Wednesday, October 31, 2012 :::
 
I watch THE VOICE online, so one day late, and last night I saw the first episode where singers choose their own song and then their "coaches" choose between two that he or she pits against each other at the last minute.  I don't like the way it is going, but from here on out, voting is by viewers.  Adam has craftily whittled his team down to several different styles.  He paired off similar singers so that he would not choose too many of the same kind, so he has a range for when the viewers start weighing in.  I also have to admit that some singers I liked chose much poppier songs to start impressing those same viewers, so Adam is fighting against his own artists' desire to be popular and I don't like the music as much.

Funnier by far is Cee-Lo's obvious delight in having discovered the first openly gay Country star.  You should have seen his eyebrows shoot right over this bald head, though, when the kid told him he was going to sing Dolly Parton's immortal Jolene.  ("He talks about you in his sleep/There's nothing I can do to keep/From crying when he calls your name, Jolene").  I suspect he thought it would be an Adam Lambert type, "Everybody knows, wink, wink" kind of thing.  Not with this kid.  And, boy, did that kid make it is own.

He should have known when he picked him.  The kid, name of Cody (just to prove I grew up Down South), said he liked to give his audience a "little of the bam-bam" to go with his singing. 

To say that ultra-traditional, ultra-gentlemanly Blake Shelton was speechless after Jolene is an understatement.  He told the other singer he had not done as well "you opened the dorr for Cody." 
Speaking of which, that statement was politely "code-y." 

Then he told Cody that he had never heard him sing so well.

When it came to Cee-Lo's moment to decide after hearing the other judges's comments, he echoed Shelton's comments, but added his own entertainer angle.  he told the other singer that Cody was more "out of the box," which made my jazz guitarist housemate and I burst out in laughter.  Everything about this kid is kind of code-y.

Give Cee-Lo credit: he said the choice of song was "bold<' but that wouldn't be enough.

It will be like everything about "official" Nashville country music, not the traditional kind I like: a little behind pop culture, a little tamer.  Adam Lambert came in second on Idol, then went public and at the Video Music Awards put on a full-throttle gay B&D extravaganza that turned off everyone and sent him back to the drawing board.  As a headline in The Onion once put it, "Gay Pride parade sets back gay/straight relations 50 years."

Cody will do dance numbers and sing sad songs about "his man" and that will be that.

Approve or disapprove?  It's just the way it is.  I've been in the arts and entertainment for 42 years, took one look at Cody and said, "Wonder if his proud, beaming papa has figured it out?'  The kid is a natural entertainer.

The other kid in the competition will be back.He is only 16.


::: posted by A Mind That Suits at 1:54 PM


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What doesn't kill me, makes me laugh... usually.