three-Word Review: Better Than CMAs!
Last week Meghan Trainor and Blake's wife, Miranda Lambert, helped open the CMA Awards with this song; and I was completely and thoroughly underwhelmed; and I've been a Miranda fan since her days on NASHVILLE STAR.
However, Anita gave one of the most entertaining performances of this, or any song, I've seen in a really long time. Vocally, it was great, and I loved the "reggae-ification" of it, but Anita is just a bundle of fun she could have been off key the whole time, and I wouldn't have cared. I've never been to Jamaica (unless you count Queens), but she makes me just want to hang out on the island and make musical double-entendres.
Team Pharrell
DaNica Shirey
Song: "Help Me" by Joni Mitchell
Three-Word Review: What'd She Say?
DaNica has a ridiculous voice, and when she gets her nerves under control, she has great stage presence, but that performance left me more confused than anything else. For about a good 20 seconds of the song, I could have sworn that DaNica was just scatting because she couldn't remember the lyrics.
Obviously, none of the coaches mentioned her going up on the lyrics, but her complete lack of diction took me 100% out of the performance, and from then on out, none of her vocal gymnastics landed (pun intended) with me, because I was too distracted trying to figure out if she had just forgotten her words, or if she was struck by the dreaded Ariana Grande disease.
Team Pharrell
Sugar Joans
Song: "I Say A Little Prayer" by Aretha Franklin (also from the recent revival of PROMISES, PROMISES)
Three-Word Review: Two-Thirds Perfect
I was so completely on board with everything Sugar was doing for the first 2/3 of the song. As you can see above, she was one of my favorites on Team Pharrell, and for the first 60 seconds of the song, I loved how she completely lived in that song and made every note count; in fact I liked it better than Kristin Chenoweth's version. But when she started just picking random words off the lyric sheet to riff with, my fingers intuitively put a screeching halt on naming her the best of the night (which she still might be).
I never completely enjoy a performance that I feel is overly "show-offy". I might appreciate the skill and artistry that goes into it, as I do with Sugar, but completely using the last third of her time to demonstrate her ridiculous vocal machinations lowered my appreciation for what she did. That being typed, I guarantee that I am going to remember this performance, which can't be said for many others the last two nights.
On a completely topic, I loved the optics of having the back-up sings next to Sugar and grooving in unison; it looked so natural as a part of this song.
Team Gwen
Ricky Manning
Song: "Lay Me Down" by Sam Smith
Three-Word Review: No More Falsetto
The only thing that didn't make this performance a complete train-wreck was a beautifully belted note a little more than halfway through. Other than that, there were far more notes off pitch than on; and let's not get started on those notes that, I think, were supposed to be falsetto.
Ricky has really great tone, but to borrow a term from another reality show, this was "a hot mess."
Team Gwen
Taylor John Williams
Song: "Stuck in the Middle with You" by Stealers Wheel
Three-Word Review: A Terrible Miscalculation
I really appreciated the artistry that Taylor showed with his rearrangement of this song, but beyond that, it did little for me. In my mind, this would have been a great song to play in the background of a dive bar scene in a movie, but it is never going to be the center of a scene. It was cool, it was smooth, it was bluesy, but, more than anything, it was boring. That is one of my favorite songs, but this version just kind of made me want to take a nap.
My Rankings of Tonight's Performances:
Team Gwen Order
1) Anita Antoinette
2) Bryana Salaz
3) Taylor John Williams
4) Ryan Sill
5) Ricky Manning
Team Pharrell Order
1) Sugar Joans
2) Elyjuh René
3) Luke Wade
4) Jean Kelley
5) DaNica Shirey
So, what did you think? Do you agree on my rankings? Who was I wrong about? Please share your thoughts in the comments below, or on Twitter @BWWMatt. Also, don't forget to follow @BWWTVWorld on Twitter and Like us on Facebook for all of the latest TV news, reviews, and recaps.
Photo Credit: Trae Patton | NBC
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