‘Rising Star’ episode 3 review: Gabrielle Nicole, Morgan Higgins, Audrey Kate Geiger advance

Three weeks into “Rising Star,” we do still wonder how much of America is actually still watching. This show is a bit of a mess. There are good performances in here, but boy, were there some duds in here. There were at least a few performances that we hope someone will come and wash away from our memory permanently.

Tonight, we’re going to start by focusing on the ones that managed to actually “raise the wall” before going to the bad ones. That way, you have something to get excited about first!

Advancing acts

Dana Williams, “Stay” – Why are so many people doing this song right now? For an advancing act, Dana has a decent tone. She’s just not that special, and we therefore envision her getting lost in the shuffle later on.

Audrey Kate Geiger, “Stay With Me” – The word “Stay” is pretty darn popular with songs these days, no? Audrey was not necessarily a fantastic singer so much as she was an interesting singer. The uniqueness of her voice, which has that haunting / quirky feel, is probably what kept her around here in the long run.

Gabrielle Nicole, “My Man” – The best singer on “Rising Star” to date, and it is honestly not even close. How did she not get on a better singing show at some point? At least she can take the consolation prize of being a frontrunner to win here.

Karen Hornsby, “To Love You More” – How did she advance? Maybe it was her emotional story, because there wasn’t a whole lot that she brought to the table here vocally. A lot of missed notes, even if her energy was high.

Morgan Higgins, “Alone” – She is very in the vein of Kristin Chenoweth or Lea Michele, but has some work to do if she wants to make it further in the competition. There was one big note that fell apart, and there wasn’t a whole lot of artistry. Still, there is serious potential here, and that is not a bad way to end the show.

Not Advancing

Unselfish – The group curse continues with this show. There was actually some potential here, but it felt like they got distracted by the super-loud backing track to the point where they started to lose all sense of the harmonies.

Cliff Cody – Hey, it’s a generic country singer who didn’t get through! We feel almost bad writing this review like that, given that Cliff seems to be a pretty nice guy who loves doing music. He’s just not a very good performer that will get people buying tickets.

OhMG – We assume this stands for “OMG what are they doing.” Another disappointing group that didn’t bring anything to the table. The girl was better than the guy, but neither are winning a Grammy anytime in the near future.

TX3 – Screw the group curse. These guys were just bad, and we have no idea how they got on the show in the first place. We feel like Kesha gave them a thumbs-up at the end just so that they wouldn’t finish with a score of around 10%.

Skye Griffin – The biggest thing that Skye was a victim of was trying a million times harder than she really needed to. There were a ton of bum notes in here, but the outfit and the voice even screamed “I really want to be Rihanna.” Also, desperate dance moves. Also, she didn’t really even look like she wanted to finish the song.

Who was your favorite on this episode? Let us know in the comments, and head over here to get some other song-worthy updates via our CarterMatt Newsletter.

Photo: ABC