NBC’s ‘The Voice’ review: Cassadee Pope, Terry McDermott fight to be in finale

“The Voice” was only an hour on Monday night, but we for some foolish reason were hoping that the show would find a way to give us more than one performance from each member of the final four. However, this was not to be. In addition to that, the show also pulled another surprise on us straight out of the gate in announcing that there would be three people in the finale, and not two as originally speculated. This is great news for all of the remaining contestants, and for us it does give us more potential winners (which is a great thing to prevent there from being two finalists who aren’t necessarily the best).

Sadly, we wish that the mentors and the producers had come up with better song choices for three out of the four singers who performed this week; Terry is really the only one who had the opportunity to show off something new, and even this was a little bit of a stretch.

Trevin Hunte – Ugh. This is the final four, and you pick the sniveling “Wind Beneath My Wings” as your song choice? As much as liked Trevin early on this season, it’s sad to think at this point that the man who has performed every big ballad in the Book of “Produce a Moment” Ballads has outlasted Amanda Brown. There were some bad notes throughout this, and we just hope that America is not fooled by emotion when it comes to voting for who is actually the best singer.

Nicholas David – We’ve loved Nicholas almost all season long, but even this song in “You Are So Beautiful” felt boring and cliche. Was there something wrong with him this week? It almost like either he was sick, or he really didn’t want to pick this song and Cee Lo Green / the producers forced him to. This is possible, since Nicholas has not really been a fan of the ballad unless he can jazz it up with some funky backing beats.

Cassadee Pope – Another ballad … yawn. The song choices this week are almost insulting to America, as they suggest that we only want to sit and listen to a night of slow songs. Trust us: we’re smart enough to vote for a strong uptempo piece! This is not so much a critique of Cassadee, though, who has blossomed into a stellar singer over the course of this season. She only had one little flat note in this whole “Stupid Boy” performance, and some of her high notes at the end here were really something special. If she is not in the final three with this countrified performance courtesy of Blake, then there is something terrible wrong with the world.

Terry McDermott – Would Terry do a ballad? Drum roll please … Yes! The good news is that he and Blake picked a great one in the Beatles’ “Let It Be.” It was the best song choice out of any of the top four, and he proved with “Maybe I’m Amazed” that he can do a great job with songs that are in some way associated with the Fab Four. (Yes, we know the latter song was after the band broke up.)

Who was your favorite from “The Voice” Monday night? Be sure to vote in our poll below, and you can see where we had ranked the contestants going into this show over at the link here.

Photo: NBC