We've reached the point in the competition where I really, really have a hard time picking a favorite each week. I like all three of the remaining contestants, for various reasons:
1) Carrie has a killer voice, and she seems like such a sweet young lady. But she also has a tendency toward the "robotic" (as Simon loves to say), and I find her just a tad ... ahem ... well, boring. Sorry.
2)Bo has a limited range and his voice, while pleasant, is nothing to write home about. But I must say that anytime he is on stage, he just owns it. It's his, his stage, all his, and that's just all there is to it!
3)Vonzelle also seems like a very sweet young lady, and when she really hits the notes (which I must admit she does not always do), her voice is just terrific. Also, my husband has a crush on her! LOL! I never find her boring, but she does have a tendency toward the insipid, and she seems to want to be liked just a little too much, leading her to be smiley when the song does not call for it. Clive Davis nailed it when he pointed out the inappropriate "hint of a smile" on her first song. I don't see real passion in her singing very often. (I also don't see it much in Carrie's singing.)
I finally decided I should pick my favorites tonight from the songs they chose themselves, rather than the ones foisted upon them. And using that criterion, I had to choose Bo and Vonzelle. Bo made a bold and 99% successful choice with his a capella song. (The 1% I didn't care for was the very, very end of the song, where he seemed to lose his way a bit and wander into an unrelated key.) (Also, I have to say I was very amused by the "mother ship" lighting for his song!) Vonzelle really got into "Chain of Fools" -- I thought it was her most successful song tonight and sounded great. It was not as gutsy as the original, but I thought it was darned good.
By contrast, I was disappointed in Carrie's Air Supply song. It did not suit her persona, but more important, it really did not suit her voice. She was "pushing" with her voice in many places throughout the song, resulting in a powerful but unattractive sound. Reaching for volume and power with your voice can be problematic: you are trying to concentrate the air flow and maximize the resonance in your head and chest to produce a lot of sound (hopefully an attractive sound!), but if you *push* the air too hard, it starts to have a forced quality to the sound. I was really getting a lot of that from her tonight. I was especially disappointed because I thought the beginning of "Crying" sounded just terrific! But by the end of that song, the excitement had dissipated. However, I hoped for good things from her next song ... and didn't get it. (The Shania Twain song was well done, I suppose, but again, I found it boring.)
Boos to the sound engineers tonight!! WHAT was their problem? Levels were all over the place. Very unfair to all the singers.
All that said, I think Vonzelle is gone. I had a great deal of difficulty getting through to Bo's line, but I was able to vote for V multiple times with no sweat. Oh, well.
They'e going to make a musical out of "Stepford Wives"..Carrie gets the lead..