Alright folks, having watched the final of The Voice UK last night, I felt inspired to write something about it. If you follow me on twitter, you'll no doubt have noticed that I actually got into the show, despite the poor ratings, so I thought I'd share my thoughts on how this series panned out!
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First of all, the fact that the ratings were so low on a show that claims to prioritise talent over sob stories and drama queens, when X-Factor (which I watch, by the way, I'm not slating it!) and BGT get consistently high ratings with people like Wagner, Jedward and the many ridiculous acts that have graced the BGT stage is a bit of a shame, and says a lot about our mentality towards entertainment. I know the show was hardly edge-of-your-seat viewing every week, but considering the auditionees were all deemed talented singers, the format should lend itself far more to actually finding talented artists than some of the others. Which, since we prefer to watch Wagner warbling his way through Love Shack, looking like he's not sure where he is, and being ridiculed by Simon Cowell, suggests that the idea of finding talented singers is not exactly high up on our list of interests!
Which brings me to my second point. The Voice has been attacked by the media for it's slumping viewing figures, and seemingly boring live shows. The judges have also been criticised for not being harsh or nasty enough, which once again suggests that our primary interest in these reality shows is certainly not talent. Sure, it'd be boring to watch ten Leona Lewises being note perfect week in week out leaving the judges with nothing to say but 'Bravo', and of course a lot of the excitement comes from seeing who can step it up week on week. But I actually liked the 'team' format, and (yes yes yes, okay, we all know I have a slight crush on Danny!) but seeing how close the contestants got to each other, and their mentors (particularly Team Danny and Team Jessie) made a nice change from the in-house fighting we so often see in these competitions. I wasn't quite as fond of Tom or Will, but that's neither here nor there.
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So last night, a genuinely stunned Leanne Mitchell won the title of The Voice. First of all, let me say that I think Leanne is an amazing singer and a lovely girl. However, the fact that the majority of people online seemed to say 'who?' upon the announcement, says a lot. The one thing The Voice had was an active online following, particularly on Twitter. Vince Kidd, Bo Bruce, Tyler James and Max Milner, in particular, have incredibly loyal twitter followers, who constantly tweeted the contestants, and, what's more, these tweets were returned on a daily basis. These contestants formed a bond with the core audience of the show - while the ratings were poor, these viewers were consistent, and probably far more engaged than the majority of X-Factor viewers who tune in to laugh at Louis Walsh's ramblings or see just how long this season's equivalent of Katie Waisell can stay in for. The format needs a shake up, for sure. The half hour slot to vote (a necessity since the results show is filmed directly after the live performances) seems ridiculously short, and the 'live but not live' Sunday night results issue caused quite a stir in the earlier stages of the show. Therefore, it could be argued that the loyal fans of these particular constestants are really what kept the show going.
Let's have a look at the finalists, shall we? Since the early favourites, Jaz and Ruth, were eliminated at the semi-final, as were Max and Becky Hill, we were left with four finalists, three of whom were not exactly your conventional 'talent show winners'. In a recent interview, Bo Bruce mentioned that at the Blind Auditions stage, she, Tyler James and Vince Kidd formed a bond, feeling like 'three insecure oddballs' in a room full of more conventional contestants, and they wondered what on earth they were doing there. Those three oddballs ended up in the final of the show, with huge online fan bases, and with their respective coaches shouting from the rooftops about how brilliant it was to have such a diverse line up of voices in the final.
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Don't ask me to explain what it is that drew me to Bo from the very beginning, because I can't! There's something incredibly vulnerable about her, and while she has one of those slightly marmite-esque voices, I loved her from day one. She has an almost ethereal sort of feel to her voice, and would normally have been totally overshadowed by bigger voices, and more confident personalities. Vince is one of the most unique contestants I can remember seeing in a show like this in a very long time. He has a distinctive voice, and an even more distinctive style, which could certainly have split audience opinion, but he proved to be incredibly well liked. And Tyler, with his (I have to say it) slightly twitchy performances, and constant use of falsetto (why Will, why not let him sing in a lower key once in a while?!) was never someone I would have imagined making it to the final, despite the fact I always really liked him as a person. And then we have Leanne, whose amazing performance of Run to You in the semi-final blew everyone away, even more so because finally she managed to get everyones attention after being overshadowed by Tom's favourite, Ruth Brown, since the very beginning. Leanne is one of those powerhouse singers, who sings beautifully, and who is a genuine pleasure to listen to. However, until the semi-final, she made little impact, and in fact, everyone suspected she would go home week after week. For what it's worth, I'm glad she made it to the final - I never quite got the appeal of Ruth's voice, even though so many people did.
The problem is, as always happens in these types of shows, the viewing figures always go up on the final night, with 'impartial viewers' tuning in to see who has made the final cut. And when that happens, time and time again, we see the same pattern form. The conventional talent contest winner wins. And Leanne, belting out a heartfelt rendition of a Whitney Houston song, is just that. While viewers who have watched the series from the beginning could appreciate Bo's emotional performance of Nothing Compares to You, or Vince's compelling version of Many Rivers to Cross, these viewers who only tune in for the final go on the night's performances alone. And maybe that's how it should be - it is called The Voice after all! I just worry that crowning Leanne the winner when the fanbases of the other three contestants probably made up a massive chunk of the ''poor'' audience numbers from the past few weeks will rob the show of the only thing it really had going for it. Fans of these three lovable ''oddballs'' are understandably (and visably - check their twitter feeds!) gutted that the support they gave to a show no-one else was interested in blew up in their faces in one evening. I reckon the show might have retained a bit more credibility if the end result had seen another of the finalists win. And for the third or fourth time, I mean that with no disrespect to Leanne whatsoever - she sang incredibly on the night. But the show had lost such momentum by then that I'm not sure that's what the final ended up really being about. Rather than being about who is the most technically gifted singer, which the show was initially supposed to be about, it became a show about which of the singers made the strongest connection with their core group of fans. With Bo Bruce's 2010 EP Search the Night soaring to number 17 on the UK iTunes chart over the course of today [up to number 5 in the few hours since I posted this!], and Tyler James sitting at a whopping 165,400 twitter followers, there's no doubt the other three finalists will do well, and in terms of the history of these shows, the runners up usually end up doing better than the winners.
The BBC has promised a shake up for the next series with all four coaches possibly facing the axe. It'll be interesting to see who they replace them with, considering I can't remember there ever being a coach on a show like this who seemed to care about their contestants as much as Danny O'Donoghue. But that's not what we look for, apparently! We prefer our judges to tear strips off the contestants, for our own amusement. Maybe next series they'll get Stuart Heritage on (whose liveblog makes me laugh every week) to vocalise his hilarious, but cruel, thoughts directly to the contestants faces. Who knows... what were your thoughts on the show? Apologies for the massive rant!
Lynsey xxx
