'The Voice': What We Learned From Top 10 Eliminations

On Tuesday night, The Voice revealed the results of America’s second vote for Season 6, and narrowed down its Top 10 to the Top 8. Here are a few things that we took away from the results show, plus one big announcement made by NBC about the upcoming Season 7.

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t seen Tuesday’s live eliminations show yet, read no further, because we’re about to tell you exactly who got knocked out of the competition.

01) The Twitter Curse is still legitimate. Season 6 failed to break the streak of Twitter-saved artists going home immediately thereafter, as Team Shakira’s Tess Boyer – the artist that America gave their votes to via social media last Tuesday – was handed her pink slip this week after her performance of Paramore’s “Ain’t It Fun.” Just because it bears repeating, we’ll remind you that means every artist who’s ever gotten a Twitter Instant Save on this show has then been kicked to the curb the following week. Which prompts another thought.

02) If that trend holds, the competition is about to take a big blow. This week’s Instant Save went to Team Adam’s Kat Perkins, whose version of the hit song “Landslide” wasn’t a bad one. It brought her to tears and did well by the track. Furthermore, Kat’s been one of the most consistently praised performers throughout the entirety of Season 6. So if she goes home next week, things are going to look a lot different around The Voice. Let’s hope Kat and coach Adam Levine step up their game on Monday and finally put the kibosh on this bizarre trend. Somebody’s got to do it.

03) Live shows really do mean zero room for error. Team Usher’s Bria Kelly did not have her best outing on Monday with an average rendition of Avril Lavigne’s “I’m With You,” a song that probably wasn’t the best choice for her either since we’ve heard it a lot over the last 12 years. (Die-hard Voice fans will recall that Lavigne and Cassadee Pope even performed it as a duet in the finals of Season 3.) But one wonders if she didn’t help her cause when she was visibly upset after the coaches’ comments. That only added to the perception of her as having an off night, and America isn’t very forgiving of off nights. As evidenced by how they sent Bria packing.

04) The social media thing is really getting a bit over the top. And we don’t just mean the Twitter Instant Save. This season’s “Voice Tailgate” concept is like a pregame show for reality TV. Now again this week, NBC is taking over your screen during The Voice‘s final commercial break, showing us a bar graph of the Instant Save numbers in alleged real time. (They’re showing it to the artists in-studio, too, albeit with their names removed.) Do we really need to see second-by-second results when we’re going to find out the answer two minutes later? It feels like the show is wringing every last bit of drama out of Tuesday nights, and we’re nervous enough for the singers without all that.

05) Gwen Stefani is your newest confirmed coach for Season 7. This wasn’t actually part of the results show, but NBC broke the news in a press release just before Tuesday’s program went to air. The No Doubt singer is stepping in for Christina Aguilera this fall, in much the same way that Pharrell Williams is replacing Cee Lo Green. Ultimately, the success of Season 7 will depend on the chemistry between Stefani, Williams and existing coaches Levine and Blake Shelton (who were also confirmed to be returning!), but purely from a musical standpoint, would you want to be on Team Gwen or Team Pharrell? (And hey, only needing 8 coaches over 6 seasons is pretty great. We’re sure American Idol is jealous.)

The Voice‘s Top 8 will perform to reach the Top 6 on Monday at 8 PM ET/PT on NBC.

‘The Voice’: What We Learned From Top 10 Eliminations

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