NBC’s ‘The Voice’ rankings: We McDonald, Billy Gilman at the top; Ali Caldwell rises
This season of “The Voice” is probably the most interesting one of the past past couple of years. While we do think that there are some favorites, at the same time we don’t consider them to be anywhere near as overwhelming as the ones that we had the seasons that Sawyer Fredericks, Jordan Smith, and Alisan Porter won. While there were moments of doubt here and there with those seasons, we think for the majority of them the winner was pretty clear.
There are some big shakeups in the rankings in the rankings this week, and that’s brought on by us still getting to know who some of these singers are, how they perform, and what America thinks of them.
11. Aaron Gibson (last week: 6) – It was a little bit of a surprise to see Team Miley’s standout in need of the Save, and to be honest, we have to put some of the blame on his coach. Miley needs to think more in terms of what the audience will like for songs rather than what she personally enjoys. You can go obscure, but this recent performance was potentially too obscure for its own good.
10. Darby Walker (8) – Darby’s extremely talented, but she may be suffering somewhat from the same problem as Aaron in not being commercial enough. Also, her voice may just be a tad too different in that not everyone’s going to like it. We’re not sure what she can do to turn it around.
9. Christian Cuevas (9) – We do think that there’s a pretty good chance that Christian makes it to the top 9 or whatever the show goes to until we get the massive bloodletting that happens every year before the finale. The issue with him is that we don’t see that extra gear yet where he can really stand out as an artist.
8. Courtney Harrell (10) – For Courtney, she’s also the mirror image of Christian, except on Team Blake rather than Team Alicia. Given that we tend to find Blake the most popular of the coaches, we’re going to give her the slight edge.
7. Josh Gallagher (11) – Now, we’re moving forward to what is our Country Trio. We don’t necessarily think that any of them really killed it on iTunes this past week, but it almost doesn’t matter given that country artists do tend to really get a lot of support from Middle America and people who don’t often download their music.
6. Austin Allsup (4) – We say the same thing here about Austin, but we give him the slight edge over Josh mostly because of the connection he has with Blake. In terms of sensibility, we do think the two are rather similar and can take on much of the same sort of music.
5. Sundance Head (3) – Sundance has Blake, he already has fans thanks to “American Idol,” and we think that he’s potentially the most folksy of the three country singers. He’s the one you’re not going to forget about. Therefore, he’s worthy of this spot on the list.
4. Brendan Fletcher (7) – If you’re a singer-songwriter type on the show, the best thing that you can have is a voice that is distinctive from the crowd given that there are so many similar performers in a given season. Brendan has that, he’s done well on iTunes for two straight weeks, and we think that there is nowhere for him to go but up.
3. Ali Caldwell (6) – The one thing going against her is that she hasn’t been considered a favorite in the eyes of the editors. She’s a little more under-the-radar, but if she continues to perform like she did this past week (where she had in our mind the strongest vocal of the entire show), we see her going nowhere but up as we continue to move further and further along into the season.
2. We McDonald (2) – A really strong outing from We both in terms of her performance and on iTunes, where she was #1 among the “Voice” artists even if she missed out on the top 10 overall. We’s had a lot of screen time since the very start of the season, and this could be her biggest overall contributing factor to her momentum going into the live shows.
1. Billy Gilman (1) – As good as We and Ali have been, we do still consider the guy with the biggest pre-show following the one to beat, especially since he’s had two strong outings that include iTunes sales. We do think he’ll need to be a little more current than covering Queen’s “The Show Must Go On,” but if he can do that, he’ll be a lock for at least the finale.
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