Talk show hosts have been big fans of making celebrities take on fun and silly challenges over the past few weeks. We’ve seen Kevin Hart and Josh Gad get coaxed into putting together a dance off, and Jimmy Fallon recently got two of the judges from NBC’s primetime hit The Voice to join him in a lip sync battle on The Tonight Show. You can check out Blake Shelton and Gwen Stefani duking it out with Fallon, below.
The basic rules of Jimmy Fallon’s lip sync battles state that celebrities must take turns lip syncing portions of famous songs. The contestants don’t know which songs the other contestants have picked, and everyone gets two chances at wowing the audience. This time around, a possibly tipsy Blake Shelton goes first, singing “Puttin’ On The Ritz” by Taco. Whatever he was doing prior to the battle must have worked, as the singer also produces a masterful tap dance at the end of the song.
Fallon has to adjust the mike way down for his rendition of “Burn” by Ellie Goulding. Then, Gwen Stefani actually calls Fallon “Jimmy Kimmel” before busting out lip syncing moves to Carly Rae Jepson’s “Call Me, Maybe.” Weirdly, she uses her own dance moves for the bubbly pop song. It’s like watching two worlds colliding and I have no idea how to feel about it. The next round involves Shelton singing “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” by Starship, Fallon singing “Cocktails For Two” and Stefani closing things off with “Endless Love” by Lionel Richie and Diana Ross. Humorously enough, she takes the Lionel Richie part and Shelton joins her to lip sync the Ross part. Laughter ensues.
This isn’t the first time Fallon has had a lip syncing battle on his show. In the past, he’s competed with the likes of Paul Rudd, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Stephen Merchant. However, I’m not sure any lip syncing battle will ever top Emma Stone doing DJ Khaled’s “All I Do Is Win” on The Tonight Show. Now, that’s what I call crushing it.
Fallon’s always been pretty fond of games on late night, even before taking over as The Tonight Show host, and I suspect there will be even more lip syncing battles in his future. You can catch NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on weeknights at 11:35 p.m. ET.
