Idol Chatter & Voice Views

The Voice returns Monday night with the first part of the playoffs.

That’s right, The Voice is splitting up the playoffs over two episodes — in fact, over two weeks — in Season 23.

And that’s not the biggest change.

That would be the fact that voters, for the first time ever, fans will have no choice in who advances.

Monday night, the five remaining artist from Team Chance will perform.

Then Chance will pick two artists to advance to the semifinals, set to air May 15.

The remaining artists from Team Blake include and the sister trio Kala Banham, Sorelle, Jamar Langley, Ray Uriel and Manasseh Samone, who got to set out the knockouts thanks to the playoff pass.

Here are the Team Chance performances from the knockouts.

My favorites where Jamar’s wonderfully smooth performance of “Crusin'” and Sorelle’s cover of “Blame It on the Boogie.” The latter didn’t quite show off the trio’s harmonies as well as their blind audition and battle round performance, but they were still a ton of fun to watch.

Then again, that was a very impassioned performance from Kala, so Chance is going to have a very difficult decision to make come Monday night. And, of course, he’ll have a fresh set of performances to base it on.