NBC’s ‘The Voice’ rankings: Adam Wakefield, Alisan Porter, Laith Al-Saadi currently lead top 10

We’re entering the home stretch of “The Voice” season 10, which does to a certain extent make it even stranger that there are still ten people competing for the title. We approve of NBC giving us a lot of time to get to know as many singers as possible (it can only help their careers after the fact), but we do wish we’d cut one of the middle rounds just so that we could have another week or two of live shows. It’d at least partially help to prevent the upcoming elimination-bloodletting from happening.

Enough of our suggested changes for the show; onto this week’s rankings! As always we’re basing these on performance quality, coach popularity, iTunes sales, edit, and voting history above all else.

10. Daniel Passino (Team Pharrell, last week: 9) – This is pretty much a cause-and-effect sort of placement. When you’re the only artist left who needed the #VoiceSave to make it this far, you’re going to be at the bottom of the rankings. Nothing else really matters.

9. Nick Hagelin (Team Christina, 8) – For Nick, this is mostly the result of us not getting to see any sort of breakout performance from him just yet. If you want to be taken seriously as a contender here, you need to either close out the show, or at least have a performance that charts high on iTunes.

8. Bryan Bautista (Team Christina, 7) – We’re not going to say that we’re disappointed with Bryan by any means, but we do feel like we haven’t seen any sort of breakout vocal performance from him so far, either. This is coming from a guy who had a really excellent Blind Audition, so that gives us a little bit of hope.

7. Paxton Ingram (Team Blake, 11) – Which Paxton is showing up this week? If he continues to sing gospel he’ll probably generate a lot more iTunes sales and stick around for a while. If nothing else, Blake is the master of steering people into commercially-viable lanes.

6. Shalyah Fearing (Team Adam, 6) – Shalyah’s voice is probably top 3 material for this season; the only reason she’s at #6 is because every person ahead of her has either a historical or tactical advantage based on everything we’ve seen so far.

5. Mary Sarah (Team Blake, 4) – For Mary, that advantage is more historical. If you’re a country singer on Team Blake, you’re probably going to get a ton of votes regardless of who you are, and she does happen to have a sound that many genre fans in particular are fond of.)

4. Hannah Huston (Team Pharrell, 3) –  While we do worry somewhat about her fan base since she doesn’t have too much of an upper hand in terms of a popular coach or genre for the show, we put her and Alisan Porter as the best pure singers this season. That has to count for something.

3. Laith Al-Saadi (Team Adam, 5) – On the strength of solid iTunes sales and appealing to a different demo than almost everyone else this season, we’re putting Laith firmly at #3. We’ve seen older contestants who perform classic rock (in this case, with a little Ed Sheeran mixed in) go far, even if they aren’t always threats to win.

2. Alisan Porter (Team Christina, 2) – Maybe this ranking will remain polarizing to some out there, but we stand by it mostly because A) Alisan’s not a country singer and B) she’s not on Team Blake. Voting history dictates that we’re probably in for an upset.

1. Adam Wakefield (Team Blake, 1) – Is it somewhat ironic that we’re putting the lowest-charting iTunes artist on Team Blake from this past week #1? Sure, but we’re considering that an anomaly since no one charted that high this past week and Paxton was doing a new genre. The truth is that Adam’s been incredibly consistent, and we think that the longer the show goes, the more his natural talent is going to appeal to the same sort of voters who helped Cassadee Pope and Craig Wayne Boyd win the title.

Who is your favorite of the remaining acts? Let us know in the attached poll, and head over here for some other news on “The Voice”! Also, sign up over here to secure some more TV news on all we cover, sent right over to you via our official CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: NBC.)