The four coaches of The Voice — Blake Shelton, Adam Levine, Christina Aguilera and Cee-Lo Green — are perhaps the unlikeliest quarter to ever share a stage.
And the truth is, they didn’t always click in the several performances they gave to open or close episodes of the show. The result was about as disjointed as you’d expect it to be.
But this performance, of Cee-Lo’s big hit ‘Crazy’ (which he recorded as part of Gnarls Barkley) was a case where the four coaches really meshed.
Ah, Blake Shelton… the cute, mischievous southern gentleman who charmed the socks off of everybody who got within 100 yards of The Voice. As talented as Dia Frampton is, I have no doubt that she made it to second place in large part because Shelton was her coach.
Prior to the show, I knew Blake Shelton primarily as Miranda Lambert’s boyfriend (and then husband). And liking her as much as I do, I knew any man worthy of her would have to be pretty special. I’d also seen him co-host a country awards show in his typical charming fashion.
Christina Aguilera is the artist who was most in need of image rehabilitation before the debut of The Voice.
In the previous year or so she’d made headlines for splitting with her husband, flubbing the lyrics of the national anthem at the Super Bowl and tripping onstage at the Grammys. And her most recent album, Bionic, was a high-profile flop.
On The Voice, she didn’t really do herself any favors. Her teasing banter with her co-hosts, Adam Levine in particular, was often more awkward than funny and at times she seemed to have a bit of a cruel streak.
Our second Voice coach, Cee-Lo Green, has had a hell of a year.
Previously best known for his stint with Gnarls Barkley (specifically the smash hit ‘Crazy’), Cee-Lo lit up the airwaves again in late 2010 with the infectious ‘Fuck You‘ (released as ‘Forget You’ on radio).
Ever the showman, he teamed up with Gwyneth Paltrow for a performance of the song on the Grammys that saw him dressed in a yellow turkey suit alongside a chorus of muppets.
My next batch of posts won’t be as timely as they would have been a few weeks back, but I’ve wanted to do a series of posts related to the NBC show The Voice, so better late than never. This week I’ll feature songs by each of the four coaches and next week I’ll highlight music by the contestants.
The Voice is the first of the millennium’s many talent-based reality shows that I’ve watched, and the reason it appealed to me more than the American Idols and America’s Got Talents of the world is its use of coaches as opposed to judges.
