I don't know if any of you watches "The Voice", but I have enjoyed the audition segments the past few seasons. Not so much the actual battles once the competition begins...at least until this year.
A week ago I saw a promo for the first battle and noted that two singers I had really liked in auditions were being pitted against one another in a battle round. Both were on Team Cee Lo (Cee Lo Green).
I wondered why Cee Lo was pairing the two up since I considered them two of his best and he could only carry one forward. During the rehearsals, the song Cee Lo picked for them was Mariah Carey's "Vision of Love" which he thought suited both their voices. When the rehearsal began it was apparent that Amanda Brown was going to blow everyone away with her vocal. Cee Lo then expressed concern about Trevin Hunte whom Cee Lo pegged as the one who could win it all. Amanda was holding her own against him, and the unspoken truth was that Cee Lo considered Amanda expendable (apparently). At any rate, the "battle" went down and it was a stunning performance by the pair who complemented one another beautifully. Cee Lo was distraught and the other judges were poised to exercise this season's new feature -- the "steal". This was introduced to help further vocalists who -- in such pairings as this one -- deserved to continue on. In the past, the loser went home...but subsequent pairings would yield singers nowhere near as good as the one(s) who went home.
Thus it was that Cee Lo, because he wanted to be part of Trevin's journey to overcome his shyness and self-doubt, selected Trevin. All three remaining judges buzzed in for the steal and Adam Levine won the hand of Amanda Brown.
This is the battle performance, which I think is brilliant:
Vision of Love The sad part was that Amanda knew Cee Lo had not considered her anything other than expendable when he matched her with Trevin. He realized it, too, and agonized over his choice. After Amanda picked Adam to be her coach she graciously said she was sad to not be working with Cee Lo any longer but she felt things happen for a reason and she's looking forward to working with Adam.
