The End of the Voice and X Factor

As we sit here on the afternoon of the first day of the year we are in that wonderful respite from singing shows that we will all be enjoying until American Idol returns in two weeks.

We spent a good deal of time viewing these two shows this fall, my wife is big follower of the singing shows.

A final thought on the two shows from this past fall.

The Voice I believe has been the more popular of the two and for good reason. With the exception of Christina Aguilera all of the judges on this show are extremely likable. Blake Shelton wears his crown as the current King of Country Music well and Adam Levine is the most polite man with tattoos you will ever meet. The contestants on this show were consistently good this year and with the judges having more impact on which guests reach the final episodes the show appears to follow a much less strict formula and be less subject to the whims of demographics.

The final three contestants on the show were all talented, in the end I believe that the correct person won. In the beginning of the show I was not a big fan of Cassadee Pope. She was obviously very physically attractive but outside of that I did not think her singing was over and above everyone else. Nicholas David the long haired, long bearded, constantly faux bowing soul singer might well have been the most talented performer on the show but his personality while apparently genuine was almost mawkish. Watching these shows, perhaps we become cynical but at times it seemed his intense devotion and public displays of loyalty and love for his wife and young family became as integral to his act as his singing. Lastly we had Terry McDermott a Scottish immigrant to America who seemed perhaps the most likable of the group. With his elven features and his absolute desire to sing Def Leppard, Bryan Adams, and other giants of eighties rock and roll there was not much to dislike in his performances. For me however he was just good, certainly not special, I am quite sure I could go to a club in anytown America and find someone about as good performing tonight. He was, in effect, to me, our everyman. It was a good group and in terms of potential to make a mark on pop culture the correct person clearly won.

The X Factor for whatever reason just does not seem to measure up to be even as good as the sum of its parts. Simon Cowell is excellent in everything he does and his formula in this show of his creation is that each celebrity judge takes a certain demographic of the contestants and is their advocate and coach. To some extent this works but for me the idea of especially Demi Lovato being a real coach to any young performer is kind of silly.

In a complete opposite to The Voice on the X Factor Simon was the only judge who was even remotely likable. I found Demi Lovato to be the worst I have ever seen on any singing show, LA Reid is pompous in the extreme, and Brittany Spears while sometimes fun to look at seems incapable of putting two words together. Spears also is a sad reminder too often of what lies at the end of the rainbow for many if not all of these performers who strike it big.

The talent on the show was solid but for some reason it just never seems to work for me in a lasting way. The winner this year was a Country Singer named Tate Stevens. Very talented and with a solid chance at a career this man, plucked off a road crew seems to be about as grounded as you would want a person in this position to be. His major competition all season turned out to be a thirteen year old superstar in the making named Carly Rose Sonneclar. This young lady had an incredible voice but again as is so often proven in the pop world a great voice is not often the first prerequisite of success. Let us hope that she gets a large first contract when she signs her record deal because we do not know that she will be successful.


With Idol starting up soon with three new judges one wonders if the era of these shows might soon be fading. When you lose the continuity of the hosts the shows do lose something. Next year's X Factor might well have three new judges beside Simon and even The Voice is giving Christina and C Lo a season off to tend to their careers. In short if continuity is one of the keys to the success of these shows they might soon be in trouble.

Perhaps that would not be such a bad thing. Let's not tell my wife I said that.

Judges Judges Everywhere

As I have discussed before our house is doing it's part to keep every singing competition afloat. From Monday to Thursday from Christina to Brittany and back again my wife loves singing shows. Kids need to have their homework done, dogs need to be fed and walked and husbands need to be quiet before the eight o'clock hour strikes.

I do not mind the shows, some performers are better than others but overall it is fine and if she gets enjoyment out of it I am fine with that. What is hard for me sometimes to watch are the judges. I know I have commented on this before so I am not going to revisit their contradictory advice and things of that nature.

I do however want to give a brief rundown of my perceptions of these people we invite into our homes each week.

Starting with The Voice first on the list would be Adam Levine. Truthfully Levine comes off as extremely likable and surprisingly genuine. He is a very good singer, gives solid advice and his back and forths with Blake Shelton seem real and not forced.

Blake Shelton also seems genuine and likable. One gets the sense that Shelton knows that this ride will be over soon, he will be supplanted by the next young gun in the Country line and he is determined to enjoy it. We never really see much more than extremely generic advice from these folks, they are rarely negative, and their exchanges with each other comprise the biggest part of their contribution to the show.

Ce Lo Green is just an odd duck but he is harmless and surprisingly talented. With Green more than any other judge it becomes apparent that he has a great deal of advice for his team members. Christina Aguilera, when I have commented in the past, has been bitchy and generally not nice quite often. This seems to be a bit less this year, she still is a prim a donna but overall she too has been nicer this year.

Overall The Voice is a good show, its singers are good, the premise of picking the team members without seeing them is interesting, and the fact that no truly terrible singers are allowed to audition make the show less exploitative than it's counterparts.

The Fox series X Factor in it's second season added two new judges. Demi Lovato and Britney Spears. Simon Cowell remains Simon Cowell and with that he can be nasty and cutting but this behavior has modified a great deal since this Idol days. LA Reid might be the most pompous man on television but he does know his stuff. I do not find him anything but there on my screen, to me he is not a draw or a reason not to watch. For better or worse the two girls are what brings the audience or drives the audience away. Brittany Spears has been the subject of much comment. In our house we always comment on how she looks that night. It is not always a positive picture. Still an attractive woman, still a talented singer Spears looks extremely uncomfortable in her role. Last week we noticed that in many of her exchanges with her team members she seems to physically recoil from contact with them. Who knows what is up with Brittany.

Still Spears seems like Einstein when compared with Lovato. If I hear her comment one more time that a performance is boring I might have to grab the remote from my wife's hand. It is not her fault. She is in no way a realistic judge. Everything she has sung has been overproduced by mentors, her helping and judging other singers is just a ridiculous notion. I do not know her, she is probably a fine person, she is, however , doing nothing in this show to shine a positive light on her personality or intelligence.

And just think, we are just six weeks from American Idol.

The Voice & American Idol

In the interest of seeing just how many music and singing competitions America can stand both NBC and FOX are airing shows which feature singing competitions. For the most part however the similarities between the shows end there.

American Idol now in it's tenth, eleventh, twenty-seventh, one of those seasons is a tried and true success. The loss of Simon Cowell did little to slow down the success of the show and now with Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez in their second season seems to have found its groove again.

Watching the auditions on Idol is a formula that many people enjoy and others grit their teeth through. Now that we are into the final 13 the singers on Idol are quite good. So much depends on their song choice of course and no matter how experienced they are in singing nerves play a big part. Idol has a maximum age of 28, as they are seeking a person that will provide the full star experience.

The Voice has a different set up entirely. Stating that for them The Voice is everything they audition performers only by listening. As the celebrity judges sit back to the stage the singers sing. The judges then depending on their impression of the singer turn around and then try to convince them to join their team. It is a neat setup, seeing the surprise on the judges faces when someone is not what they expected is a genuine television moment on a platform that is becoming more and more contrived.

The singers on The Voice seem to be as strong and certainly with no age limits on the performers a much more diverse group. On The Voice no performers are put on stage to fail, only good singers even appear on the show. They might not get selected but they are not some of the freak shows that Idol puts on.

What will be interesting to see is if The Voice ever puts some successful performers on the music map such as Carrie Underwood, Kelly Clarkson, and Chris Daughtry.

In the end it is simply a matter of taste. Idol is less about singing and more about the show. The Voice is more about the singing but the interplay between the judges is also a big part of the show...if you like that it is a plus, if not it can get tedious.

On Idol Steven Tyler is silly and amazingly likable. Jennifer Lopez has an approachability which is startling and act or not seems to genuinley care about the singers. Both are high on the likability scale. Randy Jackson seems to be attempting to fill some of the Simon Cowell role and he himself is a tired act.

The Voice has four judges. Adam Levine from Maroon 5 and Christina Aguilera have a constant back and forth, maybe it's sexual tension. If it is not they play it up to be. One of the distracting things about The Voice is all the auditions were done on the same day and they make no effort to mask this with different outfits on the judges. As my wife says Christina is a bit distracting as she has her boobs out constantly.

The other judges are C Lo Green. He is likable more so than the first two and the singers flock to him. The last judge is country singer Blake Shelton. He is perhaps the most likable of the four.

I think that I like The Voice better. Both are shows that my wife enjoys very much. I like that she gets to watch shows she likes.

The Voice

So my wife loves singing and she loves singing shows. We only very sporadically check in on Dancing With the Stars and that ilk but she does enjoy American Idol a great deal, we will watch America's Got Talent in the summer and now with The Voice she has found another show she is interested in.

Set up differently than Idol in that contestants are chosen before being viewed brings an interesting take on the game. The singers are good, although some of them are a little extreme for my tastes.

Four strong celebrity judges add to the appeal. Christina Aguilera continues her effort to rehabilitate her image from this past winters gaffes. Blake Shelton homophobic tweets ( I did not take them as such) offers a country slant, Adam Levine from Maroon 5 and CeeLo Green ( since when does non single make you an authority) round out the panel.

The show is interesting but it feels interesting in more of the it is summer we have to watch something appeal rather than the this is a great show we should watch. It will be interesting to see over the next few weeks to see if the show has more and more twists and tricks to get us to our finalists. I have seen a commercial which promises that singers will be singing the same song at the same time...a duel no less.

I hope that the show dos not try so hard to differentiate itself that it loses what could be its appeal. The idea of singing teams each being coached by a star shows promise.

While interesting this show is one we have yet to see the finished product and as yet cannot really be judged for any long term purposes.