NBC’s ‘The Voice’ review: Meghan Linsey, Paul Pfau, Cody Wickline, Sarah Potenza battle it out

 Tonight, “The Voice” continued its battle rounds with a series of exciting showdowns … at least in terms of the vocal power of the performance. The funny thing about all of this still is that you have approximately 18 minutes of real performances jammed into two hours. Yep, we still don’t understand why this stage of the competition needs to be so long. The only positive is that we do get to know some of the singers better in the process.

If you missed the introduction to the battles on the show last night, here’s a quick reminder to head over to the link here to check it out. There were only a tiny handful during that show.

Anthony Reilly d. Travis Ewing, “Get Ready” (Team Pharrell) – A fun battle to start the show. Both are really good performers, and Pharrell gave them a song with at least a few fun vocal twists and turns in it. Our major criticism right now is pretty simple: We wish the show would try harder with the edit here. The steals almost always come with the first and last battle of the night, and Blake stole Travis.

Sonic d. Ameera Delandro, “Masterpiece” (Team Christina) – Was Christina even watching this past season? She should have known that this song is a Chris Jamison and Jessie J jam! This just couldn’t compare. We didn’t think that either one of them was necessarily spectacular, but Christina did make the right choice in opting to give Sonic the nod.

Sarah Potenza d. Hannah Kirby, “Gimme Shelter” (Team Blake) – This was an interesting battle. Sarah was one of the first contestants to try out, while Blake was one of the last. She didn’t really get the chance to choose a coach then, but she did tonight after Sarah won and multiple coaches pressed that “steal” button. Ultimately, she went with Pharrell as her coach.

Blaze Johnson d. Michael Leier, “Rude” (Team Adam) – This was the letdown of the night, given that we really liked both of these guys in the audition round. Therefore, we really hoped that we’d see them rise up and do something just as great here. It didn’t happen. Blaze moves forward and Michael doesn’t, and we’re honestly not shocked at all that the results were ultimately this way.

Cody Wickline d. Matt Snook, “How Country Feels” (Team Blake) – This almost is a foregone conclusion battle. We barely even remembered Matt on the show, while Cody received relentless praise in the blind auditions as one of the best male vocalists in his genre. He could go very far in this competition, given his talent and the coach that he has.

Paul Pfau d. Meghan Linsey (Team Pharrell) – Was this a major upset? Given Meghan’s history performing, we’d say so … not that it really matters much. We actually feel almost like she’s better off on Team Blake now, given that they already have a built-in rapport and will know what to do the rest of the way.

What did you think about these battles? Share in the comments, and head over here to get some other news worth singing over via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: NBC.)