What an absolute disaster, in every sense.
Last night, betting markets were suspended as the results of the pre-recorded Sunday show were inevitably leaked online. Twitter was particularly busy with people sharing the news of Samuel and Sophie’s exits. I’ve had to endure the last 24 hours with an egg dangling above my face like the sword of Damocles, waiting to drop and confirm that the girl whom I championed without reservation fell at the first live hurdle. Oh deary me, how did I get it so wrong?
I wasn’t entirely alone in my feelings about Sophie. Daniel reckoned she had ‘legs in the competition’ but eurovicious thought her vocal was ‘appaling’ and R thought she was ‘flat’ (although sympathised with her challenge). Maybe I need to get my ears tested because I felt that Sophie was one of the strongest vocalists in the competition with an incredibly impressive range (the vocal in Titanium is well-known for being difficult) and the “ta-ta-titanium” moment was a split second of pop genius. However, the public sided with the majority of our commenters who thought that Sophie was either bad or mediocre and so she went home. By the look on her face, I think she’d side with me on the subject of her vocal ranking within the pack.
After a poor placement and song choice, I wasn’t surprised to see Joelle in the bottom two of Team Will, I had just expected to see her joined by either Tyler or Frances, especially when the latter struggled to hit her notes (apologies in advance to eurovicious – I’m saying that from a purely technical perspective). Anyway, at the risk of getting any more egg on my face, I’m not backing down on my position that Frances and Tyler are still non-starters for the win. After the treatment Joelle received in yesterday’s show, it seems fair to say that Jaz is still a good head and shoulders above the rest of Team Will.
For Team Tom, the exit of Samuel “ran out of hairgel so used” Buttery was hardly a big shock but then nobody other than The Almighty Ruth, pimp-recipient extraordinaire seemed safe for Team Tom. I have to say that I am surprised, more pleasantly than unpleasantly, that Adam made it through. I didn’t imagine there would be that many rockers picking up the phone but then again The Foo Fighters are the kind of band whose appeal branches well into the teen market.
So Ruth and Jaz are the clear favourites from their respective teams. For a while, I’ve been sceptical about hailing our heroes this early in the process but then, as commenter Ronnie pointed out, The Voice won’t run on as long as X Factor and perhaps we are far enough along for producers to rally support for their desired winners. After all, there’s only one more week of The Voice before the teams are once again whittled down by half.
The lack of transparency afforded to us by the Beeb is undeniable frustrating for punters. Without knowing how the format will play out, we can’t very well speculate about its outcomes. Are we safe to assume that after next week, there will be no more pre-recorded shows? Or will we find ourselves facing a ‘suspended’ screen on Betfair each time the acts perform for us? I’m going to have another bash at harassing the BBC press office in the mean time.
As well as the voting results, tonight also gave us a cheesy group performance from teams Danny and Jessie. There isn’t a great deal to be gleaned from this but at least the performers appeared to be live. It might we worth noting that Hannah Berney had been styled a bit younger than previously, Aleks managed to get his notes out at a reasonable volume and Max was still far too stagey. David continued to appear like he will impress, Vince and Becky were allocated generous segments and Cassius looked a bit sad and lonely.
So what do you guys think? Why didn’t the Irish get behind Sophie? Was it really her vocal? Bad song choice? Seemed too safe? Or just not as special a contestant as I had her pegged for?
No need to apologise for disagreeing with me Dug – it’s what we’re here to do! 😉
Why didn’t the Irish get behind Sophie? Because they have ears. Having rewatched her performance, the problem was the tone and weakness of her voice – there were no tuning issues (she hit the notes) and she gave it her own interpretation. But she was too quiet and reedy, it didn’t work visually, and the timbre of her voice just seemed off.
Sam’s exit was an unfortunate surprise to me given the quality and range of his voice and his great performance skills. Adam is likely getting through based on looks, on dads voting, and on the fact that I suspect the show’s viewership is older, more middle-class and (I’m gonna say it) more southern than The X Factor.
With all this talk of eggs in faces and slinging poo, I think we’re gonna need a cleanup in here pretty soon…
Unfortunately, that’s what happens when I get invited to the party, everything gets coated in eggs and poo.
Granted Sophie didn’t give the perfect vocal but I would like to have seen most of the other contestants from teams Will and Tom attempting to tackle her song choice. I suppose the fact that she had a big voice but repeatedly sang very difficult uptempo numbers should have been an indicator that producers didn’t have much interest in her. Throw ‘ordinary people’ at her and it might have been a different story.
Anyway, there’s no use crying over spilt milk and she’s on the scrapheap now, another wannabe in the “this isn’t the last you’ve seen of me” club (most of whom have never been seen again). I think that the main lesson we can take from the first elimination is that producers are happy to stick with their guns in terms of who they liked from the outset. I imagine this could spell positive treatment next week for Vince, Max and Becky.
I was also wrong about Sophie based on a hunch they want to keep her. I prefer rotten tomatoes 🙂
It was a profitable week for me. I went fairly big (probably bigger than I should have on a brand new show) on betting Samuel and M&S to be eliminated on Team Tom. Samuel had longer odds, so I was delighted to hear he was sent home. Team Will I left completely alone as I didn’t have a clue. I was surprised as well to hear that Sophie left – I thought the fact they had given her such a popular and current song was a sign they wanted to keep her.
The Voice are really in danger of becoming even more sledgehammer-unsubtle than an XF singoff, aren’t they? At this rate they may as well introduce the next-but-one show with “Tonight! The remaining members of Teams Will and Tom compete to see who gets to do one more pointless performance in the semi-final before Jaz and Ruth get to the final!”
Ronnie makes a great point on the last thread about this being a sprint in comparison to XF’s marathon. We’re used to having early pimpees fall by the wayside in XF because it’s so hard to sustain momentum for ten weeks. But with The Voice, the alternating nature of the lives means the semi-final will be only the third live show for each act. And there might have been only one pimp slot per team – Ruth’s had one, what’s the betting Jaz gets it in the next show featuring these two teams?
Good luck with harrassing the press office, Dug. Really want to know if they’re going to have the balls to not publish any figures for the semi-final’s “combination of public vote and coach’s scoring” – it would be pretty farcical if we don’t get to see if the coach has overruled the public. Looking at the US, they published percentages –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Voice_(U.S._season_1)#Episode_10:_Live_Rounds.2C_Week_3_-_Semi-finals_Results
– two judges wimped out of preferring one act over the other, one went with the public, the other made a token 51-49 gesture against an overwhelming 25-75 public split.
These recorded results shows are really irritating too, aren’t they? In retrospect it’s obviously going to leak on Twitter, and it means there’s no scope for leisurely Sunday debate on Sofabet with the markets open. Still, sadly I don’t suppose we can expect them to hire a studio on Sunday just for our benefit.
Having belatedly caught up on battle rounds, I felt that they really need to be live, too (and preferably with pairings decided by drawing names out of a hat). For me there was no sense of tension – it seemed obvious that they’d simply chosen beforehand which five they wanted, decided on the pairings accordingly, and nothing in the performance was going to change that. At least with live television there is always some element of uncertainty.
Hilarious read as ever, btw – I especially enjoy the image of the Egg of Damocles forever hovering over the pundit’s face.
Maybe I’m being naive but I didn’t see the song choices for the bottom 2 in each team equating to sabotage. Joelle’s song suited her voice, but it’s just not a well known in the UK. She also suffered from Tyler giving a suprisingly decent performance. I also thought Titanium was a good pick for Sophie, but she seemed to be playing it safe vocally. She needed to really go for it. To a public used to wannabe Whitneys and Mariahs, it’s better to come across as pitchy and shouty than flat. It’s a shame the voting figures will not be released at the end, as it would have been interesting to see the share of the votes for members from both teams together.
Sabotage I think not, but even failing to give that extra helping hand afforded to the pimpettes puts players at a disadvantage. Joelle’s song just wasn’t one that people would know well and Sophie’s arrangement was a bit Bacardi Breezer. I thought that Titanium, as a popular and current song, would be a boost but then as a performance it was more ‘whoop’ than endearing.
Really surprised that Sophie has gone. I thought she gave one of the better performances of the night, and I thought she was bound to get a certain amount of the Ulster vote, but maybe that myth has gone now about the Irish. Quite surprised really that Frances got more votes than Sophie.
I think Frances is getting votes because of how she was portrayed in the battle rounds. Many people (and I’m ashamed to admit myself included) felt very sympathetic and warm towards her after it looked like her competitor was receiving preferential treatment from Will.I.Am during the VT (that plus her sad little face when waiting for his decision that seemed to suggest she’d given up at that point).
I think she’ll ride off of that moment for the coming weeks and make it to at least 3rd place in Will’s team.
Well I just watched nearly all of the VTs, performances and comments again and being honest I think Sophie went before Joelle simply because Sophie/Frances are too similar and they/Will probably realised there is just room for 1 of them in the competition. Being honest I thought Sophie was better overall and, but the public didn’t and yeah I think Frances could get 2nd or 3rd in Will’s group now. I think a semi-final is on the cards for her actually as she obviously got the public vote more than Sophie did.
What I will say though is that it is much tougher than XF. The negative comments/VTs are much fewer though on Live Show 1 I suppose that is a given, so really the way The Voice can get its winner is by the Over-pimping which is the treatment Ruth and Jaz have got so far. I wonder who will get the over-pimping next week, if its anything to go by then its Becky or David. I guess at this moment the last 4 could almost be predicted because it runs for a such a shorter time than the XF, but we will see how this show goes. I suppose the first series should always be a non betting event really to get to used to the patterns and how it works.