17-year-old Kaylee Shimizu wowed The Voice coaches with her flawless cover of the Beatles’ “Golden Slumbers” during her Blind Audition that aired Tuesday night (October 3).
Kaylee Shimizu, a Hawaii native, earned a four-chair turn with her impressive performance that left the coaches in awe. When praising her rendition of the Beatles’ classic, we heard the coaches using words like “spiritual,” “technically gifted,” “dazzling” and “impossible.”
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But, it was John Legend who arguably gave her the biggest compliment by suggesting that she could win the entire competition.
“We’re just stunned right now. Your voice was just dazzling, it was so creative it was so musical,” Legend said. “You know you could win The Voice, right? And doing it on Team Legend would be a dream come true for me. You have so much confidence delivering these impossible notes, and I want to work with you.”
Gwen Stefani said she was “blown away” by Kaylee’s voice and praised her ability to control her vibrato. “I’ve never heard anything like that before and I think it’s because you’re so young and free,” Gwen told her.
Former One Direction singer and reigning Voice champ, Niall Horan, said that he couldn’t believe what he just witnessed. “That was just unbelievable. When we talk about ‘technically gifted,’ I’ve never met anyone so gifted. The song choice was perfect.”
Reba McEntire agreed and called Shimizu’s performance “spiritual,” saying, “I’ve never heard anybody do what you did on stage today.”
Ultimately, Kaylee chose to join Team Legend!
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Story Behind “Golden Slumbers”
“Golden Slumbers” was released in 1969 as part of the Beatles’ album Abbey Road. It was written by Paul McCartney and inspired by the poem “Cradle Song,” a lullaby written by Thomas Dekker for the play Patient Grissel in the early 1600s.
“I was playing the piano in Liverpool in my dad’s house, and my stepsister Ruth’s piano book was up on the stand. I was flicking through it and I came to ‘Golden Slumbers’. I can’t read music and I couldn’t remember the old tune, so I just started playing my own tune to it. I liked the words so I kept them, and it fitted with another bit of song I had,” McCartney said.
McCartney’s fellow Beatle, John Lennon, once said of the song, “That’s Paul, apparently from a poem he found in a book, some eighteenth-century book where he just changed the words here and there.”
The song has since been covered by numerous artists including John Denver, Neil Young and Jennifer Hudson, to name a few. But, Kaylee Shimizu’s rendition easily stands out as one of the best.
Hear Kaylee sing “Golden Slumbers” in the video below.