I forced myself - against my better judgement - to watch the opening performance of The Voice, with the four judges performing Freddie Mercury and David Bowie's "Under Pressure." I fully expected it to be bad.
Let me tell you, with every bit of objectivity I can muster, that it was well and truly awful. Never mind that Christina Aguilera's urban yodeling has no place, well, anywhere. Or that Adam Levine just can't. (Seriously, dude. David Bowie is strongly considering suicide so he can start rolling over in his grave.) I rather like Cee Lo Green, and Blake Shelton falls right in that level of like.
No, even if the four of them had actually rehearsed that song more than zero times it would have sucked. Even if they had tried to act like a group of four vocalists instead of everyone trying to be the hero and carry the song (Cee Lo being the only exception). Even if Christina could stop fucking with her in-ear monitor as if that will suddenly make the urban yodeling not terrible.
That performance was never going to be better than terrible (sounding) because NBC seems to have forgotten to hire an audio engineer for the broadcast. I could have mixed that crap better drunk, blindfolded, and backwards.
I sincerely hope that the broadcast console got hit by lightning right before the show, so that the engineer has an excuse. Otherwise, NBC needs to kick the fader-pusher off the truck and bring in someone with more experience than mixing the church band once a month.
[/critic]
tweaker
Unfortunately, basically all the performances are badly mixed. The vocals are either too forward, or too buried; nothing in between. The mix is either shrieking or muddy, nothing in between.
ReplyDeleteI think maybe they hired the same guy who did the BlackEyed Peas superbowl show (probably the worst engineered professional show I have ever seen in my life)
agreed
ReplyDeleteI actually came away from it impressed with Green's showmanship and creativity.
The so called 'competition' was laughable once past the blind auditions. Intra-team dueling? nuts.
It's no wonder the cameramen tried to spend as much time as possible focused on Aguilera's chest.