The Voice: Kelly Clarkson looks ‘like an assassin’ with eyepatch as battle rounds begin on NBC show

Kelly Clarkson sported an eyepatch that made her look ‘like an assassin’ on Monday’s first battle rounds episode of season 19 of The Voice.

The 38-year-old coach walked into rehearsal with her contestants wearing a stylish eyepatch over her right eye, which covered an eye infection.

‘I feel like I could be a really great supervillain,’ Kelly said, trying to sip her drink with a straw and almost putting it up her nose because she lacked depth perception.

‘I’m sorry I look like an assassin,’ she told the contestants. ‘If you have any troubles, just call me.’ 

Kelly’s eye patch wasn’t the only unusual sight on The Voice’s set.

Coronavirus safety precautions meant that its Battle Rounds had to be staged in a completely different way than they were in the past.

During rehearsals, the contestants sang divided by a windowed partition, and the coaches sat in a recording booth behind a glass window, too.

While practicing, the singers wore masks onstage.

On performance day, they each occupied separate rings set some distance apart.

‘It’s just such an interesting way to watch a performance, going back and forth,’ coach John Legend, 41, observed. ‘It’s like a tennis match. You’re like, ”Ooh, where did that note come from?” and looking over here, looking over there.’

‘I think that my whiplash is gonna be okay,’ joked Gwen Stefani, 51.

Team Gwen’s advisor was her personal friend, the singer/songwriter Julia Michaels, 26, with whom she had worked on her last album.

For her sole battle round, Gwen merged the sinewy vocals of Lauren Frihauf, 16, from Byers, Colorado, and Payge Turner, 27, from Trinidad and Tobago.

The pair performed a duet of Julia’s song If The World Was Ending, which she said she wrote with her boyfriend JP Saxe the first day they met.

‘Nine days later, we started dating, and we’ve been together ever since,’ she added.

In a confessional, Julia shared, ‘This song really is so special to me, especially because of the time we’re in, it really does feel like the world is ending sometimes, and hearing other artists make it their own is just a really beautiful and powerful thing.’

Gwen was so moved by the pair’s delicate intertwined vocals, she buried her head behind a sheaf of paper at the end of the song and shed a few tears.

After the live battle, Gwen chose Payge, telling her, ‘You know what you want to say, you know who you want to be, and I think we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg vocally.’

Seconds later, John and Blake Shelton, 44, pushed their buttons to save Lauren, with Gwen pumping her own button and claiming, ‘I was gonna save you,’ though it was too late.

‘I love Lauren!’ John claimed. ‘I remember turning for you, and I feel like you deserve a chance to keep going. I just recall when I heard you perform in the blind auditions, that Blake heard you and wouldn’t turn around.’

Blake volleyed back that John hadn’t been sure if he preferred Payge or Lauren’s vocals that evening, and noted, ‘I picked Payge, because I was trying to do everything I could to make you available to me. And I’ll be damned if it didn’t work.’

‘Oh my God, he can sell a car, y’all,’ Kelly marveled, as Gwen revealed that Blake’s dad was in fact a car salesman.

John won Lauren, and Blake gently batted at him with the green glove on a broomstick that the R&B singer used to greet new contestants.

‘It sucks, me losing to John, but at least it wasn’t me losing to Kelly,’ Blake rationalized.

In Blake’s first head-to-head, he paired Nashville country artist Taryn Papa, 30, with harmonizing mother-daughter trio Worth The Wait, from Centre, Alabama.

His team’s advisor was country singer Kane Brown, 27, who said he’d once dreamed of trying out for The Voice himself.

On Little Big Town’s Little White Church, both competitors unveiled soaring vocals, but Blake kept Worth The Wait, comparing the talent of its youngest member, Mia, 15, to that of his former teen winner, Danielle Bradbery.

Blake then saved Taryn as she walked offstage, telling her, ‘I’m not gonna let you leave!’

His second battle paired Nashville’s Payton Lamar, 23, and Jus Jon, 30, from Newport News, Virginia, on Sam Smith’s Dancing With A Stranger.

The coaches loved the pop-soul mashup, and Blake saved Jus Jon, whose voice he said sounded like it was ‘going through an echo chamber.’

Team Legend was next, aided by its new advisor, the R&B singer Miguel, 35.

John had soulful singer Olivia Reyes, 19, from Teaneck, New Jersey, face off against Tamara Jade, 30, a four-chair turn from Bowie, Maryland, on H.E.R.’s song Hard Place.

Onstage, the women showed great power, but Tamara’s natural charisma won over most of the judges, allowing her to triumph over the clear-voiced Olivia.

‘Tamara’s a star,’ John reflected, keeping her. ‘I love her energy. She just lights up every room, and I wanted to keep working with her.’

His subsequent battle paired Bailey Rae, 18, from Roberta, Oklahoma, and Sid Kingsley, 37, from Richmond, Virginia, on Chris Stapleton’s Tennessee Whiskey.

The song perfectly meshed Bailey’s country vocals with Sid’s bluesy inflections, and the coaches went crazy for it, giving the pair a standing ovation.

‘I love your tone,’ John told Bailey, picking her. ‘It just feels natural.’

Kelly then stole Sid, saying, ‘You opened your mouth and I had to stand up. I was floored!’

Team Kelly’s advisor for the season was her fellow Fort Worth, Texas, native Leon Bridges, 31.

Kelly paired up two of her singers with the biggest voices—Eli Zamora, 25, from El Paso, Texas, and Madeline Consoer, 24, from Eagle River, Wisconsin.

The duo sang Ricky Martin and Christina Aguilera’s Nobody Wants To Be Lonely, and were so good it was almost a shame to break them up, Blake observed.

‘You two, after The Voice, should just be a duo and take over the world,’ he said.

After the battle, Kelly chose Madelyn, noting that she’d easily mastered the Spanish in the song and was ‘good in any genre.’

The Voice will return Tuesday on NBC.