Hi guys! Excited to be judging. I hope I'm not being too harsh, but I'm trying to be as constructive as possible! Please let me know if I crossed a line =)
"Songs that Inspire"
[Wonderland] - You did justice to the song. I think your diction could be more precise -- I didn't understand at all times the words that you were singing. There were also some pitch problems when you hit your upper register, but I think you recovered from them well. Otherwise, the vocal was on point. Your lower register is smooth like butter. Different enough from Miley's original to make me look at it in a new and interesting way, and I think any artist that can do that with a popular song has done their job.
[GurlBai] - Let me start out by saying that I LOVE Yolanda Adams. You have a fabulously raspy and bluesy voice -- for me, the transition from the first verse into the first chorus was the roughest part of the song for you. You picked an extremely difficult song to cover, given that the original is near perfect, but you did well with it. Your vibrato is out of control; I think there is something to be said with a simple vocal, but as you said in your reasoning, Yolanda's original is nowhere near simple :P. Well done.
[Maxiphone27] - Ughhhh loves The Beatles. I have to first start off by saying that I hate this background track, it sounds so off from the original, a little more "carnivale." This song always makes me smile whenever I hear it. Some of your notes were flat. I think what's great about the original is that it requires very little effort to pull off a cover it -- and I think that's where you went wrong. Too much with an original... it sounded too far off what I'm used to. Perhaps that's a bias, but I can't help comparing this to The Beatles... that said, not a bad job.
[RJ18] - Donna Summer circa Disco is really hard to pull off. You struggled during the climb of the song. I think you improved as you got into the first verse and stayed the same throughout the rest of it. I tried to picture you singing this in your living room -- and to me, it didn't sound like you had that much fun with it. I was lovin' your falsetto -- probably the best part of the song. You did as well as I would imagine a young man could do with a Donna Summer song.
[FlameOnX] - I saw your reasoning under your description, but I'm puzzled why you chose to do an a cappella song. I feel like at this part of the competition, you need to do something to make yourself stand out in a good way from the rest of the competitors... I'm not entirely sure you succeeded in doing that here. A good cover of the song, I definitely felt the emotion coming from it and I could listen to this a couple of times over again.
[TolisKalkas] - I know from personal experience how hard it is to cover a Buble song. He has a certain quality to his voice that is nearly impossible to match -- it's like modern Frank Sinatra. I think you did well with the song, but I'm not entirely sure that you sang it in the correct octave for your voice -- either that, or the song was out of your "comfort zone." If it was out of your comfort zone, I commend you for taking a risk. I was missing the relaxed quality that Buble often oozes from his songs -- it's effortless when I listen to him. I could tell from listening to you that you were straining your voice a little bit. My favorite part was when you hit the notes in your upper register toward the jazzy interlude. But then you completely missed the same notes with the outro :\ Not a bad job.
[Akron] - I think the quality of the track really detracts from your performance. Once I got past that, I actually really, really enjoyed the performance. I tend to agree with John when he says you struggled a bit with the notes -- the problem with the song is that a majority of it fell within your upper register, and I don't think you're entirely comfortable singing there. I get that in the chorus you were trying to &qu
