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Hear the Record Label-Ready “Grit” and “Growl” That Earned Noah Spencer a Battle Win
Spencer proved “he can sing pretty much anything” that Coach Niall Horan might throw at him.
Noah Spencer and his Battle round partner Reid Zingale sailed through Blind Auditions earlier this season on The Voice, with each Artist earning a 3-Chair Turn. But after the two members of Team Niall paired off to sing Ed Sheeran’s dialed-back folk reverie “Lego House” as their Battle number, it was Spencer’s throaty sound that stole the show.
“Noah!” exclaimed a flabbergasted Gwen Stefani. “If somebody doesn’t snatch you up and sign you tomorrow, I don’t even know what’s happening!”
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Just as it did during his earlier Blind Audition (where he sang Zach Bryan’s soulful love dirge “Something in the Orange”), Spencer’s voice cast a spell over the Coaches. “I love the grit! I love that lil’ growl you had in there,” Reba McEntire praised. Meanwhile, John Legend tried to put Noah’s sound into words: “It just sounds so interesting — the rasp in your voice… and there’s like this softness to it at the same time.”
Noah Spencer and Reid Zingale sing Ed Sheeran’s “Lego House” on The Voice Season 24 Battles
Spencer’s record label-ready vocal swagger might just be more versatile than even he knows. Raised on country music in small-town Richlands, Virginia, Noah confessed he’d long thought of himself mainly as a country artist. After all, that was “the music I would hear as a kid, riding around with my grandfather,” he explained.
But after hearing a satisfying slab of Spencer’s signature growl during the high points of Sheeran’s more pop-focused folk number, Coach Niall Horan walked away convinced that there’s no musical genre Noah can’t master.
“Noah showed me today that he can sing pretty much anything,” said Horan after declaring him the Battle round winner. “He would call himself a ‘country’ guy, [but] he stood up today and sang basically a pop-folk song. Any Artist who comes out here and tries something that’s not necessarily in their wheelhouse will always stand out to me.”
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The Coaches also lavished lots of love on Reid and his “clear, wispy tone,” as Legend put it, a lilting warble that reminded Niall why he’d originally turned for Zingale in the first place. “I remember hearing your first audition and just wanting to turn,” he said. “If you had your eyes closed, you’d want to open them to see who this voice is coming out of.”
In the end, though, Spencer’s husky rasp simply commanded attention — in part, said Horan, because it hints at something hidden. “There’s something really intriguing about you. And I think it’s because you’re a touch closed off and you don’t give it all away,” he said, heaping an extra smidge of praise on top by comparing Noah to Irish folk musician Damien Rice — Niall’s “favorite singer-songwriter of all time” and even “the reason,” he admitted, “that I basically picked up a guitar.”
How’s that for a definitive Battle win? But how far can Spencer go in the competition, now that country’s no longer the only genre on his gritty music menu? Find out by watching The Voice Mondays and Tuesdays at 8/7c on NBC and next day on Peacock.
