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The Voice Returns For Season 9: Why I’m Not Excited [Opinion]

By Toni Matthews
Published on: 01:26 PST, Sep 20, 2015

I’ll admit it: I didn’t start watching NBC series The Voice until the beginning of Season 7. When I finally tuned in, I was rather pleased. It was a talent-heavy season with great performances. Sadly, in the end, no stars were born.

I came back for Season 8 of The Voice, and though I was rooting for Sawyer Fredericks (who ultimately won), the season’s talent pool was comparatively thin. Again, a winner was crowned — and yet again, no stars were born. By now, I noticed that I’d hardly heard a blip on the “fame radar” from any other contestants associated with this show during its entire run.

I’ve written about this before, but I’m fairly certain The Voice isn’t at all about discovering new talent that people should hear from and enthusiastically support. Instead, it’s pretty much about (1) helping famous people become more famous and (2) profiting from well-timed product placements. Anyone who tuned in for the past eight seasons expecting The Voice to create and actively promote new talent should probably give up.

And that brings me to why I’m less than excited for this upcoming season.

Sure, The Voice will have Rihanna as a key judge. Gwen Stefani is back, and I’ll admit that I prefer her to Christina Aguilera. Season 9 will probably have some great performances, too.

However, it’s kind of hard to stay excited about a series like The Voice. Why? Well, when your alleged aim is to produce marketable talent and you fail to do so season after season, it becomes a bit of a letdown. Even more discouraging, truly unique artists often get cast aside in favor of the generic versions of music artists that already exist. In The Voice‘s seventh season alone, I observed “poor man’s versions” of Lorde, Ellie Goulding, and Justin Bieber.

I will say that’s not on the American voting audience. For this to happen, the judges had to select which artists would progress in the competition. At least, that’s what we assume. Could it be these people be the Voice producers’ choices? It’s hard to tell with so-called reality TV competitions; so many moments are either staged or heavily edited.

In any case, I’m going to call it now: The Voice is on its last leg. It may not feel like The Voice is in desperate straits because of its current “ratings cash cow” status, but then it’s a show that has two seasons per year.

Two seasons per year, while failing to truly launch a single contestant into stardom. Yikes.

I hate to say it, but The Voice is a cruel gimmick that will soon wear out its welcome with any true undiscovered talent. What will probably follow is the embarrassingly public search for lesser known (and not so lesser known) singers to fill up the roster. Especially as word-of-mouth causes an increasing number of musicians to stay far away from this show and its questionable contracts.

Think I’m being too hard on The Voice or have reasons I should be excited? Tell me your thoughts in the comment section below. If you think I made valid points and wanted to share why, that’s also welcome.

[Image Credit: Screen Grab From The Voice / YouTube]

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