Who will be The Voice? We'll soon find out

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UNDATED-- This is a May 2012 handout photo. THE VOICE -- Episode 201 -- Pictured: Tony Lucca . The Voice final performance show is Monday, May 7 on CTV and NBC at 8 ET/PT. The winner is revealed May 8. Photo by: Lewis Jacobs/NBC For Alex Strachan (Postmedia News) TV-THE-VOICE-SETUP (POSTMEDIA LEWIS JACOBS/NBC)

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UNDATED-- This is a May 2012 handout photo. THE VOICE -- Episode 201 -- Pictured: Chris Mann. The Voice final performance show is Monday, May 7 on CTV and NBC at 8 ET/PT. The winner is revealed May 8. Photo by: Lewis Jacobs/NBC For Alex Strachan (Postmedia News) TV-THE-VOICE-SETUP (POSTMEDIA LEWIS JACOBS/NBC)

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UNDATED-- This is a May 2012 handout photo. THE VOICE -- Episode 202 -- Pictured: Jermaine Paul. The Voice final performance show is Monday, May 7 on CTV and NBC at 8 ET/PT. The winner is revealed May 8. Photo by: Lewis Jacobs/NBC For Alex Strachan (Postmedia News) TV-THE-VOICE-SETUP (POSTMEDIA LEWIS JACOBS/NBC)

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UNDATED-- This is a May 2012 handout photo. THE VOICE -- Episode 201 -- Pictured: Juliet Simms. The Voice final performance show is Monday, May 7 on CTV and NBC at 8 ET/PT. The winner is revealed May 8. Photo by: Lewis Jacobs/NBC For Alex Strachan (Postmedia News) TV-THE-VOICE-SETUP (POSTMEDIA LEWIS JACOBS/NBC)

It took a while but, finally, it happened. The Voice had its moment.

A "moment" -- as first used by crabby music impresario and reality-TV mouthpiece Simon Cowell on American Idol, back in the day when Idol was a water-cooler conversation piece and not an idle curiosity -- is when a virtual unknown steps into the spotlight, in front of a live, national TV audience, and delivers the performance of a lifetime.

This past week, that moment belonged to Juliet Simms, a raspy-voiced, 26-year-old rock 'n' roll vocalist, guitarist, songwriter and lead singer of the obscure, melodic rock band, Automatic Loveletter. Simms, from San Francisco, counts male '60s, '70s and '80s rockers, Robert Plant, David Bowie and Axl Rose, among her musical influences.

On this night, though, it would be her soulful-to-blistering rendition of James Brown's It's a Man's World -- an ironic song choice that Simms chose for purely ironic reasons -- that would rock The Voice's world. Simms hinted she was fed up playing skeezy bars and roadside dives, and said it was tough being the sole rock chick in an industry dominated by male rockers. Simms' performance moved Cee Lo Green to tears, prompted Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine to say, "Unbelievable, that was unbelievable," and left host Carson Daly standing in stunned silence while the crowd roared and roared.

The Voice hits the final note of its breakout season Monday, with Simms the lone female and the consensus underdog in a field of finalists that features opera singer Chris Mann, Alicia Keys backup singer Jermaine Paul, and former Mouseketeer and people's choice, Tony Lucca. As the Los Angeles Times reported the morning following Simms' moment, The Voice's final four prove it's a man's world -- but not totally. Simms totally slew on the lyric, "This is a man's, man's world, but it wouldn't be nothing, nothing, nothing without a woman or a girl."

Simms is mentored by Green; Lucca by Levine. Mann is coached by Christina Aguilera, Paul by Blake Shelton.

Reality-TV talent competitions are a dime-a-dozen these days, but this has been a bravura, breakout season for The Voice, in just its second year. The final four singers represent wildly differing music styles and tastes, from Simms' melody rock, to Paul's R&B, to Mann's classical opera, to Lucca's boy-band pop. The final result will be determined strictly by viewer-audience vote, with all that that implies.

Until now, the coach-mentors have weighed heavily in elimination decisions, allowing The Voice to avoid many of the pitfalls of singing competitions like Idol, where the decision is left to viewer-voters who don't always vote based on merit or singing ability.

That hasn't made the job easier. Faced with the prospect of having to drop one of his two finalists, Simms or R&B hip-hop artist Jamar Rogers (both, one could argue, the two strongest performers remaining in the competition), a solemn-faced Green said, "I'm very comfortable. It's very awkward, but it's the nature of the show and it's something I have to accept. I'm not enjoying it, though."

The Voice has broken out from the pack, said Daly, host of The Voice, as well as the late-night talk-show program Last Call with Carson Daly, earlier in the season.

"It's become recognized that this show, if you want to make it, might actually be the avenue to take, because these four (vocal coaches) are some of the biggest names in music, all nominated this year for Grammys, all active, all currently doing it, and so willing to give back, on national TV, all the tools they've learned in the past 10 or 15 years.

"My feeling is that, in Season 1, The Voice came on the air, and people aspiring to be in this space didn't really know what to make of it, where The Voice sat with the other music competition shows. They didn't want to get in the cattle call.

"What happened, though, is that the level of talent in Season 1 was so high that, when we went in early for Season 2, working musicians, people who had hit the road in vans, worked gigs, maybe signed with a small label, people who really want to make it, people who would never have stood in line for any other show, for whatever reason, came out and sought us out in Season 2. I think you're seeing that now. Whatever you thought of Season 1, this is way, way, way beyond that."

-- Postmedia News

TVPreview

The Voice

-- CTV, NBC

-- Final performances Monday at 7 p.m.

-- Winner announced Tuesday at 7 p.m.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 6, 2012 A16