Kelly Clarkson‘sdaughter is spreading her wings and learning to fly above the drama.
As her and late ex-husbandBrandon Blackstock’s12-year-old daughterRiver Roseexperiences the ups and downs of junior high school, theVoicecoach shared how she took a chance, made a change and guided the tween to break away from the woes of adolescence.
“I’m a pretty progressive parent, so I’m like, ‘No, no. You’re gonna make your own mistakes, and that’s OK,'” Clarkson told E! News’Will Marfuggiin an exclusive interviewonThe Voiceseason 30 live show red carpet on Nov. 9. “I’m not like an ‘I told you so,’ but I do implement advice.”
“They’re growing up,” she continued. “One’s in junior high, and junior high sucks. It’s a hard age with friends, and arguing and stuff like that. I do offer advice, and I’ve had my daughter come back and be like, ‘So you were right.'”
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But the 44-year-old—also mom to10-year-old sonRemington Alexanderwith Blackstock—will always help her daughter stand a little taller, even when she doesn’t heed her mom’s warnings.
As she explained, “I’ve had them be like, ‘OK, so I didn’t do that, and I should have.'”
While Clarkson is hitting all the right notes of motherhood, she’s also had a pitch-perfect time onThe Voicealongside fellow coachesAdam Levine,Queen LatifahandRiley Green.
Although theMaroon 5frontman took home gold last season withAlexia Jayy, he couldn’t wait another minute to focus on this season.
“He doesn’t really brag like that,” Clarkson said. “He’s not that guy. I totally would. I’d be like, ‘Good luck,’ just for fun or whatever. But he’s pretty chill about it.”
But the “Breakaway” singer would be lyin’ if she said she wasn’t looking forward to working with Latifah and Green as the newest additions experience the live rounds for the first time.
“What’s amazing about Queen is she’s such a legend,” Clarson emphasized. “I know people throw around the term legend a lot, but she actually is. She’s done so much, be it Broadway and movie musicals, be it rapping, be it singing, be it acting, whatever it is. She’s just always doing stuff.”
Simply put, “That brought just a legendary kind of status to the show for us this season.”
Meanwhile, the “Worst Way” singer has definitely brought more than wine and roses to the singing competition.
“Riley is just currently crushing it on the charts, like everywhere,” she continued. “His career is blown up. It’s a different point in his career for him, too. So it’s fun. They’re bringing that different energy of what’s happening in their world at this chapter in their lives.”
While fans wait to see who wins big duringThe Voiceseason 30, press the red button and keep reading for surprising secrets about the series.
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But while NBC and series producers have never confirmed any amount, the last singer standing at the end of the competition reportedly gets $100,000.
Past winners have acknowledged getting paid, season 18 champ Todd Tilghman telling People in 2020, “I don’t have any immediate plans to make any drastic changes tomorrow. I don’t know for sure the direction my life will go in. There’s a possibility that that money might pay the bills for a little while.”
But, he added, since his wife had promised their kids a trip to Disney World, he guessed he’d be splurging on that too.
Not that the value of the music opportunities that open up for the winners should be discounted.
“I’ve got a catalog of songs. I have a lot of writer friends I want to collaborate with,” season 27 winner Adam David of Team Bublé told Parade in May 2025. “The plan is to put out some music and go on to work. We’re going to put out some music, and we’re going to hit the road.”
Contestants must be at least 13 years old when they embark on their audition journey. The hopefuls have 90 seconds to introduce themselves and sing. They can sing anything they want but, per the show’s FAQ page, they’re encouraged to pick a tune “that best suits your voice and represents you as an artist.”
Judges listen to auditions for “five or six days with approximately 18 to 20 auditions per day,” executive producer Audrey Morrissey told SheKnows in 2018. Once they’re selected for the blind round, she explained, “Artists are with us for several days prior to [their audition] to rehearse with our band, work with wardrobe/styling and camera block on the audition stage.”
Then there’s the filming to put together the packages introducing some of the hopefuls and their families, all of which came as a surprise to season six alum Ddendyl Hoyt. “I had no idea that reality TV was filmed kind of like a drama,” she told the Washington Post in 2014, “So everything is filmed in segments and that’s kind of the longest process of it all.”
“I can’t be a mean judge,” coach Reba McEntire, who won season 25 with Asher HaVon, told Newsweek in 2023. “It’s good just to say, ‘If you want to come back again, try it again next season, maybe a song that suits you, one that you’re really comfortable with and that really shows your talent,’ give them advice and encourage them to come back.”
As of season 28, there’s also the Carson Callback card to be played, in which longtime host Carson Daly grants an aspiring artist who didn’t get any takers another shot.
“We shop for each artist to come up with great looks,” Morrissey told SheKnows. “Once we get to the live shows, looks are customized for each specific performance.”
“The coaching sessions take place over four days,” Morrissey said, “and the actual battle performances take two days.”
Meanwhile, she added, how involved a coach gets with each artist “depends on the coach. Some love a big production and like working out all the details…Other coaches mainly focus on the music and arrangement for the performance.”
Some coaches “are avid texters while others email,” Morrissey added. “All off-camera interactions intensify as the artists move through the competition and the stakes get higher.”
But it takes a village, former contestant Hoyt telling the Post, “What they don’t show is all the coaching that comes from the staff: The vocal coaches, the band director, the producers, everyone has notes for you.”
Snoop Dogg told Access Hollywood in September 2025, “The behind-the-scenes people don’t get the credit that they deserve. It’s a lot of people, moving things, making it happen…All of these people back here that make our job easy, all we gotta do is walk onstage and do what we do.”
The artists can theoretically offer their two cents when it comes to picking their songs, but usually the coaches rule on that front.
Season one’s Frenchie—who competed under O.G. coach Christina Aguilera’s tutelage—told Cosmopolitan in 2021 it was “always hysterical when the judges say, ‘I don’t think that was a good song choice for you,’ and I’m thinking, you picked that song.”
On the flip side, season 24 winner Huntley credited coach Niall Horan with helping him find his way, telling NBC Insider the One Direction alum “knows how to pick songs, I’ll tell you that.”
“We had to start visiting to check on our well-being,” season six alum Kat Perkins told Cosmopolitan of the counselors on staff. “The minute you are eliminated, you walk from that stage and into the psychiatrist’s office for a debriefing. They make sure that you talk about it. It’s very needed because you’ll never go through anything like it again. It’s traumatic and you’re not really emotionally set up to do something that big that quickly.”
Not unlike a luxury car seat, in addition to an automobile-caliber aluminum frame and shiny paint job, each chair has self-adjusting heaters (“Me and Reba, we’re the butt-warming kings,” Snoop quipped to Access Hollywood) and dual cupholders (as requested by former coach Blake Shelton).
But, according to Perkins, the dramatic whoosh sound the chairs make when they turn around is added in post-production.
“You almost don’t notice it,” she told Cosmo, “especially when you’re focusing and singing to the crowd that’s in the studio.”
“We are constantly at each other’s throats, and sometimes we really do get mad at each other,” Blake told The Tennessean in 2017. “We’re those two guys you knew in high school where we have this bond that is unexplainable. It brings out the best and worst in both of us. It truly is an explosive relationship. And I know every trick to get under his skin.”
Translation: “He’s one of the best friends that I have, but I still want to kill him sometimes.”
And even though they haven’t competed against each other since 2019, Adam knows what the fans want.
“The Voice season 1 after party, at my house with dips–t @blakeshelton,” the O.G. coach captioned a throwback pic ahead of his return to the show in February 2025 for season 27.
Meanwhile, subsequent crops of coaches were far less likely to tweet out each other’s private phone numbers.
“You spend so much time together,” Niall said during an NBC sit-down, “and I was hoping it wasn’t going to be like this TV relationship where the cameras go around and we’re like [feigning enthusiasm], ‘Hey, Snoop Dogg!’ I was always nervous about that, doing the show in the first place. I just didn’t want it to be like a forced relationship, and it hasn’t been that at all.”
