The Voice Final Performances — Duets win the day

Jake’s performance of “Heaven” last week is the reason I still last week’s episode is still sitting on my DVR to catch up with at some point. Great songs are great no matter the genre that they are performed in, and Blake’s pulling two 80’s pop ballads is a perfect example of how well this can work. Do I think it would have been safer to have Jake sing some Randy Travis or George Jones? Yes. But Jake is going to get the votes of every Country fan watching this show, maybe reaching past his genre is a big reward type of risk.

Jake Worthington & Blake Shelton: “A Country Boy Can Survive” (Hank Williams Jr.)

My earlier comments about Jake excelling in classic Country music were made before I saw that Blake had chosen this as their duet. I swear. This was an absolutely perfect choice, partly because Jake is an artist like Hank, like Travis, like Keith. Mostly though, this performance was an opportunity for Jake to out-sing his coach. Blake sounded like “Blake Shelton singing Hank Williams, Jr.” … Jake sounded like this could have been his song to begin with.

Christina Grimmie: “Can’t Help Falling in Love” (Elvis Pressley) – Team Adam

I can count the number of times I have immediately rewound a performance on The Voice to watch it again on two hands … and twice it has happened tonight. The beginning of this song was flawless; I much preferred it to the middle section, which speed up the tempo and brought in more accompaniment than was needed. It was still great, but the beginning made me want to hear a 6-minute, a capella version of this song. Christina said in the intro that she was saving this song on the chance that she made the finals; that’s a risky move, but she has proven she was born to take risk.

Josh Kaufman: “Set Fire to the Rain” (Adele) – Team Usher

This is an interesting choice … I think if I could live in a world were no one tried to cover Adele on The Voice I would be a much happier person. This is far from Josh’s best performance; there were some incredible moments, but they were just moments. I doubt my opinion will be shared by Josh’s fans – it obviously wasn’t shared by Usher, who was definitely overselling – but I think he could do better. Other than the end of the song, I didn’t feel like he was doing anything special, and this is the worst time to be just “kinda special.” I still think Josh is the most talented person in the competition, but I don’t think this song did him any favors.

So, boys and girls, that’s it for another season of The Voice. Be sure to check back here tomorrow as I’ll have the iTunes chart results posted (I don’t believe there are any bonus multipliers this week), but it should give us a pretty good feel for who’s got the best chance of winning. I think it could be any of them at this point; they are all worthy of the title. My guess, though, is that Christina pulls it out in the end.

Update: Here is the final iTunes chart as of 12:07 PM Eastern today. I’m more than a little surprised that Christina’s worst entry was the one America asked her to sing again. Josh also barely missed the Top Ten. My bet is still on Christina to take it home tonight.