The Voice is three episodes into season 9, and the Blind Auditions are already delivering some strong performances by the contestants. With the coaches more than halfway through filling up their teams, there are only so many spots left. But what about the singers who have already joined their teams?
BuddyTV spoke with the advancing artists from the third night of auditions during a conference call. Jubal and Amanda relived the big proposal, with Jubal discussing how he pulled it all off — and did Amanda know he was about to pop the question? Plus, meet the three singers featured in the montage video and learn about their background and their experience on The Voice.
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Jubal and Amanda: Planning the Right Moment to Propose
The highlight of the night came when duo Jubal and Amanda went on stage for their Blind Audition. What seemed at first to be just another audition turned into a big milestone for the couple. Following their performance, Jubal got down on one knee and proposed — and Amanda said yes!
When asked how he went about planning for that moment, he said he “didn’t know if there would be another opportunity to do it on the show. And I felt like it was something that was already in the air; we were talking about this. It was pretty obvious when we started dating that that’s probably where this is going to go.” He went on to say, “You have this opportunity to do a Blind Audition, you wanna marry the girl anyway — why not? … I just didn’t see any downside to going for it.”
He felt that it was a better moment to pop the question before picking a coach because “once you pick the coach, the fanfare’s going to start and you’re going to get walked off stage, so [it’s better to do it] while you have control of the situation. And in that moment, that was it.”
Jubal continued, “I knew one way or another that we were going to do it before we picked our coach. And when they started asking us if we were a couple, it was just perfect. They threw me a softball,” to which Amanda replied, “And you ran with it.”
But how does Amanda feel about everything? “To pull that off on national television and to get that genuine response from me, that was pretty good,” she said. But she knew something was up already. During their performance, she was trying to feel out the energy between them: “Something is up with Jubal … and I was thinking, oh man, I hope he sticks with me through this thing. What’s going on?” But in the end, it all worked out.
As for the ring that’s now on Amanda’s finger, she told us she “had the design picked out for about a year, so it was out of sight, out of mind. I was so focused on the show; I wasn’t focused on that ring that would one day be custom-made. I didn’t know what he had been doing behind the scenes.”
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Meet the Montage Singers: Riley, Cassandra and Daria
The Voice doesn’t have time to show every Blind Audition in their entirety, so sometimes a few singers are packaged together into montages and viewers only get a quick peek at what their voices sound like. During episode three, those singers ended up being Riley Biederer, Cassandra Robertson and Daria Jazmin. Here’s a little bit about them:
Kelly Clarkson has had a big style impact on Riley’s music, which is why she chose to sing the original Idol winner’s song “Invincible.” “I’ve established myself as pretty pop, but I definitely in the last [few] years have grown into my style and myself,” she said. Riley is more pop/soul now.
Pharrell Williams was her number one choice for a coach, so everything ended up working out when he was the only coach to turn around for her. In fact, she didn’t realize at first that he was the one to turn. “I had some friends that went before me, and they told me, don’t focus on the chairs because it makes you nervous. … When he turned, I knew someone had turned, but I actually didn’t even know who it was [at first] because I wasn’t looking.”
Also included in the montage video was Cassandra Robertson. She went with “Ghost” by Ella Henderson as her audition song because she’s “a person of a very strong faith.” Explaining how the performance went, she said, “It was just really full of a lot of passion, a lot of emotion.” Adam Levine ended up being the sole coach to turn a chair for her.
In terms of her background, Cassandra has done “a lot of background singing for a couple of iconic artists earlier in my life. I am also classically trained.” And while she used to work as a worship pastor at megachurches, she has moved away from that lately because she’s been focusing more on music.
And Daria Jazmin was the final singer featured in the montage. To learn a little bit more about her, she shared that she performs with her three sisters. “They were the ones to push me to do this,” she revealed. Daria’s always wanted to meet Pharrell, and she’s thought about auditioning, so why not just go for it? She’s the baby of the family, being the youngest of four siblings, and The Voice was a great opportunity for her to do something on her own.
As for The Voice itself, Daria chose to sing Meghan Trainor’s “Dear Future Husband” because “I’ve always been a fan of her and that song is just a fun song; it shows off your vocal skills. It’s upbeat … so I thought it was a good fit for me.” She was shocked when three coaches — Pharrell, Gwen and Blake — turned for her. And incidentally, the order of who she preferred was Pharrell, Gwen, Blake and Adam, with Pharrell as the top choice. “It ended up working out perfectly.”
The Voice airs Mondays and Tuesdays at 8pm on NBC.
(Image courtesy of NBC)
Staff Writer, BuddyTV
Jeff Dodge, a graduate of Western Washington University, has been a TV news editor for many years and has had the chance to interview multiple reality show stars, including Randy Jackson, Nick Cannon, Heidi Klum, Mel B and John Cena.
