Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Tyshawn Colquitt and Zaxai rehearse for their battle round match on The Voice. (NBC Photo)

Tyshawn Colquitt and Zaxai faced a special challenge during The Voice battle round.

Not only did they have to duet, they had to duet with “Love Lies,” a song normally performed by a male and a female.

But they made it work. In fact, it worked so well, both made it to the show’s knockout round.

Jennifer Hudson declared Tyshawn the winner of the battle. Zaxai wound up being stolen by Kelly Clarkson.

Of course, that was the goal all along.

“We wanted to make sure that the song was so dope and so well put together that our coach had no other choice but to nudge her other friends and be like, “Hey, somebody has to steal somebody. Like this is it right here,” Tyshawn said during a conference call with the media.

“The challenging part was to make a duet song a battle song,” he added. “So, we had to flip a first verse that’s sung by a male and then the second verse is sung by a woman, and we had to split it up between the both of us.

“And we wanted to make sure we gave each other the same type of placement, the same areas to do the same tricks, so that way everyone can get a better judgment. We wanted everyone to really get a feel for our tones.”

Zaxai said he wasn’t all that familiar with the Khalid and Normani when the song was assigned to them. But he agreed with Tyshawn’s assessment and added that a suggestion from Jennifer was key to making their performance a success.

“JHud gave us great advice and said to strip down the instrumentation and just let the singers be singers,” he explains.

“So, once she did that, it kind of freed us up a little bit. After that, it was like Tyshawn said, just looking for our little pockets and allowing them to judge us on everything else, and letting us do what we needed to do.”

Tyshawn said he got some great advice as well, from battle round adviser Haley about making sure his tone wasn’t so heavy that it hinted as sadness and from Jennifer about not unleashing all his vocal tricks early in the song, but letting the performance build and picking his spots to do so.

“When we went into our falsettos, it was my favorite part of my performance,” Tyshawn said. “It was my absolute favorite part when we started to sway back and forth on the stage.”

Zaxai said he felt blessed to be stolen considering “the amazing talent” on the show’s 15th season. The fact that he and Tyshawn both advanced was the best possible outcome.

“I was happy because Tyshawn and I literally didn’t sleep,” he told Voice Views. “We were up all the time, trying to make sure our movements were in sync; our harmonies were in sync; our tones were in sync. Like Tyshawn said, we were the yin to the yang.”

Zaxai, 29 when he auditioned, is from Brooklyn and had joined Team Jennifer after turning two chairs in the blind auditions with his performance of “Come and Get Your Love” by Redbone.

Tyshawn Colquitt, 23 when he auditioned, is from of Cincinnati, Ohio, abd performed Sam Smith’s “Like I Can” in the blinds. He, too, turned a pair of chairs before deciding to join Team JHUD.

The knockout round begins Monday night on The Voice.

Tyshawn Colquitt and Zaxai perform during the battle round on The Voice. (NBC Photo)