Campus Superstars 3 Round 2 Part 2 of 2 Performance Commentaries

Blog post to be updated after the performances as soon as possible.

As I have not received serious and rational protests on the accuracies of my commentaries, I suppose they have been a source of reasonably decent feedback for the competition contestants, supporters, singing enthusiasts and general blog readers thus far.

Whilst waiting for Round 2B to start, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all you hundreds of readers and followers of my performance commentaries out there for your spoken or unspoken support of my performance commentaries.

I value your presence here because you form part of the interested community for constructive discussion of singing, music, entertainment and related performances.

Good luck to all the contestants tonight! ^__^

C1 郑琪颖 Benita -《蓝天》 原唱者：张惠妹
- 扎了 was dragged out a little too long
- 弦 sounds like it was not enunciated
- 退， 陷 could not seem to reach the desired high note
- last word of each line during chorus was over-emphasized
- judges' scores were 6.0+7.5+6.5+6.0= 26.0
- I would have given Benita a 6.5 because I could not really feel the song as in its supposed freedom experienced by the song persona between the lines seemed to be lost as Benita seemed to have over-concentrated on the details of the song and neglected emoting the song properly. Perhaps I had a high expectation of any rendition of this song but was disappointed as Benita was tripped up, giving neither the technical or the emotional aspect of the song a proper treatment.

C2 蔡艾珈 Rachel Chua -《C 大调》 原唱者：张韶涵
- 妥协, 世界 note was unsteady
- stage was not fully utilized properly to theme of song
- admirable falsetto control
- judges' scores were 6.5+6.5+7.0+6.0= 26.0
- I would have given Rachel a 7.5 because she managed to bring out the flavor of the song in its playfulness and self-confidence of the song persona. I noticed my score was different from the judges but I stood by my judgment because even though I agreed with Fei Hui Laoshi that Rachel did not have any significant breakthrough in her presentation of songs, I was even more adamant to point out that neither did the rest of the contestants in their genre of songs for Round 2B . I want to give Rachel the encouragement that she was the only contestant who fielded a fast and difficult track and nailed it to my listening and viewing satisfaction.

C3 叶嘉敏 Jiamin -《雨天》 原唱者：孙燕姿
- 愿 note was not as clear as desired
- 慢, 太晚 seemed to have sung off-key
- 越来越远 was dragged out necessarily
- admirable emotional commitment
- judges' scores were 7.0+8.0+8.0+8.0= 31.0
- I would have given Jiamin a 7.5 because I concurred with the judges about her excellent emotional management of the song, which was a visible notch higher than the rest of the contestants tonight. However, I did not think Jiamin outdid Rachel in terms of technical command because she did make quite a lot of mistakes and I thought she was still a little bit too careful with the song to be completely immersing herself in the rendition, especially at the second part of the song. Jiamin must learn to move away from sentimental love ballads if she pulls through this round whilst Rachel must learn to commandeer such ballads if they are to continue to score high in my commentaries.

C4 李奕贤 Jarod -《听海》 原唱者：张惠妹
- 我，梦， 外，从 notes were unsteady
- vibrato was not being reined in throughout most of the song
- 如 note was over-emphasized unnecessarily
- missed a beat right before 至少 due to swallowing
- 离开 was swallowed in the course of singing
- judges' scores were 6.0+7.0+6.0+5.5= 24.5
- I would have given Jarod a 5.5 because I was quite disappointed with his rendition of what was an excellent classic by the original singer. Although I could tell from his strained facial expression that he was trying his best to emote the song, his repeated and long string of technical mistakes were throwing whatever remaining concentration I had during his performance into disarray. I agreed with Zhan Lun Laoshi's comment that the song was beyond the grasp of Jarod and if he managed to pull through Round 2B, another failure to select a suitable song for himself would probably mean a more disastrous score for him.

C5 张慧诗 Rachael -《孤单北半球》 原唱者：林依晨
- 用，晚，两端 had difficult reaching the low notes
- facial expression did not fully complement chorus portions
- E 给你的照片 seemed to be missing from the song
- judges' scores were 7.0+7.5+6.5+6.0= 27.0
- I would have given Rachael a 6.0 because I thought her performance was enjoyable enough even though she suffered repeated bouts of not being able to reach the low notes during all the verses. Qi Yu Laoshi mentioned about her incorrect camera facings during her performance whilst I would like to comment on how her facial expression could have more room for improvement especially the chorus portions as she was looking rather rigid then. I thought I picked up a missing half of one of the verse lines near the end of Rachael's performance but without a playback at the time of typing, I could not verify as none of the judges mentioned it. Either case, the suspected missing lyrics was not obvious enough and Rachael confidently sang through it without deliberately hiding it.

Good luck for the voting portion of the competition! ^__^

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