The Big Picture
Adrienne Bailon-Houghton helps contestants distinguish good singers from the bad ones on
I Can See Your Voice.
Bailon-Houghton overcame insecurities about her voice with help from vocal coach Eric Dawkins.
The singer expresses to Collider her interest in exploring Latin music for the next part of her music career.
Adrienne Bailon-Houghton is back as a permanent panelist on the FOX reality singing competition series, I Can See Your Voice.Bailon-Houughton helps contestants tell the difference between the good singers and the bad singers… without ever hearing them sing a note. And as a talented singer and performer herself, she has the skill set to do just that.
In recent years, Bailon-Houghton has become synonymous with hosting. A multi-daytime Emmy Award nominee and winner for her work on the former FOX roundtable talk show The Real, fans grew to love Bailon-Houghton for her relatable personality and anecdotes. After eight seasons of The Real, Bailon-Houghton hosted E! News alongside Justin Sylvester. She’s kept fans updated on all things Adrienne with her popular YouTube Channel, which shares family moments and lifestyle tips, as well as on her carefully curated Instagram. But in between hosting duties and content creation, fans are constantly asking when Bailon-Houghton will return to her musical roots.
She burst onto the scene as a chart-topping member of the R&B girl group 3LW with hits like “No More” and “Playas Gonna Play” before entering Disney fandom as a member of The Cheetah Girls. The latter boosted her worldwide popularity and spawned merchandise, books, tours, and more. While she’s never released a solo project, after competing in The Masked Singer and now participating in I Can See Your Voice, Bailon-Houghton tells Collider in an exclusive one-on-one interview that she’s overcome longstanding insecurities with her beloved voice. So, is a solo album finally on the way?
I Can See Your Voice
In a high-energy game show, contestants must discern between skilled and unskilled singers based solely on visual clues and lip-syncing. Guided by a rotating panel of celebrity judges and a guest music star, the contestant proceeds through multiple rounds, eliminating those they believe to be poor singers. The aim is to ensure that only one singer, preferably a talented one, remains for the final duet with the guest artist. Each episode builds suspense as the contestant makes their choices, leading to a dramatic final reveal where the truth about the remaining singer’s abilities is uncovered.
Release Date September 23, 2020
Seasons 3
Adrienne Bailon-Houghton Shares Secrets Behind Winning on ‘I Can See Your Voice’
The concept for I Can See Your Voice is something that hasn’t been done before. After all, viewers wonder how anyone could guess if someone can sing without ever hearing them. But as a singer herself, Bailon-Houghton says it’s not that difficult to figure out.
“The main thing I pay attention to is we have something called the Lip Sync Challenge. And in that challenge, they have to lip sync. But the question is: Are they lip-syncing to their voice, or to somebody else’s voice?” she explains. “I’m paying attention to every detail, how they move their mouth. It gets tricky because some incredible singers are not great lip singers, and they’ve never lip-synced… But for the most part, I feel like if you actually sung what we’re listening to, you know where to place your breath, and you pay attention to how they pronounce certain words if they have a really soulful sound — even how they fix their lips — and so I pay attention to all those super annoying little details. I think that it’s super helpful and helps me figure it out.”
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How Adrienne Bailon-Houghton Grew to Love Her Voice
While working on The Real, Bailon-Houghton was vulnerable in revealing she didn’t like the sound of her singing voice. At the time, she felt she sounded a little too teeny-bopper-ish, which no one agreed with — and she’s come a long way since then. Working on a show with other talented singers, coupled with her time on The Masked Singer, as well as other musical works she’s done in recent years with Israel Houghton and New Breed (her husband’s gospel group), she’s grown to recognize her raw talent.
“Eric Dawkins — who is an incredible vocalist himself, and I’m a huge fan of — he was actually my vocal coach for The Masked Singer. There was a moment that we had where he was like, ‘Listen, let’s just take this off the table. You know you can sing. It’s not a question of if you can sing or you can’t sing. Everybody isn’t going to like everybody’s voice, so you just need to get over the fact that you can sing, you are a good singer. Is everyone going to like your tone? No — and you got to be okay with that?” she explains. “That to me was so profound to me.”
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She’s constantly recording, even releasing music alongside her Grammy-award-winning husband, gospel singer Israel Houghton. Outside of gospel music, she says she’s a lover of different types of music but has her eye on one genre. “I love Spanish music,” the former Cheetah Girl says. “Some of my favorite singers are Celia Cruz, Selena. Currently, I love Karol G, Becky G, so maybe something in the Latin area I think would be super awesome.”
Check out the full interview with Bailon-Houghton above where she speaks more about her work on I Can See Your Voice. She also dishes on her history on reality television and whether she’d have her own show, and talks about the impact of her work on The Cheetah Girls.
I Can See Your Voice airs every Thursday on FOX. Episodes can also be streamed the next day on Hulu.
Watch on Hulu