NBC’s ‘The Voice’ live review: Billy Gilman, Aaron Gibson, Josh Gallagher, top 11 perform
Tonight, the top 11 show on “The Voice” is officially here! We’ve got new and exciting song choices, plus of course more pressure since we’re at the point in the competition where almost every moment and performance matters in some enormous way.
We’re going to be doing the same thing this week that we do every week around this time, and that is giving you our take LIVE on all of the performances. Be sure to refresh the page around the night! At the end of the night, we’ll rank everyone in order from worst to best.
11. Josh Gallagher, “Drunk on Your Love” – Josh seems like a pretty cool dude and a pretty good singer. Yet, at the same time it does feel a little bit as though he’s not branching out enough with some of his performances. There’s nothing new or interesting about them, and the arrangements are straightforward. This was fine, albeit a tad boring.
10. Christian Cuevas, “Rosanna” – Credit to Christian for bringing out a song that we haven’t heard in a long time for this show! Yet, at the same time there wasn’t really anything about this vocally that made us excited or inspired to vote for him.
9. Ali Caldwell, “9 to 5” – This was an unexpected song choice from Miley Cyrus for her, but we think that it worked. One of the main reasons why is because Ali just has a natural tendency to make songs her own without even trying too hard at it. In lesser hands, this could feel like karaoke.
8. Austin Allsup, “Turn the Page” – Probably our favorite performance of Austin’s so far this season just because it felt a little bit different, and it opened things up in terms of possibilities for what he could be doing down the road.
7. Darby Walker, “You Don’t Own Me” – Darby knows how to WORK a stage, and she especially did that after ditching that random technicolor dreamcoat midway through the song. She didn’t hit every note of the song, but there is something about her uniqueness that makes us intrigued every time she sings. We just think she’ll continue to be polarizing as we move forward.
6. Billy Gilman, “All I Ask” – This was a very good vocal from Billy, but was it almost too predictable for him? After he did a song last week with a lot of big notes to it, we’d like for him to take on something now that is a little more subdued and allows for some other dimensions in his voice to rise to the surface.
5. Sundance Head, “No One” – Going into the show, we were somewhat skeptical regarding Sundance doing an Alicia Keys song. Yet, this was surprisingly lovely and emotional. He connected to the lyrics of the song, and it felt almost like a completely different experience from the hit the coach produced so many years ago.
4. Brendan Fletcher, “The River” – It didn’t really sound very different at all from the Bruce Springsteen original, but kudos to Brendan for what we feel was a pretty tremendous job of capturing the soul and the power of that version of the song.
3. Courtney Harrell, “What I Do for Love” – What a great song choice! “A Chorus Line” isn’t really within Blake’s wheelhouse as a coach, but we like that he is allowing Courtney’s own skill set as a performer to shine! As a songwriter, she knows what sort of songs will work for her.
2. We McDonald, “Drunk on Your Love” – A really strong performance from We to close off the show, just in case the producers weren’t already clear that they consider her to be a potential favorite to win this whole competition. She does have the vocal jobs and the performance ability to pull that off.
1. Aaron Gibson, “Hurt” – This is why Aaron deserves to be in this competition! He’s an absolutely magical singer when he gets the right song in front of him, and listening to this version of the Johnny Cash / Nine Inch Nails hit provided us with a moving and powerful vocal experience. One of our favorite performances of the season so far.
If you do want to get some other news when it comes to “The Voice,” be sure to head over to the link here right now! (Photo: NBC.)