NBC’s ‘The Voice’ top 8 rankings: Matthew Schuler, Cole Vosbury, James Wolpert fight for #1

Is this still one of the best seasons of “The Voice” ever? While you could argue that last week’s episode lacked some excitement, we would say so. This show has eight great artists left, and there are legitimately no duds or plants among them designed to just be weird or entertaining. This is probably what we like about the show so much these days: It’s professional, there’s a  wide catalog of songs available, and you want to root for all of the people left.

We’re ranking this show based on all tangible evidence out there, including performance quality, iTunes sales, and the history of the coach in the competition. Be sure to stick around at the bottom to vote for your favorite!

8. Will Champlin (Team Adam, last week: 5) – It’s pretty rare that a singer is ranked last due to what is ultimately no fault of there own, but Will is in that sort of prime position right now where he is likely to be forgotten about by the voters. There’s little way that we see half of the top six all being from Team Adam Levine, especially when we at this point don’t actually see any of them winning this competition.

7. Tessanne Chin (Team Adam, 7) – This feels more just like an issue in mismanagement by Adam than in does Tessanne’s killer voice. She’s just not being given songs that really will set the social media / iTunes world on fire. She’s yet to have that big breakout moment, and you need that to get int he finals. She’s easily capable of it, which is why we’d have a hard time ever ranking her this low if we were talking about best vocalists.

6.Caroline Pennell (Team Cee Lo, 2) – This one is as big of a shocker as any this season. How did Caroline fall to the bottom 2? We blame it almost entirely on her wanting to sing “Leaving On a Jet Plane.” She did a nice job with it, but it’s boring and nobody under the age of 50 wants to vote for something with a John Denver connection to it. She has to become current and become current fast this week if she wants to survive.

5. Ray Boudreaux (Team Blake, 10) – We don’t really get the Ray fandom right now, but it’s obviously there. We found his last performance to be very boring, but it sold well online and he wasn’t in danger of leaving. Maybe this is the Blake Shelton effect again rearing its head here; if that’s the case, it’s easy to imagine that he makes his way into the top 6 at least.

4. Jacquie Lee (Team Christina, 3) – The iTunes figures for Jacquie clearly show that she is not bulletproof. “Clarity” was her worst vocal of the live rounds, and it also didn’t perform very well on iTunes despite being a pretty modern song. Therefore, she was saved more to her fan base, which may not be there for her as much in the top six if she has another stumble. We hope she’s around for the finale, but we’re a little more nervous than we were a week ago.

3. James Wolpert (Team Adam, 6) – What makes James this competition’s ultimately wild card is that you never really know what you’re going to get from him. He’s probably one of the worst vocalists left when it comes to his pitch, but he has so much passion and grit in his tone that it almost offsets it. He’s also been up and down online, but for the time being, we feel more confident with him than any other one of Adam Levine’s singers.

2. Cole Vosbury (Team Blake, 2) – He’s a model of consistently, sells well online, and has the Blake effect pushing him forward. We wonder if he would be performing this well had Cee Lo originally kept him on his team rather than picking Jonny Gray. Cole’s still probably the underdog when it comes to winning, but he’s shown the past few weeks that he’s got the inside track on making it to finale night.

1. Matthew Schuler (Team Christina, 1) – We understand some of the criticism that the show may be favoring him, given that he’s performed on average much later in the show than any other contestant as of late. But, his performances have honestly been the best week in and week out, and he’s the only artist to hit #1 this season on iTunes. We challenge you right now to make a case as to why anyone else would be at the top, even if Christina’s acts have not historically done as well.

Photo: NBC