This is posted on Wednesday, November 23, 2016 by Rodney Ho on his AJC Radio & TV Talk blog
Atlanta's Aaron Gibson, for the second week in a row, was in the bottom two on "The Voice." Yet again, he had to sing for his life. And yet again, he demolished his competitor and survived. He is now in the top 10.
Last week, he had to do an Instant Save song against his battle round rival Sa'Rayah. This time, it was former Atlantan and fellow Team Miley teammate Darby Walker.
He sang a very credible cover of George Ezra's "Budapest" and received three quarters of the Instant Save Twitter votes over Walker, who chose Elton John's "Your Song."
Although this doesn't bode well for Gibson's chances of winning, at least he is getting a ton of exposure.
Oddly, he landed near the bottom of the votes on Monday despite a well-received version of the Johnny Cash classic "Hurt." It was an excellent song choice for his gravelly voice. And he came in fourth on the iTunes chart, ranked at No. 39 at one point, behind only Sundance Head (No. 9), Billy Gilman (No. 11) and We McDonald (No. 34). In a poll held by MJ's Big Blog, his performance ranked fifth.
The MJ poll predicted Courtney Harrell and Ali Caldwell at the bottom, although fans did pick Walker as the person who should go home.
Miley Cyrus has embraced both Walker and Gibson from the beginning. She especially loved Walker because she saw a lot of herself in her. But when it came to the save situation, Cyrus was clearly favoring Gibson. And the viewers agreed.
Gibson's problem at this stage may be the fact he's competing against a couple of male singers with similar rock styles who clearly have bigger fan bases. For instance, there's Brendan Fletcher, who emoted well covering Bruce Springteen's 'The River." As on YouTube viewer noted: "How is his voice so rough and still so soothing?? This fit him like a glove."
Then there's Austin Allsup, who has more of a country twinge. He covered Bob Seger's "Turn the Page" Monday. I don't think it was as compelling as Gibson's song but he managed more votes nonetheless:
Walker suffered some pitch issues while covering Leslie Gore's "You Don't Own Me" Monday.
Here is her Instant Save performance. She clearly has a specific style and doesn't veer from it:
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