Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Their audition: Alaska Holloway and Madison Metcalf of Tulsa, Okla., make up the duo Alaska and Madi. For their Voice audition, they performed “Barton Hollow.” It was immediately apparent they’d been singing together forever. And individually, both shined on their solo parts. Adam Levine turned around in a flash. Blake Shelton turned around soon after and compared their “magic” to the Pistol Annies. The gals pow-wowed, then joined Team Blake.

Their background: Alaska and Madison say they met when they were 12 in a singing group called American Kids, designed to help young singers get rid of stage fright. In 20111, they won the American Kids national competition. A previous winner was Blake Shelton. Madi says the two have such a close friendship that it seems like they’re sisters. Unfortunately, her dad moved to Waco, Texas, for his job and she followed after she graduated from high school. Now they face the possibility of the duo breaking up. Madi is considering pursuing jazz studies in college; Alaska says if that happens, she’ll have to “figure out what my next step is.” The Voice, they say, is their chance to keep the duo together.

On choosing Blake: Alaska says it was awfully tough to turn down Adam “because he’s just so dang attractive.” But Madi says: “We picked Blake because it just seemed like fate to us. “We are from the same state as him. We were in the same singing group when he was a kid that we met in. It was a gut feeling and it felt right.” The fact that he did so well with the Swon Brothers in Season 4 played a role in their decision, too.

What the show didn’t show: If you have trouble telling who’s who, Alaska Rayne Holloway is the brunette. She’s 19, from Broken Arrow, Okla., and says she’s been singing since age 2 when she marched to the front of Disney World’s train and belted out “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.” She got involved in school choirs in elementary school and was involved in jazz choir and theater productions in high school. Madison Metcalf is the blonde. She’s 18 and from Tulsa, Okla. Her parents told her she was humming the ABCs before she could say the letters. She says she started taking classical singing lessons at age 13 and has sung everything from country to musical theater since then. Oh, and she was a member of the Oklahoma All-State Honors Chorus for five years. Of course, both were part of that Oklahoma Kids singing program; they sang together in that group for six years. Asked about their audition song choice, Madi says they’ve always been fans of the Civil Wars and “kind of like the more country-folk sound. We wanted the coaches to see what we wanted to be as artists rather than playing to what they wanted from us.” Oh, and this duo has a little pre-performance ritual they learned while performing with Oklahoma Kids, Alaska explains in their Voice video. And, yes, they did it before taking The Voice stage. “We do this with our hands,” she says, demonstrating for the camera. “Then we shake around a little bit. Everybody laughs, but it helps us get our nerves out and have fun.”

On iTunes: Just their audition song, but if you head to their website, you can check out a handful of their tunes. Make sure to listen to “Poison and Wine,” embedded below.

Update: They lost to Audra McLaughlin in the battle round; they sang Linda Ronstadt’s “When Will I Be Loved.”

Twitter: @AlaskaandMadi
Alaska: @alaskarayne
Madi: @MadiMetcalf
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Editor’s Note: For links to profiles of all the Season 6 artists on The Voice, go here.

“Two Step”

“Poison and Wine”

“Does He Love You”