Too hyped-up for comfort

CUNETA. New judge and mentor.

THE NEW season of “The Voice Kids” got off to a rip-roaring start last Saturday, May 28, but it was too hyped-up for comfort, because the tilt’s resident juror-mentors, Sharon Cuneta, Bamboo and Lea Salonga, were on overdrive to make the proceedings frenetic and “fun.”

We understood why they generated so much fervor and competition, but it was too hectic. So, we hope that, after getting all that feisty “beginner’s fun” out of their system, they can relax from here on in, and focus more on the auditioning and performing kids, instead.

That’s where we choose to focus, so our initial notes are mostly on the season’s first batch of auditionees: It was encouraging to see that, in general, the child singers looked younger than in previous seasons. Last May 28, only one hopeful was already 12 years old—and looked and sounded it.

The first contestant, Yessha, was a 7-year-old belter who made a good impression on both jurors and viewers. The second, Xylein, was the ‘tween hopeful. The third, Noel, was already 11 but still looked relatively childlike—so, pwede pasar. The fourth, JP, was 9 and didn’t just sing but did a brief demo on how to dance the tinikling.

All told, the best of the first batch was Yessha—but she tended to belt and birit too unrelievedly, so she needs to vary her “attack.”

On point of song choice, some numbers were love songs, as usual, so key lessons still have to be learned. Another problem was JP’s choice of “Anak” for his audition piece. The OPM song itself is exceptional, but not quite right for a kid to interpret, because its lyrics denote the point of view of an adult who’s looking back on his past life experiences—and, on hindsight, regretting the bad decisions he made in his craven youth.

JP is too young to feelingly plug into all that, so he just “performed” it—and who could blame him?

Focus on child singers

Reviewing the first show as a whole, we can see that, for subsequent telecasts to do better, the tilt’s production focus should shift from the mentors to the child singers. Perhaps the people behind the show feel that the kids are “too raw” to be able to “carry” the entire tilt, hence its leaning so much on the mentors’ “entertainingly competitive” act.

But, the “solution” has only created other problems related to wrong focus, distracting antics and hi-jinks. So a reevaluation is decidedly in order. The participation of the show’s three cohosts (Luis Manzano, Kim Chiu an Robi

Domingo) also needs to be looked into, because they weren’t all that helpful in making the first telecast more viewable.

In addition, there was still too much emphasis on some of the younger singers’ “problematic back stories,” like one kid’s sick lola and another contender’s family still reeling from a fire. We know that the “emotional” inputs are intended to make viewers care and feel more for the young contestants, but…—!