‘The Voice’ Changes for Season 18 With Fewer Live Shows and Allowing Coaches to Steal and Save
The new season of The Voice is here and once again the game is changing. We have a new coach with Nick Jonas replacing Gwen Stefani. Season 18 will also have fewer live shows and coaches can steal and save contestants. Find out why the changes were made and how it will affect the competition.
‘The Voice’ Season 18 will have Nick Jonas as a new judge
The biggest change this new season will be Nick Jonas being a coach. The announcement was made on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. Blake Shelton, John Legend, and Kelly Clarkson made videos with messages for him. Legend and Clarkson talked about teaming up with Jonas against Shelton.
The advisors for the teams this season were also announced. Joe and Kevin Jonas will be helping his team for the battles. Legend will have Ella Mai, Clarkson will have Dua Lipa, and Shelton will have Bebe Rexha.
A recent promo showed the other coaches giving advice to Jonas. “I just want to warn you of a couple things. Blake lies like a lot. He will say and do anything to get someone on his team,” Clarkson said.
Legend was given a hard time in his first season by having all of the other coaches use their block on him. He touched on that by telling Jonas “Watch out for the block.”
Shelton joked that Jonas should steal his move of pointing at himself to get contestants to pick him. He then said, “Try not to lose, buddy.”
There will be fewer live shows
Executive producer Audrey Morrissey talked about season 18 with Parade. There will be fewer live shows with three weeks of them instead of six.
“You can’t scoot by on any week thinking, ‘Oh, I’m doing pretty well and we’re only losing one person this week, so I’m going to take a risk with this unusual song choice. I’m not quite sure, but I’m going to give it a go,'” explained the producer. “There are some ramifications to that and what we ended up doing is adding some really exciting twists to the show.”
This change was made because of The Olympics. That’s not the only change to the competition. Coaches will get several powers this season.
Coaches can steal and save during the battles
“Another change is that in the battles, there have always been two steals,” revealed the executive producer. “This season, instead, there will be a steal and save, which is how the knockout rounds used to be formatted.”
She continued, “What’s interesting is the steal is someone who joins their team. The person they save ultimately ends up being part of a four-way knockout. So, each coach has one save and that person isn’t necessarily part of their team or part of a knockout between two people on their own team.”
Viewers will vote on the four-way knockout. Whoever gets the most votes will be revealed in the first live show week.
Changes to the show’s format haven’t always been received well. Time will tell how fans will ultimately feel about this season’s format.
