Discuss...

I say, at this early stage, The Voice. But I reserve the right to change my mind...

The Voice, definitely! I'm really enjoying it! I know it's not massively different to The X Factor and they're not all amazing, but it's nice not sitting through the joke acts!

Although everyone I'm following on Twitter seems to hate it!

I thought it was OK : not nearly so loud and in your face as the X Factor. But perhaps that's what the UK viewing audience wants...

Yeah, people seemed to think it was a bit slow. I think I just enjoyed watching the singers but perhaps it's not up everyone's street. Thought the singers were quite varied quality but all were reasonably good which I liked.

The Voice - judged (for the time being anyway) purely on what is it supposed to be judged on.

, and it's just nice to have a talent show that doesn't say THIS IS THE GREATEST, BESTEST, MOST AMAZINGEST SHOW EVER...EVER...

I seem to be in the minority but I watched BGT in a semi-comatose state (who said, 'That's the only state in which to watch it'???? ).

Yes, there were the comedy acts but there were also a few very good ones. Have to say the 130+ strong choir of 14-19 year old Welsh boys brought tears to my eyes - great stuff and every boy who thinks singing is for girls should see them...

From the view of the judges, yes.

The show as such was, in my opinion, as scripted, pre-selected and predictable as most of the other formats out there. If looks and image are not supposed to be judged in the initial stages, the producers/casting directors certainly did their thing to eliminate people who don't fit into today's pop scene.
And don't get me started on the sob-stories, the "surprises" (brother/sister thing), the excessive amount of singers who already have very decent careers (just talked with a dear colleague of mine, and he has worked with virtually half of them in the West End). The latter is of course not a problem, it nowhere says it's just for amateurs, but I guess it's all about how you present it. It personally makes me puke if I constantly hear working musicians claiming that "time runs out" (for what???) or they "never had a chance".

I was actually a bit disappointed (my fault really), but then again I don't even know why, because it certainly was to be expected.

Cynic old me

I happened catch the last few minutes. Can someone explain it to me - the selected singers get to choose who they want as their 'mentor' - they then have the choice of Tom Jones - or some non-entities[1] - if its about 'The Voice' - why would any of them choose anyone else from the available set of mentors?


[1] Maybe they're not non-entities, but I recognised none of them, and could name none of them.

Guess who watched the Voice with the sound turned off, while listening to Schubert on radio 3 and reading a book.

I watched the Voice** and thought the general standard was higher than "Britain's Got Talent" . And to its credit we did not have the disgusting spectacle of ridiculing those auditioners that lacked the commonsense to realise that they cannot sing very well.

But the previous poster is right that there has definitely been pre-selection based on appearance, attitude, and personalty, as well as ability.

You'd think Tom Jones would be the automatic choice, but it is not fair to dismiss the others as non-entities. Jessie J is a very versatile singer, and William James Adams of the Black-Eyed Peas seems to make a big success of anything he takes on, although he has some way to go before his personal fortune of $75 million catches up to Jones's 175 million GBP.

But I had never heard of that Danny O'Donoghue before. Just what have his bands (Mytown, The Script) ever done that is memorable?


** But I don't think it would stand watching every week

The contestants can only choose a mentor from those who turned to face them while they sang. So, in theory, Tom may be unavailable. In practice, it seemed to usually be the case that if one turned, then at least 2 other mentors did too.

We watched The Voice and then switched channels for the end of BGT. Like Cyrilla we liked the Welsh choir. I'm surprised nobody's yet expressed an opinion on the young "Pavarotti" and friend..

I was just very moved by the sight of so many boys/young men absolutely LOVING singing and performing with such heart. Loved them .

Yes, the big chap had certainly got an amazing voice for a 17 year old - I just hope they don't spoil it by grabbing him and making him do stuff too young...SC was (of course) really horrible about the poor girl and I thought the boy was very gallant. She must have gone off and cried..

I too loved the male choir and the male and female duo at the end. I really think Johnathan has a very big career ahead of him, but in my opinion, the female's voice was poor and incidentally, she was drowned out by Johnathan.

I only watched a little bit of The Voice so can't say much about it but each audition seemed to go on for ages...