A damn good cover.
Season 26 of The Voice kicked off last week with a brand new cast including the likes of Snoop Dog, Reba McEntire, Gwen Stefani and Michael Bublé. Though it’s still incredibly early in the show’s season, it seems like there’s already an artist who is going to receive a lot of buzz in the country/folk scene. That artist is West Virginia native, Mor Ilderton.
Ilderton, who released his debut single, “Welcome Sign,” back in April, made his first-ever live performance during this week’s episode of The Voice. The West Virginian sang a cover of none other than Dylan Gossett’s certified gold hit, “Coal,” during his audition, prompting Bublé, Reba and Snoop Dogg to turn their chairs around in an attempt to secure him.
Bublé, who used the show’s newly implemented block button on country legend, Reba, eventually was chosen by Ilderton and joined Bublés team. The “Feeling Good” singer wanted Ilderton so bad, in fact, that he said, “I didn’t touch the red button, I touched the ‘Block Reba’ button because I didn’t want the greatest country singer in the universe to get close.”
The audition has since started to go viral, racking up over 1.8 million views and 129,000 likes on TikTok alone along with over 241,000 views and 7,700 likes on Instagram, both posted from The Voices’ official Instagram account.
Gossett took to Instagram last night, reposting the performance on his story complimenting Ilderton with the caption, “Unreal! Crushed it man!”
Today, Ilderton took to Instagram for the first time after the audition went viral, thanking everyone for the positive reception and Bublé for choosing him with the caption saying, “Wanna say a big thank you to everyone who has supported me and all the positive feedback I’ve received. It means the entire world to me and I wouldn’t be here without the people that stood in my corner and believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself sometimes so for that thank you so much! God has blessed me and given me this amazing opportunity and to be able to chase this dream still seems unreal to me. Let’s keep rolling!!”
Stream Ilderton’s debut single and watch his cover of “Coal” here: