In shocking news, Kelly Clarkson will not return to The Voice for its 22nd season; the announcement came on TikTok.
Not only is Kelly out, but Ariana Grande is also leaving the show as expected and there will be one returning coach and a brand-new face joining the show.
Gwen Stefani will return to the show after taking a one-year break following her win in Season 19. However, in a surprising move, defending champion Kelly Clarkson is out and Camila Cabello is in.
Camila Cabello replaces Kelly Clarkson on The Voice
Blake Shelton started the announcement of the coaches for Season 22 when he posted a TikTok video asking the coaches of the new season to duet with him.
That led to John Legend as the first to join him, showing the two coaches were returning to the show.
However, the next person to join in was a surprise as Gwen Stefani jumped in and joined in the song. When she did it, the expectation was that she was replacing Ariana Grande.
Ariana will be filming the movie Wicked when The Voice was set to return. Ratings dropped with Ariana on the show, and none of her singers made it to the finals, showing that her millions of social media followers weren’t interested in following her to the show.
However, Kelly Clarkson had not yet joined. Fans expected that she would be back since she hosted American Song Contest on NBC, which was part of the family of reality shows connected with The Voice for the network.
But it wasn’t Kelly who responded to the duets. The fourth person started with an empty room before Camila Cabello rose up into the screen and joined the duet.
Kelly Clarkson won last season of The Voice – a 50% winning percentage – but she chose to bow out this season, and a newcomer will join the show.
Who is Camila Cabello on The Voice?
Camila Cabello will try to bring the young viewers to The Voice that Ariana Grande couldn’t.
Cabello is a 25-year-old Cuban-born singer and songwriter who got her start in Fifth Harmony. Since that time, she has released three albums. The first two went Platinum and the third just hit last month.
She has also won five AMA Awards with six nominations and also has three Grammy nominations, although she has yet to win there. Havana was the best-selling digital single of 2018.
As for her fanbase–it is large, similar to that of Ariana, and NBC has to hope her fans are more interested in following her to The Voice. She has 15.8 million followers on TikTok, 62.2 million followers on Instagram, and 12.8 million Twitter followers.
The Voice is on hiatus. The singing reality competition series will return to NBC in late 2022.