Last Choir Standing – The Final

** Spoilers! **

So, last week I said that I would be happy whichever choir won this competition, and I still stand by that sentiment. Albeit I did have a preference, which Revelation were definitely at the top of.

However I think that both Ysgol Glanaethwy and Only Men Aloud both had a good mixture of stong performances and not-so-strong performances that, for me, was enough to justify their place in the final. I must say, I much prefered Only Men Aloud’s performance of Angels to Don’t Rain On My Parade, however I think that they deserved to win and hopefully will be able to do something with this victory in order to strengthen their choir’s standing even further.

I wasn’t overly enamoured with some of the performances this week, I enjoyed the ones that I’m posting below a lot more than the other ones.

Ysgol Glanaethwy – O Fortuna

Revelation – Ain’t No Stopping Us Now (especially when they broke it down)

Group Performance : Never Forget

Group Performance : I’m Still Standing

I’m Still Standing was definitely one of the series highlights for me – so infectious and great to see the studio audience/judges/presenters having a boogie too hehe.

I also really liked Russell Watson and ACM Gospell choir singing Stevie Wonder’s Heaven Help Us. Another season highlight I thought – I wasn’t too sure that the song suited him at first, but by the end I was completely sold.

Alas, the BBC haven’t uploaded that clip, and so I’ll post the original song instead – though I was also surprised to see that My Chemical Romance have a version of the song too!

It’s just dawned on me that the BBC probably won’t be able to commission another series of this, as the choirs that would make it to the next series of finals would most likely be the same choirs as were in it this year. I think it’s a lot harder for someone to form a choir than it would be to wake up one morning and just say “I think I’ll apply for X-Factor this year” and so the percentage yield of fresh new choirs who hadn’t already entered would probably be diminished in comparison.

But back to this year’s show, I think that all of the choirs have done a sterling job and hats off to them. I have been entertained, emotionally moved and at times danced along to the wonderful sounds that they were making. Here’s hoping that they’ve helped to update the image of what a choir is. I’m all for retaining the choirboys in cassocks image as well, however I see no problem in opening up the genre of ‘choral music’ and broadening it out to include styles such as these.

Congratulations to all choirs, and I’m sure that there’ll be a BBC album out soon (which I’ll be first in line to buy!)

NB – The BBC’s “Last Choir Standing ” YouTube channel has most of the performances from this, and prior, weeks on it is well worth a look; and as always, their official website has a run-down of exactly what went on during the show.

Last Choir Standing – 23rd August

*** SPOILERS ***

Oh my goodness! What on Earth was with the judges’ decision this week?! ACM Gospel really didn’t deserve to go – they’ve been amazing and consistent throughout, much more so than Ysgol Glanaethwy have.

Mister Greg and I really didn’t warm to Ysgol Glanaethwy’s performance of “Circle of Life” at all, and in fact felt a little embarrassed for them. Therefore we were both hugely surprised with the judges’ comments and ultimate decision!

This week was always going to be a tough one, with all four choirs really deserving to be in the final. I like all of them. I was especially pleased to see that Revelation went straight through this week – they’re now the choir that I would like to see win.

Strong performances from the choirs tonight, although one or two songs weren’t really getting through to me – Only Men Aloud’s “Luck Be A Lady” and Ysgol Glanaethwy’s “Somebody To Love”. Ysgol Glanaethwy don’t seem to be fully understanding that this is a choir based show, and that they cannot continue to raise one member up in front of all of the rest of them. I would love to see them all working together doing proper harmonies, and think that some of their stuff by Adiemus and other classical artists sounds much better. Plus doing a song by the same artist two weeks out of three was a poor choice I thought. I did rather like their bi-lingual song though.

Looking forward to the final next week, I wish that ACM were still in it, and if I’d had to pick my final three, I think that I’d have let Only Men Aloud go this week. Revelation to win!

NB – The BBC’s “Last Choir Standing ” YouTube channel which, once updated by the BBC, will have most of the performances from the week on it is well worth a look; and as always, their official website has a run-down of exactly what went on during the show.

Last Choir Standing : Sat 16th Aug

Just a quick note on the latest round of Last Choir Standing from the BBC. As always, spoilers are present!

I thought that all of the choirs, with the exception of Bath Male Voice Choir, were absolutely and phenomenally outstanding this week! Cor blimey!

As usual, I really didn’t ‘get’ Bath, although I did find their sing-off song a whole lot better than any of their previous material. With all said and done however, I was happy with the decision made by the judges to eliminate this choir from the competition.

Really not sure why Revelation keep getting dropped into the bottom two – I would presume it’s a negative impact resulting from their size, and also because they are not linked to a school or local community project. As a free-standing choir, it must be much harder for them to compete as they won’t have as large a fanbase on ‘home soil’ as some of the other, larger, choirs…

Semi-Final next week, and I’m rather excited. I’ll be very impressed if the choirs can find a way to top their preformances from this week. Ysgol Glanaethwy and ACM Gospel Choir remain my favourites to win – however at this stage, I would be happy for any of the remaining four to take the title!

The BBC’s “Last Choir Standing ” YouTube channel which, once updated by the BBC, will have most of the performances from the week on it is well worth a look; and as always, their official website has a run-down of exactly what went on during the show.

Last Choir Standing – 9th August 08

*+* Spoilers relating to Sat 9th/Sun 10th Aug 08’s broadcast *+*

OK, so firstly apologies for the delay to this post – it’s been a busy week! Additionally, the BBC didn’t upload the final show to BBC iPlayer so that I could see it until Tuesday! They must be too busy with the Olympics I guess.

Anyways, I was disappointed with some of the performances last week – and I still really am not warming to Bath Male Voice Choir. I think they did well at the audition stages although they’ve lost a lot of the magic in my opinion. I would have much rather have seen them go than Sense of Sound, who I actually thought weren’t all that bad. I was VERY surprised to find Revelation in the bottom two! I can’t quite comprehend that one…!

Here is a link to the BBC’s “Last Choir Standing ” YouTube channel which has most of the performances from the week on it; as always, their official website has a run-down of exactly what went on during the show.

I was surprised to find that the format of the show was not as I’d expected… I’d thought that last week was going to be one huge final between the six (kind of how the heats had worked) and so wasn’t expecting for the show to run for another few weeks.

What with this and X-Factor, my Saturday nights are well and truly booked up in front of the telly me thinks!

Last Choir Standing – Knockout 3

*+*+* Warning – Spoilers *+*+*

Just finished watching this on iPlayer and I have to say that, for the first time, I am disappointed with the result on this week’s show. In fact, the standard this week wasn’t all that great full stop!

ACM Gospel Choir definitely deserved to be put straight through, however City of Bath Male Voice choir were uninspiring, flat and dull in my opinion. Added to that it would seem that Russell Watson was particularly gunning for ‘a male voice choir’ to be in the final – though perhaps not necessarily/specifically them.

This evening I was backing Hear Me Now to go through as, although I don’t really like their MD, some of the lads are rather tasty. Oh, and they can sing and are a little more upbeat too… of course… hehe!

I was disappointed that there wasn’t much ‘choral’ singing tonight – too many choirs went with a lead singer and the rest of the choir providing backing vocals - nothing seemed to be broken down into several parts etc.

I think I’m going to be gunning for Ysgol Glanaethwy in the live finals next week - although I intend to watch the show with an open mind – as any of the six choirs that are in the final could easily be runaway winners!

Last Choir Standing – Knockout 2

* Post contains spoilers about the 2nd Knockout stage *

Once again, I thought that the judges decision on BBC One’s Last Choir Standing programme was a sound, but incredibly tough(!), one.

The BBC offers a full rundown of how things went, however I am going to post the clips of the two winning choirs, Revelation and the delicious Only Men Aloud!. I would sincerely agree with the judges comments; namely that these two choirs were absolutely outstanding.

Revelation

Rule The World

Shackles

Only Men Aloud!

** Seemingly/unfortunately YouTube has no clips of their performances, however these can be viewed by visiting the Only Men Aloud! page on the BBC’s website for the show. **

Next week’s knockout looks to be an incredibly tough one with three of my favourites (Handbag of Harmonies, The Open Arts Community Choir and The City Of Bath Male Choir) all competing. It’ll be a nail biter, that’s for sure!

Last Choir Standing

Over the past few weeks, Mr Greg and I have found ourselves watching “Last Choir Standing” on BBC One on a Saturday night.

Although it’s kinda a tired format, and not really new or innovative, or even a good copy of a much copied format, it still makes for very watchable TV I think. Indeed, Last Choir Standing is a BBC Vision Studios production made by the team behind other BBC entertainment shows including Strictly Come Dancing, I’d Do Anything and Any Dream Will Do, and so this comment on the format shouldn’t really come as a surprise to regular viewers.

The premise is that they are looking to find the UK’s ‘best loved’ choir and have enlisted Suzi Digby, Russell Watson and the fantastic Sharon D. Clarke (who was the original ‘Killer Queen’ in WWRY and who currently plays ‘Lola’ in Holby City) to help judge the competition. There will be six choirs which will be in the final, made up from two ‘winning’ choirs each week. The overall winner will be chosen by a viewer vote during the final show.

Thus far there have been a real ecclectic mix of choirs which have competed, and without wanting to ruin it for anyone, I think that all of the decisions that have been made thus far as to which choirs go into the final and which are knocked out have been the ‘correct’ ones.

Although this is clearly a stop-gap production by the BBC to fill in the mid-summer month, when ratings are traditionally lower due to us all going out etc (the episode on 19 July 08 only received 2.25M viewers), I still find it compulsive viewing. Not just that, but instead of just getting one or two hotties in total on the show, you find that you get a good handful of them in most choirs – hurrah! hehe!

My favourite performance thus far has been by Ysgol Glanaethwy and was their performance of “Adiemus” by Karl Jenkins. The wall of sound (no pun intended on the other choir’s name!) that they were able to create, the power behind their voices and the choreography gelled really well and sat perfectly with the really uplifting and moving piece of music.

You can view their performance by going to the official website for the show and scrolling through the videos on the home page.  Alternately, you can view it via YouTube below.

Whilst I’m on the subject – check out the rest of Adiemus’s work – It truly is magnificent! Last.Fm has an extensive back catalogue of it.

Anyways, back on-topic, having only seen 5 of the 15 choirs perform properly, I’ve yet to establish firm favourites as of yet; I think I’ll wait until just before the final and then pick one of the six as my favourite then.

Should you have missed this programme, BBC iPlayer is currently carrying it.

(Episode 3) (Episode 3 Results Show)