Cade Mower barely had time to settle into his Blind Audition before The Voice coaches realized they were hearing somebody they wanted on their teams.
The 35-year-old singer from Bluffdale, Utah, performed Zach Bryan’s “Something in the Orange,” bringing a gritty country tone and years of live-performance experience to the Season 30 stage.
Adam Levine was the first coach to turn, but he didn’t enjoy the advantage for long. Kelly Clarkson, Queen Latifah and Riley Green quickly followed, giving Cade a coveted four-chair turn in less than 10 seconds.
The result immediately created one of the fiercest coach battles of the Blind Auditions.
Cade then surprised the panel by revealing that music isn’t his only career. He works full time in finance as a wealth adviser while supporting his family, even though he has spent nearly 15 years pursuing music alongside his day job.
His performing experience goes back much further than The Voice. Cade started playing guitar at around 12 and began singing before turning 21. He eventually performed regularly at his uncle’s bar in Salt Lake City and continued playing thousands of shows while living in places including Austin and Nashville.
For Cade, getting onto The Voice represented an opportunity to finally push music from something he balances with another career into something he could potentially pursue full time.
All four coaches sensed the opportunity.
Queen Latifah gave Cade perhaps the night’s biggest compliment, telling him she believed he could go extremely far in the competition. Adam, meanwhile, reminded Cade of his own record as a coach and tried to convince him that pairing with someone outside the obvious country lane might actually make him stand out more.
Then Riley Green decided it was time for his secret weapon.
Riley reached for the cowboy hat kept with his coach’s chair and put it on before making his final pitch. The move has become his playful way of leaning completely into his country credentials when he really wants an artist.
But Adam quickly tried to turn Riley’s greatest advantage against him. Rather than pretending he could out-country Green, Levine suggested that Cade might benefit from choosing the unexpected coach — someone who could approach his voice from a different musical perspective instead of putting him alongside several other country artists.
It was a well-timed argument, especially with all four coaches fighting for the same singer.
In the end, though, Riley’s country connection proved too strong. Cade chose Team Riley, giving the first-time coach another major addition and one of the season’s standout four-chair artists.
Cade entered the audition hoping one chair would turn so he could move closer to becoming a full-time musician. Instead, four coaches turned almost immediately — and by the time the battle ended, Riley Green had pulled out the cowboy hat and walked away with exactly the singer he wanted.
