Coaches lift their pitch game against queen Rita Ora to drive another ratings

The coaches enjoy playing with their new block button again as contestants Seann Miley Moore and Saraya Mauboy-Hudson reveal their links to the stars.

Rita Ora’s perfect pitch skills has got her rival coaches in a spin, with the British pop star copping the block button again as The Voice consolidates its ratings lead ahead of the reality TV pack.

The revamped series gave Seven another commanding prime time win with 1.71 million viewers nationally, with more than 1.1 million in the capital cities.

The Voice was well ahead in the metro ratings for Tuesday, with Survivor scoring 682,000 and The Block coming fourth behind the ABC’s 7.30 (641,000) with its lowers ratings of the 2021 season of 591,000 viewers.

Seann Miley Moore had his prayers answered with his performance of the Andrea Bocelli classic. Picture: Richard Dobson

It was pitch queen Ora versus Keith Urban, Jessica Mauboy and Guy Sebastian to win a couple of potential winners on Tuesday – Mauboy’s 17-year-old niece Saraya and power-lunged Seann Miley Moore.

Ora won Saraya but copped the block from Mauboy and lost Moore, who she crossed paths with previously when he auditioned for the UK X Factor.

Monday night’s line-up of contestants signalled The Voice may finally break its winners curse after unearthing pop star-in-waiting Chantel Cofie who lit up social media with her world-class performance of her own song.

The 23-year-old singer and former Disney host from Sydney put all four coaches’ chairs into a spin – and a standing ovation – when she sang 2020, a song inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement last year.

It’s taken 10 seasons to find the fully-formed diamond in the rough of Australia’s talent pool, with Cofie not only a supremely gifted songwriter and vocalist but clearly in command of the kind of artist she wants to be.

Her audition was generating plenty of repeat views on YouTube, clocking up more than 110,000 views in 12 hours and counting, a remarkable achievement when measured against established Australian pop artists.

Cofie wasn’t the only artist to keep the show’s re-engaged audience flooding social media during Monday’s show and propelling the television talent quest to another ratings win with 1.72 million viewers nationally compared to Survivor with 889,000 and The Block slipping to third with 885,000 across Australia.

The opera power of singing teacher Julee-Anne Bell recalled the scene-stealing audition of UK X Factor superstar Susan Boyle.

The 47-year-old from Queensland, who was born blind, got an encore performance of the Sound Of Music classic Climb Every Mountain when her coach Guy Sebastian joined her on stage for a duet.

“I will never forget that as long as I live,” Bell told Sebastian after their note-perfect, tear-jerking duet.

Another artist rising to the challenge of pursuing her music dream against the odds was 21-year-old Maddie Grace who suffers cystic fibrosis and sang the emotional Kasey Musgraves song Rainbow.

Despite its declining ratings fortunes on former network Nine, the rebooted talent quest is a winner for Seven whose tighter, brighter revamp has been embraced as a tonic for Australia’s lockdown blues.

The nice Voice coaches except when they use their naughty block. Picture: SUPPLIED

Seven chief executive James Warburton told Media Week that The Voice, along with the Olympics, will help propel the network to win the 2021 ratings overall.

“We took The Voice from Nine and it is the biggest entertainment program this year. We have reinvested in it, cut it down and put new energy into it,” Warburton told Media Week.

“The first episode of The Voice had 291,000 people watching on 7plus which is extraordinary for a show doing 2m plus.”

Saraya Mauboy-Hudson surprised the hell out of her aunt Jess. Picture: Supplied.