"The Voice" Season 4 premiered this Monday, with new cast members Shakira and Usher replacing on-hiatus regulars Christina Aguilera and Cee Lo Green--and let me tell you, these newbie coaches came to compete. And they came to win. Just one example of their shrewd gameplay: Even old-school-judges Adam Levine and Blake Shelton were impressed by Shakira's advanced poker-face technique, when she managed to register zero reaction as she turned her chair for one particularly surprising contestant. And the usually fiery singer's ability to play it cool totally paid off in the end.
Usher can't believe his ears, eyes
What happened was a contestant unisexily named Kris Thomas belted out(大声唱) the Whitney Houston standard "Saving All My Love For You" during Monday's Blind Auditions--and despite the fact that he altered the song's "no other man's gonna do" line to say "no other girl," which should have been a tipoff, none of the judges picked up on that gender switch; Kris's prepubescently(青春期前地) high-pitched voice clearly had all four coaches convinced that they were listening to a female vocalist. Shakira was the first and only coach to hit her red button for Kris--and when she spun around and saw a ruggedly（强壮的，健壮的，粗犷的） handsome 27-year-old man singing in front of her, instead of gasping in shock (and thus stirring up her castmates' curiosity and causing them to turn their chairs as well), she kept quiet. None of the other judges had any idea what was going on, until Kris's song was over and they turned around themselves.
"Hey…you're a DUDE!" Usher exclaimed when he finally got a gander at Kris, confessing that he would've hit his button if he'd known the truth, because "women go crazy over a guy with a falsetto." Adam also admitted, "I would have turned, if I'd known!" But it was too late. Kris was now officially on Team Shakira.