NBC’s ‘The Voice’ review: Did Dani Moz, Deja Hall dominate Team Shakira?
Given that we have two separate teams to go through on “The Voice,” we’re going to be doing our reviews a little differently tonight and dividing them up. This review is all about the members of Team Shakira. Meanwhile, we’ll have the second half of it a little later on in the evening. (Click on the hyperlink for the show’s name above; that will bring it to you when it’s online.)
Shakria has a solid team of people who are good singers, but there is one common thread running through most of them: They lack that extra pizzazz that would make any of these people true stars. That’s why we could see Shakira yet again having trouble once the actual live playoffs on the show begin.
5. Tess Boyer, “Human” – A serviceable performance, but also one that was for the most part exceedingly dull. She just went out on stage, hit a number of pretty-good notes (but nothing original), and it was done. If you are going to do a ballad on “The Voice,” you either need to have an amazing connection to the song, or hit notes that are so crazy that we don’t care.
4. Patrick Thomson, “Trouble” – Was this performance … troublesome? Not really. Its biggest flaw was, like Tess, not really doing anything to reinvent the wheel. We just don’t understand how if you’ve gone through all of this trouble to be on a show and make it to the live rounds, why you would be okay to suddenly going out and perform what is an oversaturated song on the reality TV market.
3. Kristen Merlin, “2 Black Cadillacs” – A great song choice that hasn’t been covered too much on singing shows. Solid advice from Shakira, and onstage she WORKED it. She just needs to learn to enunciate more, since she’s hitting the noted that could make this even more electric.
2. Deja Hall, “Battlefield” – The conspiracy theorist in us felt from the beginning of Deja’s performance that “The Voice” would be very happy if she makes it far. She’s still a teenager, and that means chances to develop into a pop star who could get radio play. You see the inexperience in her stage presence, and while her voice has a good deal of clarity to it, she needed to probably have this song maybe a couple of steps higher to really show off her tone.
1. Dani Moz, “The Edge of Glory” – The only artist on Team Shakira right now that we could see getting into the finale if the level of performance stays the same. There was artistry in this take on the Lady Gaga hit, very good notes, and we genuinely believed what she was singing. Way to go, Dani; you easily secured yourself a place in the next round. Now we just wish the producers would give her the power to stymie the swaybots!
The result – Shakira sent home Patrick and Deja. We don’t necessarily love this, but there was a few minutes where we thought that she was going to eliminate Dani and we’d be losing our minds on here. Overall, we’ll at least celebrate that all of Shakira’s singers were good, even if only one of them blew us out of the water. Grade: B-.
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Photo: NBC