Aguilera sings praises of The Voice
Ratings are up, it won the Emmy and pop icon’s happy to be back
Christina Aguilera is floating on air, hitting a high note on this early fall afternoon in Los Angeles. She’s back on The Voice, alongside fellow returnee Cee Lo Green, after taking time out to tour and promote a thennew album, the technopop-driven Lotus.
A vocal virtuoso and pop icon once dubbed the “Voice of her Generation” — she’s just 32 — she has a new single, We Remain, from the soon-to-be-released film The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and she knows, to borrow a lyric from We Remain, it hasn’t been for nothing.
The Voice opened its fifth season on Sept. 23rd, the night after scoring an upset win at the Emmys, winning the award for outstanding reality competition program and stopping the seemingly unstoppable win streak by The Amazing Race dead in its tracks.
Ratings have spiked — the Sept. 30 instalment drew nearly two million viewers to CTV on one of the most competitive, crowded nights of the TV week — and in the U.S., The Voice is now the buzz show of the evening.
Its week-to-week numbers have held steady — unheard of in broadcast television — among viewers ages 18 to 49, and it routinely trends on Twitter, where Aguilera’s Twitter feed (@xtina) is pushing north of 9.5 million followers and her Voice hashtag (#TeamXtina) is putting #TheXFactor to shame.
Aguilera is quick to admit, though, that she felt like a neophyte when she originally signed on to The Voice. “I didn’t know what really to expect,” she said this past summer in Los Angeles. It took producer Mark Burnett to talk her down off the ceiling.
As artists, “we know what it feels like to be up there and in that make-or-break hot seat,” she explained. “It’s interesting to me because what the show really does is it turns that around, and puts us in the hot seat at a certain point.”
Aguilera made sure to watch The Voice on TV while she was touring, and to see it from the point-of-view of a viewer. She was surprised by what she saw, and surprised that she was surprised. She was there, after all.
“I was, like, ‘Oh my God, I can see why people like this.’ I was, like, ‘Who’s going to push a button?’ I was, like, ‘Who’s going to use their save to save that person?’ It was cool and fun to see that. Sitting in the chair, you’re kind of in a bubble, because you’re living in the moment, and you don’t get to see what it looks like from the outside.
“It’s nice to see that I’m part of a show that honestly stays true to the talent, and makes sure their stories are heard.”
The on-air version of The Voice that viewers see at home creates the impression that the judge-mentors know the contestants’ backstories, because of the short, biographical videos that precede each audition performance. In fact, the judges know nothing about the singers until afterwards, Aguilera said, and then only if they choose the singer to be part of their team.
The important part of the show — learning about the singers’ influences and how to best help them moving forward — happens offscreen. “This show is basically a platform for them to do whatever they want to do after the show ends,” she said.
Aguilera got her own start as a child singer in The Mickey Mouse Club. She was too young to feel fear or know what was at stake, she says now. She was “the little girl with the big voice.” While growing up in her native Pittsburgh, she sang the U.S. national anthem at the occasional Pittsburgh Penguins hockey game, but life threw her some hard hits.
Her parents divorced when she was still a child. That toughened her, but she always had the big voice to fall back on. During Pittsburgh’s sweep of the Chicago Blackhawks during the 1991-92 Stanley Cup finals, an 11-year-old Aguilera performed The Star-Spangled Banner at both Pens home games.
“It wasn’t until years later that I learned you have to take in every experience,” Aguilera said.
“Knowing that affected me on a personal level even more than it did on a musical level. It was important for me to step away from the camera and remember what my intention is now, at this point in my life, as a mom, as a woman re-entering the business. “I’m approaching it now with fresh eyes.
“I’m there to be a coach, and to share my experiences. All of us on the show, we’ve done a lot in our careers. As coaches, we don’t necessarily need to win — it’s more about rooting for our singers to win.”
Aguilera doesn’t regret taking a break from The Voice, but she’s happy to be back.
The Voice airs Mondays on CTV and NBC at 9 p.m., and Tuesdays on CTV Two and NBC, also at 9.