‘The Voice: Australia’ Contestant Floors Keith Urban With Song Mixing His Biggest Hits [Watch]
Keith Urban is a coach on this season of The Voice: Australia, and an eager hopeful greatly impressed the country superstar with her unique original song.
Kaylee Bell — a 32-year-old singer, who, like Urban, is from New Zealand — debuted an original song called "Keith" during her Blind Audition.
It took him a few song name-drops, but Urban finally caught on that her song was original — and that it was about him and his music. The song hails Urban's hits "Somewhere in My Car," "Long Hot Summer" and "Raise 'Em Up," among many others.
As Bell got into the chorus, she used his song titles to tell a story about how the songs served as a soundtrack to a relationship. The chorus itself offers seven references to Urban songs.
"I know those 'Days Go By,' it wasn't 'Wasted Time,' 'A Little Bit of Everything,' 'Makin' Memories' of you and me / Back when 'We Were Us,' 'Once in a Lifetime' love / Can't help but think of you, hope 'You'll Think of Me,' when you play that Keith," she sings.
The camera focused in on Urban during the first verse, as he began to put the puzzle together. By the middle of the first chorus, the country star had emphatically pushed the red button to turn his chair.
Throughout the performance, Bell received chair turns from the other three judges, as well: Jessica Mauboy, Rita Ora and Guy Sebastian. All looked equally excited at the prospect of having Bell on their team.
Urban smiled and gave her a standing ovation at the end of the performance, while the other judges were also in awe of the tune.
"Did I just hear what I thought I heard?" Ora asked. "Did you just say Keith’s name in a song?"
“Is this song about Keith?” Mauboy followed up.
Bell responded that the song is, indeed, about Urban and his songs and that she wrote it "a couple years ago" with two friends in Nashville. Ora commented that the song is a "smash" and Sebastian noted that the other judges they have "no chance" of getting Bell on their team.
Despite Sebastian's caution, Ora made her pitch to Bell anyway, saying she was "made to be on stage." "To do an original in front of the person, by the way, that you wrote the song about, you took a huge risk, and it worked," said Ora.
Urban eventually spoke, but as he was praising Bell and the song, Mauboy blocked him from having Bell on his team. The audience let out a gasp, the other judges were surprised and Urban himself was shocked at the move.
"You're kidding!" Urban exclaimed. "She literally just sang a song with my name in it, and I'm blocked."
"I said I was going to fight for her, and I meant that," Mauboy responded.
Urban revealed that he had already heard the song prior to the show's taping and he "couldn't believe how catchy it was." He told Bell that the song was "touching" and called Mauboy's block "brutal." In the end, Bell chose Mauboy to be her coach on the show.
According to Country Now, Bell also shared the story behind the song, saying it was her goal to write song with a Keith Urban flavor.
“I actually had this crazy idea of writing a song and cramming as many Keith song titles as I could into the song to tell the story. So, I think there’s like 13 titles, but then you keep releasing songs with similar names like ‘We Were’ and ‘We Were Us’ and it just keeps growing,” she says. “I just wanted to write a song that felt like Keith cause Keith has such a feel about his music that I really love and so that was kind of like the aim of the game was to write a song that felt like Keith’s music."