The Voice: The Dominance Of Javier, The Rise Of Vicci

via Rickey

Vicci Martinez performs "Dog Days Are Over."

On last week's show, it seemed pretty obvious which four singers would make it through and which ones wouldn't. On Team Cee Lo, for instance, it was absolutely not a surprise that Vicci Martinez would be the one voted through. The only surprise came when Vicci stood up next to the other members of her team and revealed herself to be tiny. She's Peter Dinklage height; if she'd gone home, she would've had to travel to King's Landing to become the new Hand. Probably even Cee Lo is taller. It also wasn't surprising to hear Cee Lo go into phantasmagoric funkateer detail about how much he loves each and every one of the singers on his team, though it was pretty fun. And then, when he picked friend-of-a-friend Nakia as the one guy to stick around, I'd already called it exactly. So, you know, I'm awesome. Good choices, everyone.

(Quick Nakia update: Marc Hogan, my friend and his former showgoing buddy, reports that Nakia does, in fact, have a last name, though I've already forgotten it. The shows, Marc confirms, were probably John Mayer shows, though Nakia was probably going because he was friends with the opening band or some shit.)

Before Carson could announce which singer from Team Adam was safe, a local weatherman cut into the feed to warn me about tornado conditions, which is the sort of thing that happens when you watch network TV in the Midwest. When the show came back, Javier Colon was safe, which was pretty much a foregone conclusion anyway. And after Adam spoke semi-convincingly about how he hates to send anyone home, he threw a bit of a curveball, opting not to save semi-promising country singer Jeff Jenkins and going with the boring-as-fuck Casey Weston instead. Adam and Blake Shelton don't seem to understand that their job here is to help take part in an entertaining show. When the judges pick singers because they feel sorry for them or whatever, the show suffers.

After that little marathon of results, it was finally time to hear some people sing. Team Christina is, for now, looking like far and away the strongest team, and her charge Frenchie Davis came up first to sing Madonna's "Like a Prayer," presumably under the reasoning that she can act as a one-woman gospel choir. (Instead of a gospel choir, she got a team of dancers in choir robes, which was pretty funny.) Her phrasing of the song sounded a bit off to me, but she's got a real presence about her, a tough-chick hard-eyed intensity that alternately reminds me of Eartha Kitt and Grace Jones. That presence, I think, should be enough to keep her down even when her vocal is just OK, as it was last night.

Next up, Nakia sang Adam Lambert's "What Do You Want From Me," and his presence in the show made me think: All the people who got sent home earlier today had to get songs all ready to go, with video packages and everything. Those must be a real pain in the ass to do that when nobody's ever going to end up watching them. Anyway, Nakia's version was a bar-rock yowler sort of thing, and he started off at a piano, wearing a white suit that made him look like a fat Gibb cousin. Carson used the word "bluesman" in his intro, and that, sadly, seems to be what Nakia's going for. There was a whole lot of forced grit in there. I wasn't especially into it.

Dia Frampton, who it turns out was half of mid-'00s teenage alt-pop duo Meg & Dia, was up next, and yet another thunderstorm warning forced me to miss half of her video package. (They really like to make sure you get the point out here.) The show came back in time for Blake Shelton to praise Dia for being a visionary because she thought to throw some handclaps onto the chorus of "Losing My Religion." Somehow, Dia is the only performer remaining on the show who I like looking at, so this thing really is living up to its all-about-the-music gimmick. Unfortunately, weather conditions caused my cable to fuck up and miss the actual music in Dia's performance. So I'm going to make an educated guess here: She was OK but sort of boring and there was awkward hand-clapping on the chorus. I've seen a lot of singing shows, dude. I can figure this shit out.