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[VIDEO] 'THE VOICE' CONTESTANT, BEVERLY MCCLELLAN, #TEAMXTINA: 'THE THRILL IS GONE'

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[VIDEO] 'THE VOICE' CONTESTANT, FRENCHIE DAVIS, #TEAMXTINA: 'LIKE A PRAYER'

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[VIDEO] JILL SCOTT ON CHRISTINA AGUILERA: 'I LIKE WHAT SHE CAN DO WITH HER VOICE'

Jill Scott fills her stylish new album, The Light Of The Sun, with smart, confident songs like “Shame”. But it took her roughly a year-and-a-half to write and record, and during that time, she listened to virtually no other music. Now that she’s wrapped up in the studio, whose voice is capturing her attention? In an exclusive interview, Jill told us she’s awakened to Frank Ocean (the R&B crooner in wildcard rap act Odd Future and no friend of Chris Brown), and she’s all about angelic The Voice coach Christina Aguilera. Check out why Jill’s so in love with them in our chat below.

Jill told us that the songwriting process for The Light Of The Sun started only after she endured “a dark moment, a very dark moment.” (Bear in mind that since her previous album, 2007’s The Real Thing: Words and Sounds Vol. 3, she announced and then broke off her engagement to the father of her child). “When the light hit me again, it was one of the best feelings I’ve ever had. Everything started from that point.” The result is a sassy, savvy album that’s earning rave reviews.

In our interview, Jill walks us through the fabulous vintage soul artwork by Gomillion and Leupold and the spontaneous style with which she writes her lyrics.

But we were especially intrigued to hear her weigh in on current music after locking herself away for so long. In addition to her “So In Love” duet partner Anthony Hamilton, Jill’s been listening to Frank Ocean (who’s scored an emerging hit with “Novacane”). Of Ocean, Jill says: “I think he’s very thoughtful, I think he’s soulful.”

And she reserved special praise for Christina, whom she describes as “one of the prettiest birds I’ve heard in a while… I like what she can do with her voice. I would love to play with it.”

Who knows, maybe Jill can land herself a spot on The Voice and fly alongside that little blonde bird next season.

Watch the complete interview below.

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[NEWS] 'MOVES LIKE JAGGER' TRENDING WORLDWIDE ON TWITTER!!!

[NEWS] 'THE VOICE' BECAME A 24/7 SOCIAL MEDIA CONVERSATION ALL THANKS TO THE 'BIONIC ARMY'

The Behind the Social Media Campaign Series is supported by Oneupweb, an award-winning agency specializing in search marketing, social media and design for mid-to-enterprise level brands. Download Oneupweb’s free whitepaper, “Measuring Social Media’s Contribution to the Bottom Line: 5 Tactics.”

First there was scripted TV, then reality television became the “it” format. But now that’s getting old and stale, and the audience wants something new. The Voice delivers that, with a highly engaging and social co-viewing experience that’s earned it a spot as the top-rated new show this season. People are ready for a change in entertainment, and The Voice is providing a nice alternative.

If you’re not familiar with it, The Voice features musician coaches Christina Aguilera, Cee Lo Green, Adam Levine and Blake Shelton, along with host Carson Daly. During “blind auditions,” singers performed one at a time, and if they caught the attention of one the judges — based on voice alone, as the judges were turned around — then they would join that coach’s team. Each team started with eight artists, then were whittled down to four. The coaches, all of whom have achieved success in the music industry, are grooming the artists and developing their voices and performance skills. Each week, a few artists are eliminated, and the last one standing will be crowned “The Voice.”

Mashable spoke with Nicolle Yaron, the show’s supervising producer, Andrew Adashek, the social media consultant, and Alison Haislip, the social media correspondent, about the show’s social media integration and why it’s effective.

Borrowing an Idea and Making it Bigger

The Voice isn’t exactly a new show — it was adapted from a Dutch television show called The Voice of Holland. During its first season, the show began trending on Twitter worldwide, and NBC executives realized that there was something to the format. Executive Producers Mark Burnett and Audrey Morrissey were passionate about the highly social program and “stood behind us” as the American crew adapted the show, says Yaron.

The Dutch set had screens with live tweets, a social media room, a social media correspondent and a website. Yaron says NBC’s challenge was to take the format from something that serves a small country the size of Rhode Island and make it work over multiple time zones, and also create much more noise and value and push the boundaries in American TV.

“From the very beginning, the social media and digital aspect of the show was very important to us,” says Yaron. She wanted to create active engagement and offer accessibility to the coaches to mirror how the show offers access to top stars. “We wanted to create a true, real-time co-viewing experience.”

The American version expanded the social aspect to include coach tweets, as well as fan tweets, and because of the massive audience, NBC had to create a filtering program to manage the volume (something the Dutch didn’t have to deal with). So while the idea derived from Holland, the U.S. crew had to develop an entire infrastructure to manage the social media content that would be generated each week.

But what separates The Voice from other social television shows is that NBC doesn’t use social media as an awareness and marketing tool — it is core to the show as a whole, so the digital integrations are very organic. “In this day and age, digital and social media for a successful television show can’t be an afterthought — it has to be established in pre-production and developed throughout the show,” Yaron says. She and Adashek laid out a three-stage digital strategy and spent countless hours figuring out the social media strategy and how the show would leverage the judges and the artists. “All the goals we set out have been reached or exceeded, and I think it’s only going to grow and grow as we go into next season. As digital and social media change, we will change too. We set the trends now and we will incorporate new technologies as they develop.”

Casting The Coaches

The show is called The Voice, and not surprisingly the four judges all have distinct radio voices — the raspy Cee Lo Green, the belting Christina Aguilera, the high tenor Adam Levine and the crooner Blake Shelton. Christina wasn’t even on Twitter when she joined the cast as a coach, but her effusive “you go girl” tweets and diva-stacked team have garnered her more than 440,000 followers since she joined — and she has only tweeted 47 times. While Christina’s not the most active tweeter, Yaron says her fans are the most dedicated, and on the show’s premiere day, the “bionic army” had #TeamXtina trending from 9 a.m. until the premiere.

Green had a Twitter account before the show, but wasn’t very active. Levine was moderately active and Shelton was very active on Twitter. But all four coaches had to step up their game for the show, since NBC pushed coach engagement. Since the show is about the artist’s journey under the leadership of the coaches, Yaron says she wanted the coaches to live-tweet the show and broadcast the feeds onscreen in real time “so we continue the storytelling and enhance the experience for the viewers” even when the coach is not on camera. One joke amongst the crew is the “bromance” between Shelton and Levine, which is unabashedly broadcast on Twitter and followed by many of the show’s fans.

Much of the digital integration onscreen in driven by Alison Haislip, who’s no stranger to digital and social media — she spent four years at tech and gaming site G4. Now she’s The Voice‘s “in-show and online correspondent” hanging out in the V-Room with the contestants and serving as “your direct digital connection to everything” related to The Voice.

Encourage Conversation

If you watch the show, you’ll notice that “#TheVoice” isn’t always on the screen reminding you to vote — it’s strategically placed onscreen at times when the producers feel the audience “would be compelled to talk about it.” And it’s an effective strategy. Yaron says that 70% of the tweets about the The Voice include the hashtag #TheVoice, a “phenomenal” rate that a Twitter spokesperson says is an “industry high.”

Last week, during the first of the live shows, tweets that used #TheVoice or the handle of the show, a coach name or an artist name appeared in the lower third section of the screen during parts of the live show. In the V-Room, Haislip is tasked with bridging the online and broadcast elements of the show, and encourages fans to take their dialogue to Facebook, Twitter, NBC Live and NBC.com. “Fans could tweet or post on our Facebook wall and then I could, on air, ask the artists the questions and fans can see the response,” says Haislip. “It really engages the viewers instead of letting them sit back — they become a part of the show.”

The challenge has been managing the sheer volume of tweets — during airtime, there are upwards of 3,000 tweets per minute. “Filtering tweets live has been really interesting because as the show is progressing, the conversation around the show really transforms,” says Adashek. “We have to make sure it fits within broadcast standards, and we want to keep the tweets super fresh and relevant to what the viewers are seeing on TV.” (In case you’re wondering, the West Coast sees a rebroadcast of the East Coast show, so the “live tweets” are taken from the initial airing. However, the West Coast viewers are activated in other ways, and Haislip encourages them to live tweet.)

NBC has been working closely with Twitter to master the live tweet process, and Adashek says Twitter has been very helpful and “really forthcoming with a lot of data and metrics,” which helps the show maximize the impact of its social media-centric platform and also measure its success.

And it is indeed successful. Adashek says that last week, during the show’s first live performances, every contestant, coach and team trended, as did song titles and “Jersey Girl” — an homage to contestant Raquel Castro, who starred in the 2004 movie of that name. “Everything trended last week, no matter how good or bad it was,” he says. “There was enough inertia that everyone was trending.”

“When we look at the graphs and data on Twitter, we can see the peaks and valleys around the calls-to-action — the tweets and the hashtags and the performances,” says Adashek. “It’s like watching The Matrix — we’re pulling massive amounts of data, and when you’re seeing that many tweets, you really can see [trends and sentiment] right way.”

“Twitter was a natural first because it’s very live and real-time, so it lends itself to events,” says Adashek. Facebook is also an important platform for The Voice, but Adashek says it’s more long-term, has different content and is building a fanbase and laying the groundwork for future seasons. Since the coaches have their own highly engaged Facebook Pages, The Voice has been able to reach out to those fans and pull them to the show’s Facebook hub. For instance, last week when Team Christina performed “Lady Marmalade,” the Page gained nearly 10,000 likes within a few minutes.

Nonstop Storytelling

The Voice is about a journey, and Yaron says the NBC.com homepage has been focusing on “24/7 storytelling and continuing all of the reality stories and experiences of the artists and the coaches and the rivalries between them.” By cultivating the story online and providing a look behind the scenes, The Voice is becoming more than just a weekly television show — it’s nonstop entertainment online, complemented by an hour or two of live performances every week.

“The artists are not sequestered, they’re encouraged to talk about the show as much as they can,” Haislip says. “Regardless of how they do on the show, they still will come out of the competition with something that is going to help them in the future, and they’re all getting a huge leap ahead of the competition.”

That “something” Haislip refers to is digital savvy and a strong fanbase. From the minute they landed in LA for blind auditions, artists were given training in blogging and Facebook Pages and handed Samsung Galaxy Tabs and cameras to document everything from team dinners to rehearsals with photo and video. Each artist has his own hub on the site that links to a blog, Facebook, Twitter, video and photos — viewers really have the opportunity to be heavily invested in the show and the artists, and that translates to better ratings and higher engagement. Giving the artists free reign has let their personalities flourish — Beverly McClellan has started a fake talk show called, “What’s Up With That?” and Jared Blake captured his new ink session on video.

“This is something that every other reality show has kind of shied away from, but we feel really strongly about it,” says Yaron. “We are giving the artists the same platform that real musicians have. We’re training them and mirroring the new ways in which the music industry works. We’re giving them the tools to be the next Lady Gaga. It will help them stay in the competition and become successful music stars. We felt that it was time for a reality show to do that.”

Innovative Voting

While traditional shows like American Idol — and even The Voice of Holland — rely on calls and texts (Idol only recently launched Facebook voting) to log votes for contestants, The Voice has emphasized digital. Of course there’s the old standard of voting by phone, but there’s also an NBC Live app, NBC.com and an iTunes-driven voting platform. Instead of texting to vote, you can vote with your wallet and purchase your favorite songs, available from Universal Republic Records. Viewers can vote up to 10 times with each method, so the show encourages cross-platform engagement.

“The iTunes component was a huge part of the digital strategy — it’s an active vote,” says Yaron.

Conclusion

“The story of The Voice is not just an hour or two every week,” Yaron says. “It lives online all day and all week long, and it will continue all year long. This is a living, breathing entity, it’s not just show-based.”

And it might just be the future of television.

The Behind the Social Media Campaign Series is supported by Oneupweb, an award-winning agency specializing in search marketing, social media and design for mid-to-enterprise level brands. Download the Oneupweb sponsored Marketing Sherpa free study, “Measuring Social Media’s Contribution to the Bottom Line: 5 Tactics” to learn how to cut through the clutter and be sure to catch up with them on Facebook and Twitter.

Source: Mashable

[TUMBLR] CHRISTINA AGUILERA SETS ALL-TIME HIGHEST RECORD FOR MOST 'NOTES' & 'REBLOGS'

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[TWEET] @BLAKESHELTON: 'OH WOW!!! LOOK WHO SURPRISED ME FOR MY BIRTHDAY!' @THEREALXTINA

[NEWS] MEET YOUR NEW IDOL, CHRISTINA AGUILERA GIVES 'VOICE' TO SUMMER'S SURPRISE HIT

A funny thing happened in the course of producing this summer’s breezily entertaining breakout hit, “The Voice.” A potential disaster, actually. After the conclusion of the auditions, during which a quartet of coaches chose singers for their teams, host Carson Daly went out onstage and said, “We have a problem.”

The coaches had not selected enough contestants. Only Cee Lo Green had the requisite eight; Christina Aguilera, Adam Levine and Blake Shelton were all short. What to do?

“I was on the floor. I was actually sitting in the audience,” says executive producer Mark Burnett. “I talked to the cameramen, talked to the coaches. They didn’t know how many [contestants] were left. They had never seen these performers, or seen audition tapes or heard them before.”

Then Aguilera, who serves as the Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and J.Lo of “The Voice,” came up with a brilliant idea. And the only one that would work.

“She said, ‘Why don’t we see some of them again?’ ” Burnett says.

But where were they? “Many had already left the studio,” Burnett admits. “We sent minivans to the hotel to bring them back.” The mastermind behind “Survivor” now wishes he had had the foresight to work that rescue mission into the show somehow. “It would have been a brilliant moment of television, to show that,” he says.

When the singers that the coaches wanted back took to the stage, they sang songs that were completely unrehearsed, songs that the band already knew.

“They were singing for their lives,” Burnett says.

Improvised moments such as these set “The Voice” apart from rivals such as “American Idol,” whose structures have been in place for years. “The Voice,” which is headed into its final two weeks, is also a more democratic talent show than “Idol,” as its contestants have a wider age range. Most satisfying, though, are the song choices, which lean heavily toward contemporary music. The contestants are not asked to sing material their parents and grandparents played on the victrola.

“It’s a breath of fresh air. We’re not trying to make a country singer sing Motown. Or an R&B singer do country,” Burnett says. “They’re allowed to be themselves. It’s coach-and-artist driven.”

His production team is headed by MTV veteran Audrey Morrissey who worked on “Unplugged,” the “VMAs” and “The Movie Awards,” among other specials.“They’re very experienced in contemporary music,” Burnett says. As a result, “Slightly older people are discovering newer songs for the first time,” he says.

The success of “The Voice” also hinges on the chemistry of the judges, superstars in their respective musical worlds.

“In classroom terms, what you’ve got are three naughty boys and the hot teacher who tries to keep them in line,” Burnett says with sly assurance.

“Christina’s not just the hot teacher. She’s the naughty, hot teacher,” says Shelton. “The one who makes it into the news for doing naughty things.”

Shelton was a stranger to the TV world before he signed on and it took one night at the West Hollywood Soho House — and Burnett’s credit card — for the coaches to feel comfortable with each other.

“By the end of the night, we were all high-fiving,” Shelton says. “We talked about relationships and marriages and drank a lot of expensive Champagne.”

How expensive? “Thousands of dollars,” Burnett says. “I bet they went through five bottles of Dom Perignon. But it was money well-spent. The chemistry from that moment on was organic and they became friends. I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw [musical] collaborations among them.”

Burnett was so confident that “The Voice” would be a hit that he even predicted its initial rating — an excellent 5.1 in the demo — and was right (the show has averaged 12.9 million total viewers for the season). “I knew the show was really good. And NBC-Universal had done enough promotion. It would have been hard to live in America and not know it was coming on. Making a good show is only part of it,” he says.
Like any proud producer, he has his favorites among the singers.

Rocker Beverly McClellan “knocked the Melissa Etheridge song ‘I’m the Only One’ out of the park,” he says. “She always delivers. Patrick Thomas always delivers. Dia Frampton on the piano was surprisingly different. She showed herself as a true artist.”

That “The Voice” has tapped into so much undiscovered talent does not surprise Shelton. “This business is based on opportunities and on being lucky,” he says. “People just don’t know how to go about pursuing that dream. I guarantee you this show is a nice way. I wish there’d been something like this when I started out.”

As “The Voice” heads toward its June 29 finale, where the winner will receive $100,000 and a contract with Universal Republic records, the competition heats up and the field narrows to just four contestants, one for each coach. Burnett says, “It’s totally impossible to predict who will win. People are stepping up every week. It’s all that growth.”

Even though Burnett thinks that “The Voice” has little in common with his signature show, “Survivor,” he’d like to mention one point of commonality.

“ ‘Survivor’ Season 2 began with the Super Bowl lead-in which led us to beat ‘Friends’ on Thursday night. Season 2 of ‘The Voice’ will also have a Super Bowl lead-in. That’s 70 to 100 million people. I hope ‘The Voice’ lasts as long as ‘Survivor.’ ”

Source: NYPost

[VIDEO] BLAKE SHELTON BOASTS ABOUT CHRISTINA AGUILERA'S BOOBS

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[NEWS] ALISON HAISLIP'S DIGITAL HATER ADVICE + FRENCHIE CREDITS CHRISTINA FOR HER THICK SKIN

“If you live on the internet, you know that haters, you know that trolls, they’re just-- they’re the nature of the beast. They come with the territory,” Alison Haislip told LA TV Insider Examiner when we caught up with her at The Voice earlier this week.

Here’s the thing: some of these performers are still so young, and so new to the public eye, let alone any semblance of fame, so Haislip told us that the one thing she is really cognizant of is that while she’s back in the V-Room with the contestants, Tweeting along with the show and interacting with their fans, she makes sure they understand how to let any criticisms roll off their back.

It was a really good point to make, especially considering The Voice semi-finalist Frenchie Davis endured a bit of controversy of her own during her previous stint with reality television. Developing a thicker skin is something Davis shared with us that her own coach, Christina Aguilera, is really helping her to do.

“We had a wonderful chat about becoming thicker skinned, which is something that I have to work on because underneath all of whatever this comes across as, I have a very big heart, and I’m a little sensitive…There have been times when I’ve called my mother crying because I read something mean about myself somewhere, and you know, what I admire about Christina is that she just remains Christina no matter what people say about her,” Davis told us.

So Haislip tells the contestants-- and this is good advice for anyone dealing with online bullies, really-- that if they see something negative about themselves or the show, they have to ignore it.

“Don’t acknowledge it; you’ll only fuel the fire! It’s hard to sometimes, but you know, I think they’re learning that as they go along,” Haislip wisely advised.

The Voice returns to NBC, live from Los Angeles, on Tuesday night at 9pm.

Source: Examiner

[PSA] IF CHRISTINA AGUILERA WAS A MAN...

I just wanted to publish what is on everyone's minds...

If Christina Aguilera was a man, the topic of debate of whether she should or should not be paid more than the other coaches on 'THE VOICE' wouldn't be discussed. "Talk about the double standards in society today." That's all.

[VIDEO] CHRISTINA & ADAM DUET 'RADIO FRIENDLY'

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Source: Youtube

[POLL] DO YOU THINK CHRISTINA IS WORTH MORE THAN DOUBLE THE OTHER JUDGES? HELL YES!

NBC's 'The Voice' is arguably the hottest reality competition show to hit the small screen so far this year, and it's no wonder with a panel that includes Cee Lo Green, Blake Shelton, Adam Levine and Christina Aguilera. But you might be surprised to learn that Christina is raking in considerably more than her co-coaches.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Aguilera is pulling in $225,000 per episode, while Green, Shelton and Levine are each taking home $75,000 per episode.

'The Voice' crew is featured on the cover of The Hollywood Reporter's latest issue. In addition to the coaches' salaries, in the article sources reveal that John Mayer was considered for a coaching gig on the show at one point. But don't expect to see him next season: all four coaches are expected to return.

Do you think Christina is worth more than double the other judges?

Please choose option A: "Absolutely! She is the biggest star on the show by far."

CLICK HERE TO VOTE

Source: WTAM
Image: Miss-Aguilera