Blake Shelton just can't tell the truth when it comes to The Voice Blind Auditions!
On day two of season 20, the coaches settled in to hear more hopeful singers, including 19-year-old Gean Garcia, who is something of a musical legacy. "I'm very appreciative of the path my father has paved for me," said Gean, whose father, Juan, is a Latin Christian artist who has a large fanbase in South America, "and with that I will make my own legacy."
Gean wowed the coaches by showing off an impressive range in his cover of Kodaline's "All I Want" -- Kelly Clarkson's jaw dropped when she saw the performer behind the falsetto -- but his talent did lead to some contentious moments on the panel, particularly, when Nick Jonas realized he had been blocked.
"I thought they were gonna play nice," Nick said when he finally saw the ominous red letters in front of his chair. "Turns out, Blake's a bully."
"I didn't even realize you got blocked!" Blake claimed, though John Legend pointed out he was the only one who turned before Nick and could have thrown the block.
"If I did, it was an accident," Blake covered as his fellow coaches groaned. "It's only because I'm that passionate about your voice."
See the full audition below:
Ultimately, after the dust had settled, Kelly praised Gean's voice as "beautifully broken" and "melancholy" (which Blake had to Google).
"You moved me, that's the whole point," she told the young singer. "I think you're gonna go far, no matter what team you end up on."
The pitch worked, and Gean chose Team Kelly to continue on! "I'm looking for an artist who sounds unique," Kelly marveled, "and there is no one on this season who sounds like Gean."
As The Voice kicks off its 20th season, and prepares to celebrate its 10th anniversary, ET sat down with the coaches, who all noted that there's still something thrilling about the show's "captivating" blind audition process that fans love to watch.
"It's all about the talent and not the aesthetic, right off the bat," Kelly explained. "It's a really interesting thing to just hear something and be moved by it and turn around and go, 'What?!'"
In fact, the performer and talk show host shared that the Blinds for season 20 "were my favorite Blinds to shoot. Like, it was so much fun. I literally kept coming home, thinking on my drive home, 'I can't believe I get paid to just go and hang out and it's really fun.'"
"We're so fortunate we get to do what we love to do and we're so fortunate that we have art as such as an outlet for us creatively and emotionally," John said, also sharing his gratitude for the crew that makes their production a possibility amid the COVID-19 pandemic. "It's not just a job, because we actually enjoy doing it. It's fun to be around our coworkers and we get to make music with people who have dreams and are inspired and that's exciting."
The Voice airs Mondays at 8 p.m. PT/ET and Tuesdays at 9 p.m. PT/ET on NBC. See more from the upcoming season in the video below.
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