The Voice Artists: It’s Blake vs. the Rest

There are battle lines drawn in every season of The Voice, and with the Blind Auditions almost over, it seems like this year, it’s going to be Country Idol Blake vs. The Rest of the Coaches.

I’m not even kidding here.

Every year, there’s this idea that all country artists choose Blake. And though that notion is almost always true, what that fact fails to underscore is this: Blake Shelton is really, really selective when it comes to country artists. Much more than when it comes to people singing in any other genre.

The bare truth also leaves this one small detail: for all that most country artists chose Blake, somehow, he always ends up with a pretty eclectic team. We have no idea how he does it. Maybe it’s because he’s won a lot and artists seem to gravitate towards that. Perhaps it’s because he seems like a fun coach. Either way, all joking aside, Blake seems to know what he’s doing. And this year seems to be going exactly like he planned.

Chris Crump is the perfect example of that. A pop artist who chose Blake, Chris was very clear on his strategy when he and the other artists spoke with reporters recently: “I was like, ‘well, I want to be different, you know, because if I’m on Team Pharrell I can get — there’s going to be a lot of artists like me or Adam or Gwen.’ So I thought, maybe with Blake I would be with some different people and maybe [have] a chance to stand out a little bit more.”

None of this means the other coaches weren’t pulling all the stops. They were. And so were the contestants. In fact, Jubal, of the duo Jubal and Amanda (who picked Team Pharrell) had a plan from the beginning. He was going to propose. And when both Pharrell and Gwen Stefani turned, “it was just a matter of sort of waiting back and letting the thing unfold. I mean, I knew one way or another that I was going to do it before we picked our coach and when, you know, when they started asking us about if we were a couple, hey, it was just perfect.”

It kind of was.

Because the coaches might want this. They might fight for it. But it’s the contestant’s lives who are changing. Korin Bukowski (of Team Gwen), who’d had people telling her she couldn’t do it for a very long time, talked about how thankful she was to be in this position, and both Victor Kiraly (Team Adam) and Krista Hughes (Team Blake) discussed how surreal it was to have to pick between all four judges.

But it was really Morgan Frazier (Team Blake) who got to us, when she revealed the following: “I didn’t even know I was going to, like, try out or anything like that. And I had a dream about doing it (the song “I want you to want me”) on the show.”

The strategies seem clear. Blake is going mostly country (like always), Adam is looking for the most variety possible, Pharrell is selective, and Gwen makes her decisions not just with her ears, but with her heart.

But the artists? Well, they’re here for the game, of course, but increasingly, they’re here for something else. As Taylor Dickerson (Team Blake) so clearly stated: “I have a purpose in this world and my purpose in this world is to make people smile, make people happy… with my voice.”

And that’s, after all, the name of the show.

The Voice airs Mondays at 8/7c and Tuesdays at 9/8c on NBC.