'The Voice' Season 18: Zan Fiskum beats Joanna Serenko in the knockouts and Blake Shelton swoops in for a steal
Zan Fiskum and Joanna Serenko from Team John Legend were the last pairing to take the Knockout stage on 'The Voice'. The former went with Brandi Carlo's song 'The Story' which is about being misunderstood by people and Zan mentioned that it would be great validation for her if she won the knockout round. Special coach James Taylor mentioned that she's set herself up for a major challenge taking on a song like that and John joked that Carlo usually made songs to challenge other singers.
Joanna went with 'Angel from Montgomery' by Bonnie Raitt and John Prine. During the rehearsal, James noted that Joanna had a cool detachment to her voice just like Bonnie did. John advised her to find a place in the song where she could showcase her range by going big with her voice at some point during the performance and when she did, both John and James were left mesmerized. John even mentioned that Zan and Joanna are the best performers and that it was "his bad" for pairing them together.
After the knockout performances, both Zan and Joanna managed to garner a great response from the coaches as well as the studio audiences. Nick Jonas, Joanna's ex-mentor mentioned "Joanna you know I love your voice. I had to make the toughest choice last round in the battles and I am regretting that decision now". This was in reference to Nick choosing Roderick Chambers over Joanna in the battle rounds.
Kelly Clarkson thought that both of the artists were very even in terms of their performance but Blake thought Zan was better amongst the two. It was now time for coach John to make his decision. Even though he thought it was cool to hear Joanna's fluttery voice, he picked Zan as the winner of the battle for her consistency throughout the competition.
However, it was not over for Joanna who lost the knockout round. Her exit was interrupted by a double steal by her ex-coach Nick Jonas and Blake Shelton. Earlier in the episode, he'd tried to lure contestant CammWess to his team by saying that it's never a good decision to get back with an ex (John Legend was CammWess's ex-mentor and the former had chosen someone else over him in the battle). Revisiting the same advice, he mentioned "I've had a sudden change of heart" and that he wanted to complete the circle and get her back on his team.
Joanna, on the other hand, had other plans and she chose Blake Shelton as her new coach saying "I'd like to move on". That was a major burn for Nick and Shelton had the last laugh in this situation and he later mentioned "I am proud that as a 43-year-old man, I got to steal a girl from Nick Jonas"
'The Voice' airs Monday nights on NBC. Check your local listings for more information.