The Voice video: See Johnny Gates Blind audition — hear music from his band
In this video, Gates performs a cover of the Rod Stewart hit “Maggie May” that feels, in a word, authentic. This is a guy who’s clearly very familiar with this genre of music, and has a deep connection to it. You don’t perform this song unless you really have a close connection to it. Gates is a good singer, but more so than that he’s a different sort of singer. There isn’t anyone else this season that sounds like him, and uniqueness on this show is so much more important than anything else. There are countless people who we’ve come to see on this show over time who we, quite frankly, forget about a month or two after the season is over. If he makes it far enough this time, there’s a reasonably good chance that this won’t happen with him. He could be memorable, and he could last a while this season.
As for the result of his audition, he gets everyone other than Adam Levine turning around, and an interesting showdown ensues that includes Gwen Stefani telling him that his choice is obvious and then Blake Shelton comparing him to Mick Jagger, leading to one of those trademark awkward moments between him and Adam involving the lyrics to “Moves Like Jagger.” As for who he should pick, our feeling is that Gwen seems to have the best instant connection to him, and to go along with that, seems to understand his music and his style in a way that nobody else really does. She can speak to him from the experience of being in a bad, and she certainly knows a lot about rock music.
What else has he done?
Johnny has some videos online with a band called Runaway Saints. If you head over to the link here, you can see a little bit of that music now. We do really like that this show exists in the internet age, and that you have contestants on it who weren’t just born in a lab somewhere. They’re credible, and they’ve been doing this for a rather long time.
For some more news and blind auditions from The Voice, just be sure to head over here. (Photo: NBC.)
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W6Em0U9Gbs