The Voice Recap: James Wolpert and Matthew Schuler Land In The Bottom Two
Tonight on ‘The Voice’ former singing champ from that other singing competition show, Kelly Clarkson, graced the stage with a song off her new Christmas album. Dressed in a red sparkly dress, complete with baby bump, Ms. Clarkson was delightful and charming as always.
Carson did his bit where he asked the coaches to give their (very biased) opinions on who they felt rocked their performances last night. Cee Lo felt that Tessanne did the best job with her two performances the previous night and Blake said that although he only has one team member left, he truly has faith that Cole has what it takes to win the whole thing.
Then it was time for the first group performance of elimination night, starring Tessanne, Jacquie and Matthew singing ‘You Got The Love.’ Oh my goodness. You guys. This performance was superbly painful to watch and listen to, with everyone competing to shout over the other, resulting in about one million wrong notes and a whole lot of noise. At this point in the competition, a performance like that is just plain embarrassing.
Carson then announced the first save of the night, from team Christina… Jacquie Lee! So clearly, America is not voting based on vocal merit, because in our totally non-professional opinion, Jacquie is the least talented singer left in the competition. But Christina Aguilera has been on a mission, campaigning for the sixteen year-old girl, and perhaps her huge, loyal fan base is coming through. That Jacquie is one lucky gal.
Then it was another performance, this time with coach Blake Shelton and his former team member Xenia from the first season of ‘The Voice.’ Singing ‘Silver Bells,’ the duo were incredibly enchanting to watch, with their pristine voices a marked contrast to the cacophony of noise we had heard earlier.
For this week’s confessional, the stars of ‘The Voice’ were asked what they would be doing if they weren’t on the show. Cole said he would be a stand up comedian (we would LOVE to see that). James said he would be an illustrator, and drew a very sad looking picture of a ham. When asked what he wished he had known before being on ‘The Voice,’ Blake responded that he wished he had learned how to invest his money better so he wouldn’t have had to take this job. Oh that Blake… what a joker.
Back to the live eliminations where Carson revealed the next singer moving on to the semi-finals: Cole Vosbury. And all we can say is, THANK GOODNESS. The Jacquie save made us a bit nervous, but America redeemed themselves by keeping the superbly talented Cole.
The next performance was of Extreme’s classic ‘More Than Words,’ sung by James, Cole, and Will. This performance was a thousand times better than the hyper number from earlier, with the three guys keeping it simple and only showing off when necessary. Nicely done, boys!
Tessanne of Team Adam was the next safe contestant, which resulted in her family jumping up and down and pretty much freaking the hell out.
Before getting to the final results, the Top 6 gathered together for yet another Christmas tune, ‘O Holy Night.’ As nice as this performance was, the backup singers totally stole the show for this number. If there was some surprise twist where the backup singers were allowed to enter the competition, we’re pretty sure they’d destroy all the remaining competitors.
The last pre-Twitter save of the night was Will Champlin, leaving Matt and James firmly in the bottom two. Adam begged the audience to save James, blaming his “off-week” on his sickness, and claiming James is one of the best singers Adam has ever been in a room with. Then Christina desperately pleaded for Matthew to be saved, eventually (thankfully) getting cut off by Carson, who gave his instructions for the Twitter save.
And then came the results: James Wolpert was saved instantly, meaning Matthew’s time had come to an end. Although he started off extremely strong and was a fan favorite early on, Matthew had been slipping ever so slightly the last couple weeks, and we think voters got it right this week by sending him home.