Image Credit: Art Streiber/NBC

And we’re live! The atmosphere last night was electrifying. To me, there’s nothing more exciting than live television, and we unveiled this new set that was big and bright and enormous. It felt like the Starship Enterprise, it was so huge. And the crowd was gigantic, filled with anticipation for these live shows, which are just so much fun to do. It’s just like one big party. Backstage, we have this trailer village, we call it, where all of the coaches and myself and Christina Milian hang out together. It’s just like camp! The whole atmosphere at the beginning of the live shows was just electrifying. You walk backstage and you see Sera Hill’s dancers rubbing oil on their bodies, or you hear Chris Mann’s warm-up (which is so loud, of course, and echoes throughout the whole room), or you find Moses Stone stretching. There’s a lot of last minute prep, and it’s all really fun. It’s such a circus… in a good way! READ FULL STORY »

Image Credit: Art Streiber/NBC

I loved the first battle last night. Those were two great guys paired together, and of course it was sad to see one go. James Massone has that great “How do you like them apples?” personality, and that storyline of true Boston grit and his family supporting his pursuit of music. And then WADE stole my heart, too. When we met him, he was a real student of music, listening to his iPod the whole day, singing Al Green. A little glimpse behind the scenes: when James and WADE went to rehearse, neither of them could sing “True Colors” at first. Confidence was such an issue with James and WADE at the beginning, and Cee Lo even had to sing the song for them during rehearsal! WADE idolizes Cee Lo, so when he was in that mentorship process with Cee Lo and Babyface, he couldn’t sing in front of them. They had him get his confidence up by turning him around and having him sing “Love and Happiness” by Al Green towards the wall. That’s how they started working it out with him.

And the battle, of course, brought Cee Lo to tears. That was a great moment in the show that I think shows how much our coaches really care about each person on their team, and how difficult it is to make these tough decisions about cutting people. Cee Lo’s not a guy who’s going to show that much emotion unless it’s 100 percent pure and organic, but he did last night. It was a great way to start the show, and a real testament to how difficult it is for the coaches to cut their teams. Our coaches are so into this show for all the right reasons, and sometimes it shows up like it did last night, in the form of Cee Lo crying. You just can’t make that stuff up. READ FULL STORY »

Image Credit: Art Streiber/NBC

There was a lot of ’80s love in the air last night! I had noticed that three out of the six songs were ’80s staples: we had a little Billy Ocean, a little Tina, and a little Pat Benatar. So the songs of the ’80s definitely helped narrow the fields down in the third battle round.

Pip and Nathan Parrett are really close friends, and Adam, of all of our coaches, specifically tells the producers of the show that he doesn’t want to know any personal information about his artists before he pairs them up. He likes to decide his battle pairings based only on the vocals of the blind auditions, so that’s definitely an interesting tactic for him. But even though he didn’t know any of the personal details about the artists, he ended up picking Nathan and Pip to go up against each other. I remember Pip killing it in the blind auditions, coming out with his bow tie and suspenders, yet wanting to be taken really seriously, so he can be something of a silent threat. But he surprised a lot of us, and now look how far he’s gone. He’s going to the live shows, which is great for him. READ FULL STORY »

Image Credit: Art Streiber/NBC

We’re in the heat of the battle rounds, which was on full display last night. There’s some fierce competition! It’s interesting to see how different battle pairings approach the battle round. Some people get super competitive, some people get inspired by each other and end up being really collaborative, and some people (like Sarah and Juliet) just seemed to have a great time. For the blog this week, I really wanted to try and focus on giving you guys more behind-the-scenes nuggets and a little more insight into what you don’t get to see on the show.

READ FULL STORY »