Thoughts and Sounds

I made an ERROR

And the show is almost perfectly engineered to eliminate potential for going viral lmao

Lmao I didn’t mean to start anything, and like I said it’s clearly not a “fair” comparison. I do think it’s revealing about the SM reaction to this show and why (other than Republic) people have so many issues post-show. The voting audience of this show is just not in anyway a thruline to post-show success. GNT is better positioned than any winner in recent memory with almost 200k listeners on Spotify, but odds are still super stacked against them and it’s sad. I am hoping for the best with them and maybe they’ll benefit from a fairly niche genre, but it’s hard. cuz like, when he was asking “does this show want winners with the best voice or winners who are going to chart?” the answer is none of the above dude

This guy is a relatively popular vocal reaction channel and he reacted to OTR and The Chain from the finale. Title is kinda clickbait because YouTube. I think he represents the YouTube/Twitter “hyper-casual don’t actually watch the show” reaction to the results pretty well. But to be fair, he only reacted to those two performances, and that’s Wendy’s best vocal versus a bottom half vocal from GNT. He clearly doesn’t watch the show but I think you sort of add to the sense why the voice never produces stars from how he talks about it

A popular vocal reaction channel on YT reacted to Wendy’s OTR. You can definitely tell that he doesn’t watch the show and the title is a little click-baity but he was super laudatory towards her performance.

I hope everything turns out okay with their father. Honestly super sad to hear about

I can’t believe she never explained just how severe things were on the show. If you’re gonna have a horrific injury at least play it up and get the sympathy votes! In all seriousness though I hope everything goes well. The whole situation is awful

I think you two are actually agreeing here It’s about the song, and how the listener connects with it. And that’s a personal experience, not an objective one. It’s not measured by how much emotion they show on their face, but by how much you feel. for me, Wendy was by far the contestant whose performances and songs I “felt” the most. someone else thinking Wendy didn’t “emote” enough in her performances doesn’t invalidate that and the opposite is also true — If you don’t connect, you don’t connect you just can’t make definitive statements based on whether you think someone’s facial expressions were good enough

When she gave one of the best knockouts of the season and lost I was SO pressed

Just in terms of raw vocal capability, it’s Wendy. She has so much control over every part of her register.

Honestly, I think GNT is just getting to be the unfortunate recipient of a lot of built up anger/disappointment. And then that was exaggerated by Wendy making a resurgence in the last two weeks that put her close on (non-itunes) indicators, and she would have been a very deserving winner as well. But GNT was great, and they were going to be hard to catch after the 1-2 punch of their KO and t13 performance

Definitely my #1 favorite runner up

Sometimes. It depends on who wins and who the runner-up is. In this case, GNT don't fit the mold of the facebook winner and there was also a very deserving runner-up that would have been the preference of twitter. People who are upset are generally the loudest as well, but they got the most votes, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Honestly a great winner. Hope the record label does not kill their momentum

Honestly, kinda feel a similar way, and I like GNT! I really expected her to come second, but it still feels bad because of how much she deserved it. tbh it's probably that she broke her arms and has to get a terrible elbow surgery for second You know for sure that Republic would have never done anything with her though, so I am glad she doesn't have to deal with that BS during recovery lmao

I hope they release %s after the leak

Congrats to GNT! Hope to see a lot out of them in the future

They better release the vote totals after this

No idea who Chayce is, but I'd default to the digital charts

Voting has been closed for a while, but one final SM update for the season. VIews (1000s) Likes (1000s) Likes/1k views Facebook Upbeat Hailey 162.8 4.3 26.4 Paris 75.9 4 52.7 GNT 356.5 13 36.5 Jershika 93.3 4.2 45.0 Wendy 242.6 8.2 33.8 Ballad Hailey 107.2 4.7 43.8 Paris 124.3 7.1 57.1 GNT 229.3 9.1 39.7 Jershika 100.2 3.6 35.9 Wendy 317 12 37.9 Youtube Upbeat Hailey 200 8.3 41.5 Paris 78 2.4 30.8 GNT 197 6.3 32.0 Jershika 136 5.8 42.6 Wendy 155 5 32.3 Ballad Hailey 192 9.5 49.5 Paris 100 3.4 34.0 GNT 159 4.8 30.2 Jershika 91 3.4 37.4 Wendy 211 8.3 39.3 For facebook, Wendy and GNT have so many more views than anyone else that there's no way to really compare. Across both performances, GNT has 586k views, 22.1k reacts for a ratio of 37.7 per 1k. Wendy has 559k views, 20.2k reacts, for a ratio of 36.1 per 1k. Wendy's obviously strongest with OTR and GNT with The Chain. Overall, pretty good numbers for both, and a very high note for Wendy to end the season on. Again, Hailey does so much better on youtube it's not even funny, but her Billie cover was just better received across the board than Deja Vu. Wendy is probably second overall on youtube off the back of OTR, but it's a pretty fat gap (and at least Jershika is doing well on YT this time around, makes me happy)

But you definitely get it now

He’s saying in general, Trios and AA women are not liked. Not specifically these artists. At least as I understand it

My outlook is pretty straightforward. I would like Wendy to win because I think she deserves it but also because she has the least to lose from it imo. But I don’t think she will win. And regardless, winning is kind of trivial at this point! What I want to see is all of the finalists carve out a path for themselves in the industry because they all deserve success, but that path is not easy or clear for any of them. This is the first season in a long time that I feel like some artists really could do something post-show, but given the track record, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.

If Wendy were to win, how much of an upset would it be? Over/Under Chris Blue over Lauren Duski level?

Last day of stats for the season VIews (1000s) Likes (1000s) Likes/1k views Facebook Upbeat Hailey 91.7 2.7 29.4 Paris 25.6 1.5 58.6 GNT 161.3 8.1 50.2 Jershika 25 1.5 60.0 Wendy 110.9 4.2 37.9 Ballad Hailey 33.6 1.7 50.6 Paris 64.3 4 62.2 GNT 73.4 3.6 49.0 Jershika 45.2 1.8 39.8 Wendy 75.5 3.9 51.7 Youtube Upbeat Hailey 57 4 70.2 Paris 13.8 0.75 54.3 GNT 46 2.9 63.0 Jershika 20.8 1.5 72.1 Wendy 30 1.8 60.0 Ballad Hailey 33 3 90.9 Paris 28.7 1.6 55.7 GNT 22 1.4 63.6 Jershika 25 1.5 60.0 Wendy 22.6 2 88.5 Some of these are very hard to compare because there's such a view disparity, and very low viewed videos on Facebook tend to have good V/L ratios but also indicate lack of popular interest. I think, in terms of GNT vs Wendy, GNT has the edge in the upbeat category and Wendy has the edge on the Ballad front. Hailey does much, much better on youtube, which is not a shock (Wendy also does better on YT, whereas GNT does worse)