A triple-shocker on utterly unpredictable 'Voice' top 13 results night

Yahoo Music

Wow. Tuesday’s top 13 results show on The Voice was a triple-shocker. Let’s get right to it, because there’s a lot to process.

Shock No. 1: Team J.Hud’s SandyRedd, the most dynamite diva of this otherwise lackluster season and someone I once predicted could win this entire show, went home — even though her performance Monday, dedicated to her late mother, was the most tear-jerking moment of the Thanksgiving-themed episode.

SandyRedd, Tyke James and Lynnea Moorer were the bottom three on “The Voice.” (Photo: NBC)
SandyRedd, Tyke James and Lynnea Moorer were the bottom three on “The Voice.” (Photo: NBC)

True, SandyRedd did not totally hit it out of the park Tuesday, as I had expected, with her Instant Save performance of “Believer.” Her hairography, stankface, and Pretty Woman boots were on point, but the Imagine Dragons song seemed too low for her, and she never quite got into her groove. She lost her mojo. Still, I never thought SandyRedd would lose by such an embarrassing landslide, earning a measly 10 percent of the Instant Save vote.

Shock No. 2: Tyke James was in the bottom three and ultimately went home along with SandyRedd, despite faring very well on iTunes. As his coach Adam Levine put it, “To be top three with music and to be bottom three on the show doesn’t match up.”

Allow me to explain here. Since The Voice’s inception, iTunes downloads of contestants’ songs have counted as votes. Presumably, that rule — along with other online twists and gimmicks like the Twitter-based Instant Save, the Comeback Stage, and viewer-picked songs — were put in place to favor young, edgier (read: more marketable) singers, whose fans were likely to be tech-savvy. This 15th season, the show switched it up and angled the show even younger, still making the artists’ weekly songs available for download on iTunes but tallying the songs’ streams (of 30 seconds or longer) on Apple Music as actual votes instead.

How did this new emphasis on streaming change the game on Tuesday’s top 13 results show? It’s hard to know for sure, but Team Adam’s 14-year-old Reagan Strange, the most-streamed Voice hopeful this week, was the first contestant called to safety by Carson Daly, followed immediately by 13-year-old Team J.Hud member Kennedy Holmes. (The girls charted on iTunes at No. 42 and 90, respectively.) But the oldest singer in the competition, Team Blake’s 39-year-old Dave Fenley, also made it through. So what the new rule really did was make it a lot harder to predict Tuesday’s results.

Thirty-five-year-old SandyRedd may have fallen victim to the new streaming situation, though it’s hard to say, since her song also fell outside the iTunes top 200. But Tyke was the third-highest iTunes chart of the week (at a respectable No. 24, behind Kirk Jay and Reagan Strange). And one might have assumed that his teen-dream appeal would give him an advantage with the youthful streaming audience. Apparently not.

Then again, Tyke’s sleepy, one-octave Instant Save performance of Michael Bublé’s “Home,” with a chorus that repeatedly pleaded, “I wanna go home,” wasn’t the best choice for a sudden-death elimination round. So, America got it right by sending him home Tuesday — but his misleading iTunes success made that a surprise.

Shock No. 3: Lynnea Moorer prevailed! The Comeback Stage singer is now the comeback kid. Lynnea, as the token contestant from the online-only Comeback Stage competition coached by Kelsea Ballerini, received hardly any screen time until last week. And her fast-tracking over other, televised contestants, who had paid more dues was controversial with Voice fans. She gave a solid performance Monday, but she must have assumed she was doomed on Tuesday’s double-elimination night, so she went for broke with Alicia Keys’s “If I Ain’t Got You” and made the best use of whatever TV exposure she had left. It was a noble underdog effort, and it paid off.

“I told Lynnea she had the uphill battle, because she was the comeback kid,”Kelly Clarkson, her new coach, said. “She doesn’t have has much as a fanbase as everybody else. She still fought like crazy. You have to have that in you to survive in the music industry.” Well, it was certainly enough to help Lynnea survive this week and make it to the top 11.

If you’re having trouble keeping track: A contestant who turned no chairs in the Blind Auditions and fell outside the iTunes top 200 (Lynnea) beat out a contestant who turned four chairs (SandyRedd) and a contestant who made the iTunes top 25 (Tyke). With the new Apple Music streaming rules in place, the iTunes chart obviously no longer a reliable predictor of results, and the early ousting of the token seasoned diva and pretty-boy heartthrob, anything could happen next week. Watch this space.

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