Blake Shelton Scores Two Tennessee Singers on ‘The Voice’
Monday (Mar. 12) night ushered in the final week of Blind Auditions for the 14th season of The Voice, in which coaches Blake Shelton, Adam Levine, Alicia Keys and American Idol alum/newbie Kelly Clarkson compete to figure out who will make up their respective teams.
Country's rep Shelton has already collected quite a few characters for his team, some of them rather surprising, but this night belonged to Team Adam. The Maroon 5 frontman, who'd had a rather slow start to building his team, scooped up four contestants this evening. Meanwhile. Shelton, who had only three slots open (Levine had six), picked up two more, both being rather safe choices that likely surprised nobody in the viewing audience.
The first of Shelton's catches was 27-year-old Bransen Ireland from Fairview, Tenn., an Apple store employee who chose to cover Don Williams' 1982 genre-fluid "Tulsa Time." This resulted in a small battle between Levine and Shelton, who both turned for him; Levine noting that it would be a fun shock if he was chosen, while Shelton pragmatically warned that hard work would be in order on his team. In a decision that definitely did not shock, Ireland went with Shelton.
Shelton's second score was also a Tennessee boy, and also resulted in a little run-in with Levine; namely 28-year-old Jordan Kirkdorffer from Nashville. Both men turned for his version of Brett Young's "In Case You Didn't Know" (which, oddly enough, was a selection on American Idol this same night as well). Levine seemed to know he was sunk as soon as the vocalist noted he was from Nashville, and indeed, Kirkdorffer made the predictable selection and joined Team Blake.
Tune in Mondays and Tuesdays for recaps of Season 14 of The Voice, and we'll see how things shake out.
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