Sensing that America just can’t stop talking about Christina Aguilera right now while not really paying attention to what it’s saying, NBC has hired her for The Voice, its upcoming singing competition reality show rival to American Idol. Aguilera joins a panel of “musician coaches” that also includes Cee Lo Green and Maroon 5’s Adam Levine so far, providing mentoring sessions to young would-be artists in an attempt to transform them into stars, using only hard work, a little bit inspiration, and the help of all the coaches’ “high-powered friends” in the industry.
As previously reported, The Voice’s primary gimmick is that the coaches will sit in rotating chairs that will force them to face away from singers during auditions, and only allow them to turn around after they’ve chosen a voice to work with, thus confronting the grim realities of the human body to which it’s attached. Series producer Mark Burnett said today that Aguilera was his first choice for a female coach when he conceived The Voice, suggesting he knowingly went looking for the show’s own Paula Abdul; presumably Aguilera’s open act of treason at the Super Bowl and her arrest yesterday for public intoxication were just the sloppy icing on the unstable-cake.