The Voice May Need To Take Action After Sparking Big Fan Outrage

NBC's The Voice is no stranger to controversy. For those who haven't watched, the singing competition involves four celebrity voice coaches and judges. At the start of the show, contestants take the stage while the coaches' chairs are turned around, and the coaches must choose which singers they want on their team before ever seeing them face-to-face. The idea is that the contestants are chosen based on sheer vocal ability, rather than age, gender, appearance, or style. Throughout the show, contestants can be eliminated by audience votes as well as the coaches themselves.

As with any TV competition, there's bound to be some hiccups. In one particularly memorable scandal, Maroon 5 lead singer Adam Levine, who was a coach, said he preferred one contestant who was unable to perform that week due to health issues over another. The man who was Levine's least favorite just so happened to be a fan-favorite, and fans were furious that he was eliminated after being humiliated by the star on national television. Afterward, the producers of The Voice made the interesting decision not to address the controversy and continued as though nothing had happened, per The Washington Post.

Several seasons later, the producers found themselves in a similar situation, with thousands of angry fans and no clear path forward. Read on to find out why everyone is so upset and what it means for the future of The Voice.

In any reality TV competition, be it The Bachelorette or Top Chef, eliminations are par for the course. In the early weeks of a competition show, large numbers of contestants often go home at once (think the first night of The Bachelor). The Voice is no different — and that's precisely what landed the show in trouble on Dec. 1, 2020. On that fateful night, a whopping eight contestants were given the boot.

Fans were unhappy that so many contestants had been sent home at once, and what's worse, some of those eliminated were beloved by the audience. This isn't unprecedented, though. The show's contestant pool once dropped from 17 to nine during the previous season when production shut down to COVID-19, per Decider.

At the end of the night on Dec. 1, most folk or alternative singers were sent home, while the judges seemed to favor the country-oriented performers. Fans took to Twitter to vent about the perceived bias.

"I have a love-hate relationship with #TheVoice. The dope artists never make it through and for some reason, country artists always do well," one fan vented on Twitter. "This may be an unpopular opinion, but I feel like the country artists always stay around and win on the voice and the ones that are really talented and also black/poc tend not to. It irritates me," wrote another. 

No word yet on what the producers plan to do, or if they even plan to address the controversy.