Happy Girls Round of 5: Review

The singing quality this round seemed to take another sizable step upward. The theme for this week was "hand in hand" with most of it dedicated to the Typhoon victims in Taiwan. Each girl was paired up with a difference contestant from previous years' "Happy Boys" competition for the first round of competition. Then after the initial rankings, they went solo thereafter. Here's how it played out:

1. 江映蓉 Jiang Yingrong - She was paired up with 张杰 for the first part of the competition. Ironically, because of 张杰's busy schedule, they never even had 1 practice together. Luckily, the song they chose didn't really require much teamwork or coordination and it all came out pretty well. She took a page out of 李霄云's "how to crone for first place" method and chose a slow love song for her second song as she won the ELLE cover model for this week.

2. 黄英 Huang Ying - She was paired up with 吉杰 as they sang a unique blend of disco/modern/classical music with a hint of Latin flair. Seriously, they sang a folk song, this is 黄英 we are talking about after all. PP tells me that 吉杰's specialty was actually more towards jazz, but he did an admirable job playing 黄英's foil. Her second song was the same song she sang a while ago. This time, she probably practiced it more, ditched the boat, and went barefoot. All of this apparently made a difference as the audience thought it was a better performance, but not as good as 江映蓉's croner. Her third song was pretty awesome though. I had heard "person who first got me into video games" sing it multiple times at karaoke and always thought it was a pretty good song. 黄英's rendition didn't quite have the forcefulness that I liked about the original, but it certainly had the power. After this week, I really think she has a chance to win this thing.

3. 李霄云 Li Xiaoyun - She was paired up with 苏醒 for the first part. They sang a absolutely stunning version of 红豆 for their song. However, I think their strategy was a little off. They chose to go first in the competition and since it was a round robin, their chances were hurt because the voting always occurred after their opponent's performance. I totally think she was snubbed by the judges as they were voted as the last place team. This probably ticked her off as she chose immediately to go after 郁可唯 during the challenge. This was not a friendly challenge either. This was the "I am going to kill you, feel my battle aura" type challenge and 郁可唯 was visibly taken aback by 李霄云's ferocity. Her second song was this angry, energetic, 杀气好厉害 song that the audience totally loved as she successfully defeated 郁可唯 in the challenge. Her third song was good, but nowhere nearly as awesome as her second song (WTH was up with those feathers...). In a surprising twist, she was selected by 郁可唯 to move onto the next round. Perhaps the intimidation factor was too high and 郁可唯 didn't want to go up against her in elimination.

4. 郁可唯 Yu Kewei - She was paired up with 魏晨 for the first round. They sang this exceptionally difficult song that I used to love back in the day when I was obsessed with 周华健. Their performance was pretty damn awesome. I seriously think they should have been the top team during round 1. Her song for ELLE cover model was good, just your average 郁可唯 perfect pitch/smooth transition/kinda bland song. Her challenge song to 李霄云 was this French love song. One has to question the choice of choosing a French song for a 1v1 challenge since their track record in major wars tends to be one of capitulation and surrender. This was no different as her song pulled a Maginot Line and she was again put into the elimination round.

5. Eliminated-刘惜君 Liu Xijun - Ahh, she of the dead eyes. While her singing has improved in the past weeks, I think it was about time she went. She was paired up with 俞灏明 for a first round cron-fest. The song was pretty good and they got the judges questioning if they were actually dating each other after their performance. She went for the "awww, dancing kids" effect with her second song and probably got some sympathy votes as the song wasn't really that awesome. Her last song was taken from 红楼梦 but was sang pretty horribly as her voice doesn't really match the style of the song. That and she ran up against 黄英's rock and roll extravaganza. She was eliminated by 郁可唯.

If I had to take a guess as to who is going next week, I would have to say a toss up between 郁可唯 and 李霄云.