The Voice is continuing its slow crawl to the finale of season 9 by eliminating only one contestant a week. So, on Tuesday night, once again the stakes were low. Despite middling performances from the majority of the contestants on Monday (Nov. 23), all but one were going to get through... so how did it play out?
The first saved artist was Team Adam's Amy Vachal, which was no real surprise. She tapped into that Taylor Swift magic with "Blank Space," though like her breakout "Hotline Bling" cover, she remade this song to be her own jazzy style. Despite failing to connect with the irony of this chart-topper, Amy went to No. 4 on iTunes and was an easy pass into the top 10.
The second top 10 performer announced was a bit more of a surprise... Team Gwen's Braiden Sunshine. His cover of "True" was pretty bad, but he's a cute young kid and has a big following. Expect more of his mediocre-ness for a long time.
In a continued pattern that revealed that maybe the performances don't matter that much, Team Blake's first save with to teen heartthrob Zach Seabaugh. Could he hit his notes last night? No. But could he work the camera? Yes. And that's definitely a strategy to go for. The fourth save was obvious and deserved, Team Adam's Jordan Smith. Let's be real, Jordan is a sure thing for the finale, with tons of support from The Voice itself. So, expect that easily.
The show decided to even out its order of announcements, spreading it throughout the teams. So, Team Pharrell got a save via Madi Davis, a reliable player with her soulful acoustic performances. Team Blake also got its first deserved save of the night, with country darling Emily Ann Roberts breaking into the top 10, with relative ease. Her cover of "Why Not Me" was pretty and unique enough to crack the No. 10 spot on the iTunes charts.
So, then there were five: Korin Bukowski and Jeffery Austin of Team Gwen, Team Blake's Barrett Baber, Team Adam's Shelby Brown and Team Pharrell's Evan McKeel. Jeffery was a surprising late call to the top 10 - his performance of "Dancing on My Own" was the best of the week, but it's great that he made it. After a bit of a slip-up, wherein Caron Daly called out Shelby's team prematurely (when he meant to say Team Gwen's Jeffery), Shelby was deemed top 10 regardless. He apologized way too many times, considering she was safe anyway. He could have just gone with it. But, I guess they wanted the teams to seem really even. After that weird bit, the show had to continue and Barrett made it into the top 10 by America's vote.
So, once again, Korin found herself in the bottom two, and the look on her face was a heartbreaking one of total defeat. But, she did remarkably well last week in this same space, so she could easily get this anyway, especially against Mr. Beige himself, Evan McKeel.
It was no surprise that Evan found himself in the bottom two, his performance last night was so forgettable that I literally already forget what it was... and this is my job. For his Twitter save performance, he went for "Let's Stay Together" by Al Green. This performance was fine, but it lacked a spark. And, that is the worst thing about Evan... he's just so damn dull.
For her second Twitter save in a row, Korin decided to reach over to Adam's wheelhouse and performed the Maroon 5 hit "She Will Be Loved." The vulnerabilities of this song played well to the soft parts of Korin's voice and that sort of emotion that she can do so well. But, when she opened her mouth for the big, deep notes, she was so horrifically off-key that I yelped.
Despite all of that, at least Korin has something interesting to her, and that helped pull her through to the top 10, once again, by the skin of her teeth.
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