Ray Uriel’s smooth voice won over the coaches on The Voice during the second week of Blind Auditions.
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Uriel took the stage with a cover of Joji’s “Glimpse of Us,” showing off the various mellifluous tones in his voice as coaches Blake Shelton, Kelly Clarkson, Chance the Rapper and Niall Horan listened intently with their backs to the stage. Just as Uriel was hitting his final note with no chairs turned, Chance came in at the final second, hitting his buzzer to get Uriel on his team, much to Clarkson’s shock.
“That was a nice strategy,” she quipped, with Chance confirming, “That was a fake out.”
“You just remind me of a recording artist,” Chance told the 24-year-old singer from Gary, Indiana. “You feel to me like a person that makes songs that have certain intricacies to your voice.”
Horan noted that Uriel is “voice first” with his performance, with Chance pointing out that there were a couple of moments that were “shaky,” which didn’t stand in the way of his “potential.”
“This dude has potential to kill any song and I’m excited to work with you,” Chance cheered.
Uriel revealed that he writes his own songs and grew up singing in the choir and doing musical theater. Horan compared some of the notes in his voice to ones he’s heard in the musical, Les Miserables, which Uriel said he’s been in a production of. “This is one of those ones for me now I wish I turned,” the former One Direction member confesses to the other coaches.
“I actually think that song is a beautiful song for this show, I just kept waiting for you to sail on it,” Clarkson explained why she didn’t turn her chair. “I just kept waiting for you to open up towards the end and go for some bigger notes and sustain them. I feel like you have a really great voice so I can’t wait to see what y’all do.”
The Blind Auditions continue next week when The Voice airs on Monday night at 8 p.m. ET on NBC.
Photo by: Casey Durkin/NBC
