Reality vocal competitions tend to play things pretty close to the belt. Producers would rather play it safe than scare away their audiences, and normally it works out. The Voice tried to get a little too politically correct during last Tuesday's episode, and ended up offending even more viewers than if they had just left it "uncensored."
The song was the gospel standard "Will The Circle Be Unbroken." All eight remaining contestants performed alongside a children's chorus, but when they reached the line "in the sky, Lord, in the sky," the performers replaced the divine title with a simple "O." A verse that included the words "savior" and "heaven" was also removed. Viewers didn't like it, and host Blake Shelton was in agreement.
"I was sitting in my chair singing that song how I grew up on it, with 'in the sky, Lord, in the sky.' I sang it as loud as I could. And that might be why I didn't realize until after the fact that 'Lord' was either taken out, or it was just performed some other way," he said. "I will say, that's not the version I grew up on. And that's not the version I was singing sitting in my chair, if that clears up anything [about] where I stand on this thing."
Producer Mark Burnett wasn't aware the change would take place, but said he understood why it did. If anyone on the show should understand that changing songs for religious purposes is a bad idea, it's judge Cee Lo Green. The R&B vocalist drew heat from fans when he sang John Lennon's hit "Imagine" during 2011 when he changed the lyric "and no religion too" to "and all religion's true."
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