Campus Superstars 3 Round 3 Part 1 of 2 Performance Commentaries

Hi Campus Superstars 3 blog readers!

So sorry but without the official confirmation by the CSS 3 website, and none of the contestants' fanblogs have revealed their song choices, we can only wait until the competition starts in 30 minutes' time to find out.

All the best to the four contestants tonight! ^_^

C1 张慧诗 Rachael - 《至少还有你》 原唱者：林忆莲
- 我怕，愿意 were sung slightly off-key
- 力气 seemed to be swallowed up by her singing
- 们 note transition was not very stable
- judges' scores were 6.0+6.5+5.5+5.5= 23.5
- I would have given Rachael a 6.0 because she did not make any significant improvement in her singing skills at this late stage of the competition and I agreed with Zhan Lun Laoshi that she was being too careful with the song till the flavor of the song was overly-reined in. The song was indeed abit too difficult for Rachael to handle and thus she was unable to emote the full range of emotions intended by the songwriter.

C2 郑琪颖 Benita - 《恋之憩》 原唱者：张泛
- 幽幽， 水手 was sung slightly off-key
- 温柔 note did not seem to reach the desired high
- 回忆才天长地旧 buildup was not as distinctive as necessary
- judges' scores were 6.0+7.5+7.0+6.0= 26.5
- I would have given Benita a 6.5 because she made quite alot of mistakes in a song which I was familiar in. The techical mistakes were somehow soothed out by her confidence onstage but since the competition has already hit this stage, the criteria I set is consequently higher and I felt that Benita still did not have the 柔软度 in transiting between those beautiful lyrics so it fell a little short of my expectations of her command of the song.

C3 林瑞敏 Rachel Lim -《Beautiful Love》 原唱者：蔡健雅
- starting verses' notes were unsteady
- vibrato was overly-used when it was not unnecessary
- judges' scores were 7.5+8.0+7.5+7.0= 30.0
- I would have given Rachel a 8.0 because Beautiful Love is one of the most difficult songs to handle on a live stage but she did an above-expectation rendition of the song. As what Xiao Han Laoshi had commented, the song required a powerful feel and reach towards the audience and Rachel managed to bring that out even though she was fumbling with the unsteady notes at nearly every verse line before the first chorus. From there onwards, Rachel surprised me with a good control of the variations within the choruses and steadied out to give a good climax right till the end of her performance. It was that firm chorus control that won my grades over.

C4 Ridhwan Azman - 《翅膀》 原唱者：林俊杰
- 些 note was held back a beat too quickly
- facial expression was not in line with sad verse lyrics
- chorus was flatter than usual and did not build enough momentum
- 翱翔， 好了 reach was not stretched till desired length
- 眼泪 at the final verse was a beat slower affecting climax ending
- judges' scores were 6.5+6.5+7.0+7.0= 27.0
- I would have given Ridhwan a 6.0 because even though I noticed my grades were lower than all the judges, I thought Ridhwan had been singing too many JJ Lin-R&B styled of songs and never really moved far to improve his genre ever since the competition started. His rendition of this song was also not up to that kind of vibrancy and there were actually portions of downs and ups in the emotions of the song but he seemed to be stuck at only one mode of emotions. The incorrect angular holding of the microphone as pointed out by one of the judges in a previous round was not corrected as well. Without a distinctive improvement or self-challenge to his own vocals, Ridhwan is going to score downhill from here onwards from my end at least.

All the best in the voting rounds for all the contestants! ^__^

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