Spoilers below for The Voice, Night 5 of the Blind Auditions.
The Voice continued for a fifth night of Blind Auditions on Monday, and with the first round of competition coming to an end, the judges got extra picky about who they turned their chairs for, and extra feisty when trying to win over the artists they were interested in. But the celebrity coaches weren’t the only ones on fire, as Jordan Matthew Young gave Kelly Clarkson a hard pass after she enlisted the help of Gwen Stefani to try to keep the country contestant off of Blake Shelton’s team. Well, she sort of enlisted Stefani's help.
After Jordan Matthew Young’s audition with the country classic “I’m No Stranger to the Rain,” which inspired chair turns from Kelly Clarkson, Nick Jonas and Blake Shelton, Clarkson showed a video of Gwen Stefani clips from the pop diva’s Voice coaching days, edited together to make it sound like Shelton’s bride-to-be was steering the contestant away from Team Blake. Young rejected Team Kelly outright, saying he was only considering Jonas or Shelton. Watch the audition unravel below and see for yourself:
Ouch, Kelly Clarkson might need some ointment for that burn! Now, Jordan Matthew Young and the celebrity coaches — especially Blake Shelton — all seemed to find the Gwen Stefani mashup hilarious, so revealing the talk-show host as his third-place choice probably wasn’t a direct result of Clarkson’s antics. Country singers mostly gravitate toward Shelton anyway, and it’s likely Young went into the audition hoping to work with the cowboy.
But this was another occurrence on the reality competition show — like the coaches using their Blocks to keep contestants off certain teams — where parts of The Voice that are thrown in for humor might end up working against the coaches who use them. It seems to me like artists might be beginning to lose trust in the coaches who fight to keep them away from the superstar they’d prefer to work with, just as we’ve seen contestants this season choose to go with a different coach than the one who used their Block to try to get them.
Whether this was part of a larger trend or just one artist’s way of narrowing down his choices, Kelly Clarkson and John Legend’s faces when Jordan Matthew Young eliminated Clarkson from contention was priceless. She laughed it off, and no hard feelings seemed to exist between the two, but you could tell that comment stung, because, as the EGOT winner pointed out, the contestants don’t usually eliminate a coach before making their final choice.
The teams are almost full, and thank goodness, because six nights of Blind Auditions are a lot, and I’m ready for the Battle Rounds, to get to know this season’s talent a little better. Only one spot remains on each coach’s team, so it’ll be fun to see what genre of artist each picks to round out the competition. The Voice returns next Monday for one last night of Blind Auditions. Tune in at 8 p.m. ET on NBC, and in the meantime, check out our Spring Premiere Schedule to see what shows are starting this week.
