NBC’s ‘The Voice’ review: Matthew Schuler, Cole Vosbury, and Kat Robichaud rule top 10 show

There are so many great things we can say about “The Voice” this season, beginning with just that you have artists that really appear seasoned and ready to perform. There are no groups thrown around at the last second just to make things “crazy.” These people are all ready to hit the recording studio, even if only a few of them have real chances on the radio.

As we’ve been doing lately, the contestants are ranked here in order of our personal least-favorites, to the ones who just came out on the stage and completely owned it.

10. Ray Boudreaux, “You Are the Best Thing” – There was nothing really inspired in this song choice. Ray sang it pretty well, but there wasn’t exactly much here to actually … sing. It was straight down the middle vocally, and just not that exciting. This is really an indictment on how good this season is in that you have to be more than good every week to be ranked near the top. Ray would be a star right now on “The X Factor.”

9. Caroline Pennell, “Leaving On a Jet Plane” – While Cee Lo Green was sitting in his chair looking like he was wearing a hoodie / trash bag combo, Caroline came out with a questionable song choice from John Denver of all people. Yep, nothing gets modern audiences more excited than John Denver! We love Caroline, and she sang this well, but it was boring. We lost attention about halfway through, and we know that she can do better than this. Being boring is one of the worst things that you can do, since even a trainwreck holds the interest of voters.

8. Austin Jenckes, “Your Life”  – Team Blake’s first performer on the night wanted to try and give him something a little bit different, which is a nice recognition from the coach that this is a season where going outside of your traditional lane could be a good thing … but we’re still surprised that the only country singer in the competition is not going straight-laced country. It was far and away better than anything we’ve seen from him thus far … but the challenge comes here in being remembered, since he was the first person to perform.

7. James Wolpert, “Without You” – This is a powerful song with big, big notes, and a weird choice for James. But, we kind of liked it! James feels almost like a love child of Phillip Phillips and Brandon Flowers. His voice here was great, but we worry that the lack of a melody with this song is going to get him in trouble with the iTunes crowd.

6. Jacquie Lee, “Clarity” – This is one that we’re still trying to figure out. In some ways, it was an awesome vocal of a song that we like, and an acoustic version that probably only diehard Zedd fans are familiar with. That in itself should make this a big seller on iTunes. But we feel like she started the song a little under the pitch, and there were also some weird phrasing things that took us somewhat out of the incredible melody of this song. It’s probably the weakest performance that she’s done on the live shows … but she also has a much higher standard than almost everyone else.

5. Will Champlin, “Love Me Again” – A risky move for Will to perform a song that is not familiar to Americans, but then again, Cole Vosbury actually helped to propel Passenger’s “Let Her Go” to some success earlier this season. The difference here is probably that Cole’s song had a little bit of a catchier melody behind it. This one could be a hard sell, but we don’t dispute at all that he killed it vocally. We also really dug that red blazer / Movember beard look that he had going on.

4. Tessanne Chin, “If I Was Your Woman” – Tessanne has been the big enigma of the season so far in that she has sung wonderfully, but for whatever reason, we haven’t really found ourselves attached to her. We still felt that a little bit tonight, but you still did get the feeling that you were transplanted to another world with her voice. Next week, she really needs to work on maybe shaking things up with a surprising new arrangement of a song. Originality in that field is for now her biggest weakness.

3. Cole Vosbury, “To Be With You” – Never in a million years did we ever imagine that Cole was going to become a heartthrob on this show. No offense to the guy, but the epic beard! But he’s managed to win a ton of the ladies over with these soulful covers the past few weeks. We don’t know if it was as good as “Adorn” last week, but we loved the soulfulness and the simplicity of it.

2. Kat Robichaud, “We Belong” – We actually feel like we undervalued Kat’s performance last week, but she did herself no favors by performing something that nobody had really heard of, and something that was not that voter-friendly on iTunes. This was everything you could have wanted: A great vocal mixed with great staging, a mentor in Cee Lo who does understand that performances need to come alive, and a song that should do well on iTunes. Dare we say it that Kat may not be in danger this week? Fingers crossed.

1. Matthew Schuler, “Beneath Your Beautiful” – The man is just boss in the world of singing. This song had everything that you could want: A little originality, a great melody, and Matthew’s killer voice. This guy, and Christina Aguilera, are starting to surface as the favorites to win this whole competition, and following him getting to #1 on iTunes at one point during the process last week, it’s clear that the audience loves him just as much. Episode Grade: A-.

Who was your favorite among “The Voice” top 10 tonight? Share your thoughts in our poll below! Meanwhile, click here if you want to see where we ranked all of the performers leading up to this show.

Photo: NBC