S.A. singer wins battle on ‘The Voice’
“Shake your hips, mija.” That’s the advice San Antonio singer Rudi Gutierrez says she always received from her late grandmother, whom she called her best friend and No. 1 supporter.
But it was the way she controlled her powerful voice that won the night for Gutierrez — who performs under the single name Rudi — on Monday’s battles episode of “The Voice.”
Gutierrez, 28, defeated her Team Gwen teammate Joslynn Rose, a 16-year-old from Lake Benton, Minn., in a battle that had them performing a duet of the Evanescence song “My Immortal.”
It was the first time the altrock hit sung by Amy Lee had been performed on “The Voice,” according to the singers’ coach, Gwen Stefani.
Both singers described it as a song about loss, which is why Gutierrez shared and drew on memories of her beloved grandmother, whom she said she “lost a few years ago,” during rehearsals.
Both before and after the battle, Stefani praised Gutierrez, a pop R&B singer, for the restraint she showed in performing a song outside her genre.
“She was so tasteful within the genre of this song,” she said. “She could have tried to put all these runs all over it. She just did enough that we were reminded that she knows how to do that.”
The judges who expressed a preference after the battle — John Legend and Reba Mcentire — both chose Gutierrez. And Niall Horan’s description of her performance showed he was leaning toward her, too.
“That was phenomenal,” he said. “Pretty much flawless. It felt like you were climbing a mountain the whole way through the song and kept going and going and going.”
In the end, Stefani said she chose the contestant “who’s ready for what’s to come in the competition.”
For her part, Gutierrez said she’s “very lucky to have Gwen on my side in this dream.”
Next up for her are the threeway knockouts, which pit three teammates against each other, each singing a song of their choice.
Maybe Gutierrez will pick a song that lets her shake her hips.