Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Blind audition: Sisters Whitney and Shannon auditioned with Fleetwood Mac’s (Stevie Nick’s) “Landslide.” Midway through the performance, Adam Levine, Miley Cyrus and Blake Shelton turned around almost simultaneously. Before the song ended, they were joined by Alicia Keys. Adam called their performance “beautiful.” Blake said they sounded “so country” and reminded the sisters how well he did with the Swon Brothers. Alicia says “the world needs the two of you.” The sisters joined Team Alicia.

Their background: Whitney is 25 and lives in Austin, Texas, working as a property assistant for a real estate company. Shannon is 23 and lives in Houston, where she works for a church. That means they live three hours apart and don’t get to see one another often. Their parents were missionaries, leading to opportunities to perform in other countries — Mexico, Brazil, Holland, Scotland, England and others. That’s how their love of music grew. “As teenagers, we always talked about getting to do music together,” says Shannon. But Whitney adds that they hadn’t performed together for about a year prior to The Voice. They used to perform in Houston at coffee shops and in church. “The Voice is really that opportunity we need to come back together and do music full time,” Whitney says. They say as a duo, they sing pop, but they expressed a pre-audition preference for Team Blake.

What the show didn’t show:
* Their parents divorced when they were teenagers and at one point they lived even farther apart, according to The Voice website, with Shannon moving to Los Angeles for a ministry program and Whitney moving to Dallas to attend Bible college.
* They released a single called “Stars” in 2013. You can check it out below.
* On Facebook, they describe themselves as an inspirational soft pop sister duet and list their musical inspirations as Natasha Bedingfield, Corinne Bailey Rae and Lauryn Hill.
* That was the Dixie Chicks’ version of “Landslide” that the sisters performed for their blind audition. Said Shannon in a conference call with the media: “We’ve actually sang that version before. It’s kind of one that we were really familiar with and we think that just with our style and with having harmonies and all of that, it was the version that suited us the best.”
* The Voice has been tough on duos. In 10 seasons, only The Swon Brothers have ever made it to the voting rounds. Whitney and Shannon’s plan: to work hard and be themselves. “I mean, so far that’s all we’ve ever really done is just put in the work and do our best,” says Shannon. “And whatever the outcome is, we’ll be able to be happy with that because we know that we gave it our all.”
* As for the conversation the sisters had prior to selecting a coach? “When we turned and looked at each other, we were both hoping that the other person was going to go with Alicia and thankfully, we both felt the same thing,” Whitney said. I think one of the main things Alicia said was that she didn’t want to put us in a box as far as our style of music goes and that’s really important to us to have freedom to kind of do whatever we want.”
* Shannon’s take on the coaching choice: “We kind of had planned to pick Blake because we have a little bit of a country influence and we thought that he would get our styles the best. But when we got up there, we saw Alicia Keys and she charmed us completely and so we kind of couldn’t help but go with her.”

Keeping up with Whitney and Shannon:
Twitter: @WHITNEYnSHANNON
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