Blake Shelton has his team ready for the live shows on The Voice Season 12 as last night the Knockout Rounds wrapped up.
Blake had four artists that had not competed in the Knockout Rounds heading into last night’s episode of The Voice. That would be resolved by the end of the show Monday (4/10).
To begin with Blake paired two young ladies that I believe could be contenders for the win. This was a mistake in my opinion. He should have positioned them against others where they both could have had a chance to both advance. That’s just my opinion and I could be wrong, after all Blake has won the show five out of the 11 seasons so far, but I digress…
The two ladies I speak of are Lauren Duski and Andrea Thomas. Andrea gave herself a large challenge by picking the Faith hill song “Cry” for her performance. She met the challenge head on and showed she could handle the song quite well during her performance below.
Lauren took a different approach by choosing to show her emotional side with the song “When You Say Nothing At All” originally recorded by Keith Whitley and remade by Alison Krauss. While the performance did not have the soaring vocals that Andrea showcased, you could definitely feel Lauren’s performance of the song below.
In the end Blake made the choice to reward Lauren for putting all that emotion into the song and displaying it for all to see as she advanced to the live shows and Andrea was eliminated from the competition.
Next Blake paired a couple of young hopefuls in Aliyah Moulden (15) and Caroline Sky (16). While the two young girls are close in age, their performances were generations apart. Caroline stayed true to her roots and picked the Etta James classic “At Last” for her Knockout Round performance. Her physical age did not match the vocal ability she was able to show on the classic song below.
Aliyah decided to show her coach some versatility by choosing to perform the more recent country hit song “Before He Cheats” by Carrie Underwood for this stage of competition. The other coaches pointed out that even though her age reminds us that she likely knows very little about the subject matter in the song like “shooting whiskey,” she performed the song with conviction that kept us from thinking about that.
I don’t know if it was the fact that Aliyah picked a country song for her country music coach or if it was something else that Blake heard in the performances, but he declared Aliyah the winner of the round which meant Caroline was eliminated from the competition.
Blake Shelton has his team ready for the live shows (as do all of the coaches). The members of Team Blake heading to the live shows for season 12 of The Voice are pictured at the top of the page and are (L-R) Aaliyah Rose (stolen from Team Gwen), Casi Joy, TSoul, coach Blake Shelton, Lauren Duski, Aliyah Moulden.
You can see all of the teams that will be competing in the live shows on The Voice Season 12 at the show’s official website here.
Tonight (4/11) is a special episode of The Voice Season 12 that highlights the road to the live shows for the top 20 starting at 7 PM central time (8 PM eastern time).
Next Monday, April 17th the live shows for season 12 begin on The Voice with viewers getting to vote on which artists will remain on the show each week.
By: Buck Stevens
P.S. Just for fun…
