Now that Zain has been eliminated.....and some others worth noting

Zain was never going to win this show. I’d have been extremely disappointed if he did. But I won’t lie — with him gone, this show is a lot less entertaining now. As a casual viewer who’s watched the entire show so far, Zain was among the few performers I actually looked forward to listening to, primarily because of his song choices and his actual personality and stage presence.

That is not to say the other contestants aren’t good — in fact, they’re tons better than Zain, which is why I never expected him to win. But in my personal opinion, what we’re left with now is...… a bit boring when it comes to song choices and variety.

Zain:
In the past few weeks, I’ve seen so many comments and posts insulting and degrading him for their previous performances and even their past lives. I’ve also seen a lot of undue comparison, which is what I’m going to refrain from doing, since I see no reason to bring others down.

From what little I’ve seen of Zain, I’m sure he’s likely not the best person in the world. I also agree he might have overstayed his time on this show. However, he’s also not like the other contestants in that he does have an actual personality, which he doesn’t shy away from.

Everyone claims that Zain never went outside of his genre, but if you look at the songs he sang, they were all somewhat different:

1. Lai Beqadraa Naal Yaari — fairly decent performance and a differentiated version
2. Deewanai Chalain Sath — a breath of fresh air after listening to only ghazals in the previous rounds
3. Keh Dena — atrocious and elimination-worthy. Had he been eliminated here, I would have completely understood
4. Mast Qalandar — fairly decent again
5. Mehndi Ki Raat — probably one of his best. A key criticism here was that he sounded like Jawaad, which I can’t understand — since when is it a problem to sound like the singer who sang the original song?
6. Purani Jeans — another good performance and sufficiently different from the original
7. Dhonla — a bit of a copy-paste, but again, many competitors sing the same genre and nearly the same kind of song and get away with it
8. Kal Shab Dekha — probably one of his best again

Another thing I was very disappointed by was people taking videos from his past — or from each episode or other exclusive clips — and using those to further insult him. We don’t know how people evolve over time — how their personalities and even singing abilities change. And what bearing does someone’s past have on their current singing and position in this show?

Mehtab:
I saw a lot of comments asking for Mehtab’s elimination, potentially because of his accent and how it interacted with his singing. Mehtab, at least based on official feedback, also never really had a bad performance, barring maybe one exception. He tackled multiple songs and also developed a stage presence that was far better than many others on the show.

He was clearly a simple person with limited exposure and likely came from a small town. Instead of building him up, I saw lots of people in this sub trying to bring him down, which was very disappointing.

Waqar:
Another performer who goes under the radar on this sub. Waqar has nailed every song he’s sung and has often gone outside his comfort zone and genre. Yet there’s barely any mention of him here because he doesn’t fit into the mold that we expect everyone to be like.

There is something to be said about how individuals on this sub have united to promote their favorites while also putting others down. People have wanted certain individuals to win or be in the top five for many weeks. They’ve called for others to be eliminated or for their flaws to be ignored so they can stay in the running. They’ve been fine with singers performing the same genre and type of songs repeatedly.

There is — and has been — blatant hypocrisy in this group, but it seems to be acceptable if it’s those few people who you want to win.