The Sing-Off: season 3, week 2

Seriously, The Sing-Off would get a little more respect from me if it stopped trying to blatantly steal Glee's thunder. First, to announce itself as starting a musical movement in America? This TV trend is definitely thanks to Glee, which found success, in my opinion, partly due to American Idol watchers. Then, there's the thing of The Sing-Off's group numbers two weeks in a row-- both songs highlighted in last season's Glee and used in The Glee Project as well! "Raise Your Glass" performed by The Warblers and "Sing" sung by the New Directions. Sigh. The Sing-Off in its own right has so much going for it but these choices make it impossible not to draw these riding-on-the-coattail-of-Glee's-success conclusions.

Now onto my thoughts about this week's 8 groups...

Pack One:

• Dartmouth Aires: (performing "Higher Ground") This group amused me, from their personality to their outfits. You can tell that they're totally having a blast! I think it's funny that the groups are each given a color to differentiate in their first week of performances and the Aires chose green and orange! Haha. All the way to their socks and shoes.
• Pentatonix: (performing "E.T.") This was a really interesting arrangement. Their bass and effects were ridiculously awesome. I was worried cuz the groups who try to do something dance-y often give performances that are pretty disastrous but this group of FIVE pulled it off!
• Messiah's Men: (performing some gospel song) I think it's awesome that they got a group of refugees who banded together through acapella to be on the show. These men were so inspiring. They don't have the wow factor of some of the other performances but they have such a story. Plus it gives you a warm and fuzzy happy feeling to watch and listen to them perform.
• Two groups of five in the first pack! Sonos (performing "Wicked Game"). Apparently they normally perform using effects pedals--Ingrid (Michaelson) does that! I wouldn't mind seeing Sonos in concert but I didn't think they were dynamic enough to make it out of the first pack. Great sound but there was very little on the performance side.

Surprisingly, the judges chose Messiah's Men to leave this week. (No more curse of performing second in your pack, though!) :(

Pack Two:

• The Collective (performing "Rolling in the Deep"). Their lead singer is the one I didn't like in the full ensemble number. I also felt like there was too much going on in this number. This group felt less cohesive than the other groups for me.
• Soul'd Out (performing "Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In"): What horrible outfits the girls were wearing. Cuz there were so many of them (a group of 16!), I really thought it was hard for the leads to pop. Plus the leads had good voices but not great, commanding voices like some of the other lead vocalists in the other groups.  They did have some great harmonies together, though.
• North Shore (performing "Runaround Sue"): A doowop group and they were so cute! They finally brought the energy the second half of the episode was sorely missing!
• Deltones (performing "Feels Like Home") The group supported their lead vocalist so perfectly in this number. And the lead vocalist had one of the strongest lead vocals in this pack. With the weak performance by the first two groups, I definitely thought they were safe.

Oddly the Collective was saved before Deltones in this pack, but ultimately the judges sent home Soul'd Out. (And the curse of performing second in the pack returns!)

Once again while watching this week's group of eight, I was wondering how the packs of four were determined? The first two of the final pack were weaker than any of the groups in the first pack in this episode or the last pack in the first week's episode! I definitely would have sent home The Collective before Messiah's Men or Cat's Pajamas, personally. Oh well.  I'm not sure I have any strong favorites, but I am looking forward to some fun musical performances!!