Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Amy Vachal slips into the semifinals on The Voice

Amy Vachal, won't be saying "Bye Bye Bye"
OOPS! Don't be alarmed, but Amy Vachal slipped a little but she has enough standout talent to still win a spot among the Top 9 finalists on The Voice. But that little bit of slippage from top to middle of the pack could spell the difference of making it to the Dec. 14 finals or getting eliminated in the semi-finals next week when five of the remaining singers will be shown the door.

Once again, the Filipino/American songbird took a pop song - "Bye, Bye, Bye" and transformed it into a haunting rendition of what N'Sync performed as an upbeat song that appealed to the preteen gaggle of girl fans. It should be noted that the N'Sync hit was a Grammy award winner way back in 2000. Most of those Tweenies are now in their late-20s/early 30s and have moved on musically. If they wanted to get nostalgic, they would download the original.



To Amy's credit, her performance was strong enough to garner the No. 8 spot in the iTunes download list during the voting period for the singing competition, so what do I know. No. 8 is good, but it was a drop from last week's No. 4 spot that she was able to get with her flip of Taylor Swift's "Blank Space," which is tops the charts NOW. Landing in the iTune's top ten is critical for Voice competitors because each download counts as a vote multiplied by 10. A word of caution, though, she had five other Voice contestants ahead of her.

A similar drop in the voting next week could eliminate Vachal, At this stage, with the Dec. 7 semi-finals looming, song choice is critical. It's obvious that Amy and her coach, Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine, is carving out a personality for the sultry singer, separating her from the rest of the crowd who are splitting the country, blues and rock voting bases. 

Her biggest challenge seems to be coming from favorite Jordan Smith, who is attracting the Christian voters with his song selection. This week, he did Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" and despite the dicey lyrics open to interpretation, any song with the word "hallelujah" in the lyrics still gets interpreted as a religious tome. 



As the competitors are winnowed down, it may come down to who can pick up the voters who backed the singers who have been dropped. Among the remaining contestants, Amy has shown that her ability to flip any song into something that shows off her smooth singing style. 

Here’s where everyone stood based on iTune downloads as of noon EST, when voting ended on Tuesday (Dec. 1):

2. Jordan Smith, “Hallelujah”
3. Barrett Baber, “I’d Just Love to Lay You Down”
4. Madi Davis, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”
5. Emily Ann Roberts, “She’s Got You”
7. Jeffery Austin, “Jealous”
8. Amy Vachal, “Bye Bye Bye”
10. Shelby Brown, “Go Rest High on That Mountain”
20. Zach Seabaugh, “Crazy Little Thing Called Love”
27. Korin Bukowski, “Same Old Love”
113. Braiden Sunshine, “Radioactive”
In the end, Korin lost the sing-off to teenager Braiden.

So you can see, as good as Amy is artistically, she is not a sure bet to make it to the finals despite being adored by critics and highly praised by the coaches.

When asked how all the singers are getting along behind the scenes Amy says that the members of Team Adam are all connected by their faith and their thankfulness to God, and that they know God has a plan for all of them for the rest of their lives. 

My, my, my. I think she was speaking from the heart and it wasn't a sneaky ploy to garner support from some of the Christian crowd backing Jordan. She just might connect with middle America.
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