NBC’s ‘The Voice’ review: Alisan Porter, Shalyah Fearing, and Adam Wakefield rock top 8 show
Tonight is clearly the most important “The Voice” performance show of the entire season. The remaining artists are vying for a spot in the big finale next week, but the twist here is that only half of them are going to end up making it. Four will be cut tomorrow by the wayside, and one of the finalists will get in thanks to the final #VoiceSave of the season.
If you’ve read these reviews before, you know the drill coming up. We’re going to be updating this article live as the show goes on, so refresh the page to get more of our insight into how everyone fares!
Shalyah Fearing, “And I Am Telling You I Am Not Going” from Dreamgirls – Here’s the challenge with Shalyah: To make us care about a song that’s been way overdone on the singing-show circuit. She really put a whole lot into this, and we give her a lot of credit for the effort. We just wish that someone who is so young got a chance to do something that is a little more fun than a huge ballad like this.
Paxton Ingram, “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)” by Meat Loaf – This song choice is an IMPOSING one. It’s interesting that this was the second song of the night (at least in terms of solos), given that they both have something in common: They were much bigger than they really needed to be. Why couldn’t Paxton have gone with something that wasn’t one of the biggest songs out there?
Laith Al-Saadi, “One and Only” by Adele – Did Laith do enough with this song? Laith genuinely feels like he gets better and better as the show goes on, and much of it comes from experience performing and twisting songs to make them feel like more of his own. He really does that here.
Alisan Porter, “Desperado” by The Eagles – Was this what Alisan needed to make the finale? It was a little bigger than it really needed to be at the end, but there’s no questioning the awesomeness of the strength of her voice. We’re surprised specifically that this is the first time this song has ever been done on the show.
Adam Wakefield, “I’m Sorry” by Blake Shelton – Did Adam put a spin on his own coach’s song? May we go ahead and say that this was better than the original version? Well, we will! Adam has been slowly building a resume to be the winner of this season, and we don’t think after this you can really deny that he is in a good spot.
Bryan Bautista, “Hurt” by Christina Aguilera – How was this for a “1+1” follow-up performance? It was certainly Bryan trying his best, but the band went into complete overdrive, and unfortunately seemed fine to leave him in the dust along the way.
Mary Sarah, “I Told You So” by Randy Travis / Carrie Underwood – How was Mary doing more classic country? We’re still not going to admit to be the biggest pure country fan, but now doubt she has brought it the past several weeks. We can easily see her in the final after this.
Hannah Huston, “When a Man Loves a Woman” by Percy Sledge – Did we love this vocal as much as we really wanted to? It’s definitely a worthy question. This was very nice, but at the same time, we’re still not sure it brings her into the finale. It at least makes things competitive.
As for the duets, they don’t really count as much to us as anything of substance … but Adam / Alisan was far and away the best one.
You can see where we ranked everyone going into this episode of “The Voice” by heading over to the link here! Also, sign up over here to score some other TV news on all we cover, sent right over to you via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: NBC.)