Posted by Andrew Unterberger on 11/11/2012 at 12:56 PM News

The Popdust Files: i believe in this life, jermaine paul, the voice

Well, nobody could ever say that the The Voice didn’t do a good job marketing the stars that the show ostensibly produced after their time on the show was done. Actually, wait—you totally could say that, because no contestant from The Voice has really done shit (at least in the mainstream sense) after their season wrapped. (Anyone heard from Dia Frampton or Javier Colon recently? No, singing the national anthem at local baseball games doesn’t count.) And if you could even name the guy who won Season Two, unless you saw him perform recently on Season Three, we’d be marginally impressed.

That already-forgotten Voice winner does in fact have a name—Jermaine Paul, R&B powerhouse from Team Blake—and now he also has a single and video, entitled “I Believe in This Life.” (We can only assume the song was so titled due to its similarity to “I Believe Can Fly,” Paul’s signature performance from Season Two.) If the song’s primary goal is to re-establish Pual in the popular consciousness, it couldn’t have done much worse of a job, as it comes off as an almost purposefully anonymous-sounding club jam that could’ve been performed by just about any second-rate Chris Brown or Ne-Yo knock off, and doesn’t showcase Paul’s incredible voice at all, even handicapping him with auto-tune. Even the video just seems like a rip-off of Usher’s “Yeah!”

Say what you will about how badly The Voice is thumping American Idol in the ratings these days, but there’s a reason why Phillip Phillips is still in the iTunes top ten while no Voice alum rates anywhere near. Voices are important and all, but let’s not forget songs, production and packaging play a part too.

[Yahoo!]