Sing! China (season 2)

Sing! China season 2 coaches

Eason Chan

Na Ying

Liu Huan

Jay Chou

On 24 November 2016, Jay Chou was confirmed to be returning for his second season. Eason Chan was also announced to join the show as a new coach, which effectively confirmed that there would be changes to the coaching panel with at least one of the coaches from the previous season exiting the show.[1] On 8 December, it was claimed by an unknown media outlet that Liu Huan, who was formerly a coach on The Voice of China, would also be joining the show as a coach. Lu Wei, the show's publicity director, later refuted the claim.[2] On 28 March 2017, Na Ying was confirmed to be returning for her second season.[3] A month later, on 28 April, Wang Feng issued a statement via his management to announce his departure from the show to focus on his music career, but hinted a possibility of returning in the future seasons.[4] On the same day following Wang's announcement, a photo showing a promotional banner that was claimed to have set up at one of the show's preliminary auditions began to circulate online. The banner in question revealed Liu as part of the coaching lineup, together with the other three coaches who have all been confirmed to join the show. With this, Liu was once again rumoured to be joining the show to fill the final seat on the coaching panel. Lu once again refuted the claim, stating that the promotional banner is "fake", and the team has yet to finalise on the selection of the final coach.[5] However, despite the constant denial from Lu, Liu was announced on 19 May as the fourth coach to join the show, via one of the show's promotional video.[6] Harlem Yu was therefore confirmed to have left the show.[7]

Up till the airing of the premiere episode, it was not revealed who would take on the hosting role for the second season. It was previously rumoured that Li Yong would not return for his second season and be replaced by Shen Tao, a host from Zhejiang Television.[8] On 14 July, Hu Qiaohua was revealed as the host on the premiere episode for the season, with Li exiting the show. The thirteenth and fourteenth episodes were hosted by Shen and Yi Yi.

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The taping of the blind auditions began on 5 June and ended on 20 July. In the blind auditions, the coaches are to recruit nine artists to form a team of their own. Coaches may also recruit more than nine artists during the blind auditions, but to ensure equal representation across all the teams, they are required to cut their team down to nine artists before moving on to the Round-Robin Battle rounds. At the end of the blind auditions, Jay Chou and Na Ying each recruited nine artists to their teams, while 12 and 13 artists joined the teams of Eason Chan and Liu Huan respectively. Therefore, a total of seven artists (three from Team Eason and four from Team Liu Huan) were eliminated by their coaches and did not advance to the Round-Robin Battle rounds.

This season saw the introduction of the team badges and flags, which are specially designed by the coaches themselves. When an artist is defaulted or elected to join a coach's team, the respective coach's team flag would be lowered on stage, with the coach going forward to present the artist with the team badge as a signification of their addition to the team. The coach's respective victory songs ("谢谢侬" for Chan, "春暖花开" for Na, "千万次的问" for Liu, and "霍元甲" for Chou) would also be played in the background.

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The post-blind auditions stage of the competition kicked off with the round-robin Battle rounds, a competition format modified from the Cross Fighting rounds featured in the previous season. Dubbed as the "six-dimensional round-robin battles", the competition would see all four coaches going head-to-head against one another in the all-play-all format, with each coach facing off with every other coach in separate Battle rounds. In each round, the two coaches involved would randomly pick an artist from their personal team. The two selected artists would then perform and receive votes of approval from a 51-person panel. The artist with the most votes in each Battle rounds would advance to the Playoffs, while the other would be eliminated. The eliminated artist would lose their personal team badge and had to pass it on to a surviving team member. The team flag of the winning artist would then be lowered on stage with the team's victory song playing in the background.

Each coach would be allowed to save one losing artist from their team by pressing the button on their chair before the artist leaves the stage. The saved artists would then perform again in the "coach's save" round, with the one receiving the most votes moving on to the Playoffs. Coach's saves that are not used by the coaches by the end of the three-week round-robin Battles would be forfeited.

The round-robin Battle rounds were taped on 7, 8, and 13 August.

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The Top 19 performed in the Playoff rounds for a spot in the finals. The format of the Playoff rounds for this season was reverted to the one used for the first three seasons of The Voice of China, which saw the remaining artists competing against their fellow team members instead of artists from other teams. At the end of the Playoffs, each coach will crown one artist as their team winner, who will later represent them in the finals. Coach Eason Chan crowned two team winners, instead of one, as he had the most artists (seven) competing in the Playoffs. The competition was split into two rounds — the Knockouts and the Final Showdown.

In the Knockout rounds, the teams would be split into groups of two (or three for one of Team Eason's Knockout rounds). Each Knockout pairing will see the artists competing against each other via duet performances with celebrity guests. The two artists will then receive votes of approval from a 51-person panel. The other three non-competitive coaches were also given two votes each, which they have to cast for one of the artists in the knockout pairing. The artist with the most votes will advance to the Final Showdown, while the other would be eliminated.

In the Final Showdown, the remaining artists will perform a solo song against their fellow team member. Similar to the Knockout rounds, the artists will receive votes of approval from a 51-person panel at the end of the performances. On top of the votes given by the panel, their respective coaches were also given 50 votes each, which they have to allocate to their own remaining artists at their discretion. The artist with the most votes will be crowned as the team winner and advance to the finals, while the other would be eliminated.

The Playoff rounds were taped on 29 August, 12, 13, and 14 September for Team Na Ying, Team Eason, Team Jay, and Team Liu Huan respectively.

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The Top 5 performed live in a two-part season finale on 8 October, held at the Beijing National Stadium. In the first round of the competition, the five finalists performed a duet with their coach, and a solo song. Based on the public votes received from the live audience at the end of the first round, the bottom three artists with the fewest votes would be eliminated.

The final two artists would then sing their winner's song before a 101-person panel and live audience, who will vote for the winner at the end of the performances. Every member of the panel would be entitled to one vote, and the total number of votes received by the artists from the panel and live audience would be converted into percentage points accordingly. The artist who received the highest number of points would be announced as the winner.