Ruby Leigh made a huge impact with her time on The Voice. The young country singer from a small town in Missouri didn’t win the grand prize. However, she boosted her already-blossoming career by letting countless viewers witness her talent every week. After finishing second in the competition, she’s looking at releasing an album and touring. In a recent interview, she revealed that she signed up for The Voice as a joke.
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Recently, Leigh and her family sat down with Lincoln News Now for a series of interviews about her time on The Voice and what she plans to do in the future. In the latest installment, she and her sister Grumpy (real name Sandra) revealed that she sent in her audition tape as a joke. No one believed she would make it on the show.
[RELATED: ‘The Voice’ Runner-up Ruby Leigh Has Fans Abuzz Over Debut Album, Tour Chatter]
Ruby Leigh’s Joke That Got out of Hand
Leigh was explaining how long it takes to get on The Voice. She noted that she sent in her first audition tape in November of 2022. Her onstage audition came in June of 2023. “They have to narrow it down to 100 people who actually fly out and 56 make it to even try to be on the show,” she explained. “Yeah, I didn’t do it to try to be on the show. I did it as a joke [Grumpy] set me up for real, and I’m like, there’s no way,” she added.
Leigh recalled her sister saying, “How funny would it be if you sang rock but if you dressed up super country?” She added, “My audition outfit was all mine. It was all my stuff. So, super country. Like, embroidered French cowboy hat and I sang a bunch of rock. I’m like, great. That’s awesome. They’re definitely going to kick us out.”
In her first video audition, Leigh sang “Poison” by Alice Cooper. Within two hours, Leigh and her sister got an email back from the folks at The Voice. It said, “Congratulations, you made it to the next round.”
“We went to my dad and we’re like, ‘You’ll never believe this, we just made it to the next round,” Leigh recalled. Her dad didn’t think it would go anywhere. He told her, “Calm down. You know why that is? You know that there’s probably one person who saw that audition. They just probably said, ‘Move it on to the next round so a bigger group of people can see it and laugh at it because it’s so funny. Then, they’ll kick it off.”
The Joke Stops Being Funny
Leigh had to send in three more songs for the next round. So, she sent them more rock songs while wearing a country outfit. Then, the producers reached out to ask for another song. They said, “Hey, we feel like you have a great country voice. Would you mind sending in some country songs? If not, no worries.”
She sent them three country songs and made it through to the next round. At this point, the joke stopped being funny. “Then, it was in March of last year they called and said they were going to fly me out for a blind audition,” Leigh recalled. The rest, as they say, is history.
Featured Image by Greg Gayne/NBC
