Rat!

Yeah, I forgot to mention that I think visual emoting specifically is a pointless metric. I agree with what you think of Wendy. I believe she had her share of stiff moments on stage - you can get that from a few glances. But I personally felt the sheer power projecting from her voice, and the feeling of that alone was compelling and exciting for me. The idea of seeking a feeling from someone's voice should not be so shallowly limited to tenderness or melancholy from the song, but a lot of people definitely treat it that way.

Definitely has happened, and at times its had justifications when you look at the screen and see a considerably empty look in the eyes of Emily Luther/Wendy, but I find it's a bit of an arbitrary metric to judge someone by. At the end of the day, music is sound first, and not some random perception of what you think someone's emotions towards a song are.

Brooke Simpson is actually insane.

It is impressive, but she certainly enjoyed the privilege of not presenting the dark-skinned prerequisite of Blackness that people haphazardly assume. She's definitely Black, but probably has a different lived experience than darker-skinned women.

What exactly was the point of Wendy being on this show? Was her long history of gigs not doing it for her? I don't know if I want to hunt through her pre-performance packages because a lot of that is manufactured. It looks like she had a good time which is excellent for her, but I'm interested to know.

Top 10-15, since a lot of winners can and have blown them out of the water by comparison. Even Bekah alone would get completely WASHED by a lot of these winners.

This poll is certainly missing Alisan/Adam, and in the greater scheme Sundance/Billy and Chris/Lauren in terms of talent. Jordan/Emily is probably not valid at all lol 1. Tessanne/Jacquie 2. Chloe/Addison 3. Alisan/Adam 4. Wendy/GNT GNT had a great run but for me they're much less compelling than what other Top 2 placements have done in the past. I would sooner ride for a lot of these finalists and Wendy before them. Lucky that we got such an exceptional Top 2 though.

I definitely underestimated the power of being Blake's top dog, but a lot of stuff went into Wendy taking 2nd. Paris and Hailey having declining performance quality in the later lives while Wendy came up definitely helped on top of her status. I still think a Black female winning is not possible without a lot of work from start to end, and that certainly includes casting. Thinking about 2022 though, it's probably time for another country/adjacent win, and I'd hope to see it from a female act, since there have been so many male winners recently. But if that's the case, said act's gonna have to be Blake or Kelly's top dog and without a WM country competitor. I hope to god if someone is in that space that it's an adult, since we haven't really had it good since Lauren. If we're talking about checking categories here, a teen Black female on Team Blake is probably as good as it gets.

Kind of interesting how the casting favored GNT and Wendy both so well. Wendy very well would have probably won if GNT weren't there.

Amazing how so many of y'all have the energy to actually argue about artists, which is a whole other level from just having preferences between them. There's no actual competition between them lol

what the

1. Wendy: Over the Rainbow - Performance of the season by miles for me. 2. Joshua: Ashes 3. Jershika: Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me 4. Wendy: Ain't No Way 5. GNT: Wichita Lineman HM to Jershika's Inseparable and Hailey's Elastic Heart

Oh no doubt it was super messy. I gave her a pass seeing as how she was in that position two weeks in a row (especially in one where she already had to rehearse two songs), so there was already a ton of pressure on her.

Girl you are wrong for that. omg

Martina McBride, please.