The 3 Gs of The Sing-Off: Season 3, Episode 6

In addition to full reviews of each episode of The Sing-Off, this season we will offer extended coverage most weeks via the 3 Gs format.

Great: Represents my thoughts on the best performance(s) of the night—these are the star-makers, the tearjerkers, the ones we’re all going to remember.

Gone: Represents my thoughts on the final showings from the group(s) we’re seeing for the last time in a given week.

Give it a second look: Represents the act(s) you might not remember, or that we might not have expected much from, but which delivered just the same, and deserve another listen.

Here are my thoughts from this week’s episode:

Great
Delilah shows they still know how to love what they’re doing. Remember back in week one, when Delilah looked like a frontrunner to win this whole season? Week by week, that memory felt increasingly distant when all of a sudden, BANG, they hit us with this multiple-soloist, layered, adventure of an interpretation of a Lil Wayne song, complete with a dramatic use of dynamics and a real diversity of complementary sounds. In an episode that easily could have seen this group recede to the bottom two, they came out guns-ablaze for what I’m going to give the controversial nod as the single best performance we have heard on The Sing-Off this season thus far.

Gone
This is a Collectively bittersweet farewell. Oh, The Collective. Y’all are nothing if not controversial. After turning in an abysmal interpretation of “Give Me Everything,” The Collective really gelled on a deceptively clever and well-sung rendition of “Just A Dream” for their sing-off song. On a cumulative scale, the haters are right that The Collective were overdue for elimination this season. Based on the two-group showdown at the end, though, I struggle to say that they deserved to leave at this point.

Give it a second look
Afro-Blue continues to kill it (softly). Like Delilah and Vocal Point, Afro-Blue opted to circumnavigate their discomfort with hip hop in favor of reimagining a song to their own tastes. “Killing Me Softly” represented an interesting mid-point between Roberta Flack’s original and The Fugees’ hip-hop take on the song. The result? A stripped down song by Afro-Blue standards, that fused hip-hop percussion techniques with silky vocals, before arriving at some remarkable power chords. Not a stand-up, pound-your-chest world beater, but a solid performance that shored up the group’s place among the show’s elite.

Check back tomorrow for the updated ACB Sing-Off Power Rankings!