The Voice: First Season Winner

Well, for all of my spot-on predictions this season, I ultimately backed the wrong horse. Last night, Javier Colon (not Vicci Martinez) was named THE VOICE. Even with a 75% chance of a woman winning, a man emerged victorious, officially proving that American Idol and The Voice have the same voting audience.

Ah, I keed I keed. You won't hear any conspiracy theories or "It's not fair!" shouts from me. Congratulations to Javier. I hope that one of the perks of his new title is that, everytime he walks into a room, a faceless singer has to intro him with the show's lame theme song, "THIS IS THE VOICE!" Seriously, they need to get a new theme for Season 2.

Luck was really on Javier's side last night because, not only did he emerge victorious, but he also got to sing with Stevie Nicks. Sure, her voice isn't quite what it used to be, but she'll always be one of my favorites. And she still has an incredible sense of harmony. The way she can mold her voice to fit with whoever she's singing with is amazing.

Although Blake Shelton is very sweet, and his reaction to seeing wife Miranda Lambert and protege Dia Frampton performing together gave me the warm fuzzies, I'm not sure they really fit together that well. Their duet was just OK for me. I have no idea why Beverly McClellan was paired up with Ryan Tedder. Was that her choice? It was an odd one. They actually sounded pretty good together, but I would have rather seen her paired with, say, Lady Gaga. Or maybe they could've gotten Bob Seger! He has a new album he could be promoting. As for Vicci's duet with Pat Monahan, I'm not even going there. I mean, I love Vicci but I hate Train. And that song about soy lattes and deep fried chicken is the worst.

So, Javier gets the Universal recording contract, but what will happen to the three runners up? I have a feeling that they will fare far better than American Idol runners up usually do, even if we've gotten less face time with them than we normally do with Idol contestants. It helps that these music biz hopefuls have a lot of experience (and fans) under their belts already and that they haven't been completely broken by months of very Brady group sings and soul-sucking Ford commercials. And oh yeah, they're a lot more talented than most Idol cast-offs. Honestly, I can't remember an Idol finale that was as evenly matched as last night's Voice finale was...and there were twice as many singers involved. I truly felt that any of the final four could have won and all of them deserved it. Like anyone, I had my favorites (Vicci and Beverly) but I have no problem with Javier taking the crown. In fact, the only issue I have with the guy is his name. It just sounds like an answer to the question, "What's that bewitching scent you're wearing?" "Why, Javier cologne, of course."

I can bring home the trophy
Buy a fancy Rolls Royce
And never never let you forget I'm The Voice
'Cause I'm the winner
Javier*

*You probably need to be over 30 to know what tune to sing this to.

Yeah, I'm like the Weird Al of commercial jingles. Interestingly enough, that took me 45 seconds to come up with and it's still better than most of Tuesday night's "original" songs. "Original" belonging in quotation marks even more now that I've learned that Vicci's "Afraid to Sleep" is actually a decade-old Dido song. And here I was giving a lot of the songwriters the benefit of the doubt because I was thinking that they had to quickly cobble together songs and push them out the door in time for the Finale. If picking obscure existing songs was an option, there's no good reason why the one picked for Vicci should have sucked so much worse than the other three...or why anyone's songs should have sucked at all!

Anyway, for all of my initial hesitation about this show, I really enjoyed the first season and am looking forward to the next. I'm even looking forward to seeing more of Adam Levine—something I never thought I would say before The Voice came along. Of course, I still wish he'd disband Maroon 5 and stop writing ridiculous lyrics about the joy of banging, but I do so enjoy looking at him.


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