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What It's Really Like to Attend Blind Auditions for The Voice
We have the inside scoop on what it's like seeing those big red chairs IRL!
For 13 years and 26 seasons, NBC’s The Voice has been one of the few competition reality shows able to reinvent itself through the caliber of the Contestants and the chemistry between the Coaches. Be it Blake Shelton and Adam Levine’s hilarious needling of one another, everyone teasing Kelly Clarkson’s chattiness, or John Legend’s heartfelt wooing of singers from the other Coaches, there’s been a seemingly infinite array of personalities that’s kept the competition singing series feeling fresh.
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The Season 26 Coaches are Reba McEntire, Gwen Stefani, and first-timers Snoop Dogg and Michael Bublé. During the first production days for the Blind Auditions, NBC Insider was invited to the Universal Studios backlot in Los Angeles to watch the four superstars in action. Here's what happened:
An empty stage awaits
It’s almost 11 a.m. inside the massive The Voice soundstage where the infamous swiveling chairs look across a very shiny floor in anticipation of the first Blind Audition Artists to belt their hearts out. However, right now it’s just an empty stage. Aside from some stand-ins sitting in the Coaches' chairs to test their spinnability, this is the calm before the storm.
Inside the VIP area set aside for families of Artists and Coaches, we’re nestled in the back watching two huge LCD monitors with the camera feeds that the director is testing in the unseen control room.
On the far end of the stage, there’s the faint tones of a bass being tuned and a keyboard being played as the live musicians warm up for their day of backing up Blind Auditions. About 40 minutes later, the audience of about 150 people begin to file into the stage and take their seats to the left and right of the main floor. The announcer reminds everyone about basic safety measures (including earthquake procedures) and hypes the crowd up. Of course, he reminds people to keep their excitement off social media for now—we can't have spoilers out there!
Here come the Coaches
At 12:30 p.m., McEntire enters, then Stefani, followed by Bublé and Snoop. A huge applause welcomes them all to their seats where they get situated and ready to tape. A warm-up comedian, Reuben, gets people even more loose for what's about to happen. The excitement is palpable.
RELATED: Michael Bublé Tearing Up to Snoop Dogg About Getting to Meet Him Is So Tender
Showing them how it’s done, The Voice’s musical director, Paul Mirkovich, comes out to the main stage for a final sound check with his band that’s hidden in the shadows down stage. He unleashes a fabulous version of Journey’s “Separate Ways” to which Stefani and Snoop immediately turn their chairs, while McEntire follows and then Bublé.
By 12:45 p.m., it's showtime.
Those first day jitters
For the rest of the day, the rotation is as follows: A new Artist walks onto the stage with the chairs all turned away. They’ll start singing with the band that's playing like a well-oiled machine for the performer. From there, it’s all up to the Coaches to respond to what they’re hearing, and for Snoop and Bublé, it’s about finding their groove on who is worthy of their turn. By song’s end — regardless of the chair reaction — all four Coaches will give their feedback to the performer. Kindness is the pervading mood.
“My strategy was to look, listen and learn,” Snoop Dogg said. “First of all, I'm glad they didn't make me go first. They made me go, like, second or third, so I was able to watch the other Coaches and see some of the things that they did. And then once I understood that, I could add some Snoop-ism to the situation, as far as my conversation and my lingo, to the Artist to try to get them to come home.”
Bublé admitted that convincing Artists tom join his team was a bit tricky at first.
“Honestly, it's not what I'm best at. It's hard to advocate for yourself in that way,” he said. “And when I did, I tried to do it with humor, to be self-deprecating and to hope that you could break down barriers that way. It would have been harder for me, I think in other seasons where there was a different energy, like more of an edge of Coaches kind of fighting each other. But I was trying to be genuine, to tell people that I might be able to help them, and use humor, again, just to break down those walls. Because my dad always said: If you're good, you don't have to tell people.”
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Stefani said she was just like Bublé when she first started but learned the art of the self-sell from Adam Levine. “Man, I learned from the best,” she laughed, remembering her former Coach. (Levine returns for The Voice in Season 27). “It’s funny, because it's just so different from what we're used to. But then you get to be in this other position of being a Coach, where you get to look back at your career and think, ‘Gosh, how did I do that? Like, let me share that with them, because maybe I can help them do it too.’ So it is just super fulfilling…and weird.”
McEntire, who starts her third season as a Coach, now has a solid philosophy when it comes to spinning her chair. “It’s not how they look or how they sound, it's what do we feel when they're performing?” she said. “Are we inspired? Do we feel something? I will turn in a heartbeat for somebody that makes me feel something—cry, or laugh—but I've got to feel something. A lot of people can sing. How many people can touch your heart when they sing? That's what we're looking for, and it's an eclectic group of entertainers and singers that we've chosen. It's maybe not the fanciest, or maybe the youngest, but it's who touched our hearts.”
Season 26 of The Voice premieres Monday, September 23 at 8/7c on NBC and streams next day on Peacock. The show will air twice a week, with Tuesday episodes, starting October 8.
