Music Monday: The Voice

via

Do you guys watch The Voice on NBC?  (If you do, and you still haven't seen last week's finale....there's a SPOILER later in this post!)

Season 5 just ended, and I'm pretty happy with the winner this year.  First of all, it's important to note that we all have different tastes in music.  A singer that one person loves, someone else might think is the worst singer on the planet.  Which is probably why watching shows like this can be excruciating. 

If you haven't seen The Voice, I can tell you that it's 100x better than American Idol.  Here's a few reasons why:

• Having gone to auditions for both of these shows, let me tell you a little how it works.  For American Idol, people ages 15-29 go to a stadium somewhere during the summer and sing for producers.  If you make it through that first round, you keep singing for producers until they have it narrowed down.  THEN, you come back in the fall to sing for the celebrity judges.  In other words, they PURPOSELY allow those people through to stun the judges and get TV ratings.
• The Voice is seeking out truly talented people.  Again,  people ages 15-??? travel to a designated city near you and sing for producers.  If you make it through that round, you have to come back in a few days to sing with a band on a stage for more producers.  After these rounds, you may get to go to LA to the blind auditions in which the celebrity coaches do not see you at first.  Their chairs face away from the performing artists, and if they like your voice, they push a button and their chair will turn around.
• As you can see from the above reason, The Voice does not have a cap on the age of their auditioning contestants.  I like that "older" people still have a shot.
• The Voice has coaches as opposed to judges.  The coaches actually work with the contestants to give them advice and guidance.  They give the contestants (both on their team and not) positive, encouraging, and constructive feedback.  American Idol often has it's judges giving confusing and unhelpful advice.  (I can't even remember how many times judges would tell a contestant to do something and then criticize them for doing it the next week....)

Now, back to my original reason for writing. 

I was very close to giving up on The Voice after this season.  (P.S.  I stopped watching American Idol when they added Nicki Minaj as a judge.)  Here was the final three:

via
 Jacquie Lee (Team Christina), Will Champlin & Tessanne Chin (Team Adam)

Jacquie was "the youngest artist in the competition" at 16 as Carson Daly felt the need to remind us almost every week.  (He finally stopped closer to the end of the competition, thank goodness, it was getting on my nerves.)  She has an amazing voice, don't get me wrong, but I seriously would've stopped if another teenager won this competition.  If I wanted to watch teenagers win singing competitions, I would still be watching American Idol.

Maybe I'm jealous.  Maybe I'm just old.  But I honestly don't care to buy music by 16-year-olds.  Last year's winner turned 17 during the show.  Even though she was also good, a country artist, and on Team Blake, I just couldn't be ok with her as the winner.  There were many more talented artists last season who lost in the finals or were eliminated WAY too soon.  So I was totally behind Will and Tessanne to win this season.  (And it doesn't hurt that they were on team Adam....)

via
I'll give you a moment....

...........

...........

Good?

Anyway, I literally cried when Tessanne Chin was announced as the winner!

Here's her blind audition:


This is one of her performances for the finale competition show:  

Amazing.  This is an artist whose music I will purchase.  Maybe it's because at 28 years, she's "old".  :-p  :)  Either way, she was the clear winner in my book!

 

Do you have any thoughts on The Voice this season?  Any of your favorites go early?