Carson Daly Wants To Show You Around NBC's 'The Voice' Auditions

The fanfare surrounding each year's Super Bowl can be an odd duck.

Personally, it seems like each and every year, I encounter fewer people around me that give any types of damn who's playing or who might win The Big Game. It's like a bizarre farce-come-true of the cutesy marching band T-shirts I'd see in high school that referred to high school football games as the band's "opening act."

Some care more about the parties they orchestrate around the game than the game itself.

A few masochists actually still watch the game anxiously awaiting the halftime show. After a performance during the 2011 Super Bowl that the Black Eyed Peas will hopefully never be allowed to live down, these people can largely only be described as performing the same action repeatedly and expecting a different result. Madonna and Cirque du Soleil performing this year in Indianapolis will be a recipe for either unintentional absurdity or a crap-tastic event that will induce an aneurysm. Place your bets.

Others just think of it as that thing happening between commercials with people wearing the helmets. Somewhere, the writers of "Demolition Man" just scream "You know we meant this as a joke, right?"

Still others actually await what comes on after the game. That postgame slot can be a prime premiere-event time. After all, many moons ago in 1999, FOX followed the Super Bowl by introducing a little show called "Family Guy" and the Griffin family taught us all to live, love and embrace ADD-addled, irreverent cut-away gags again.

And with the game coming to NBC this year, the Peacock Brand has decided that the rematch between the New York Giants and New England Patriots on Feb. 5 will be followed up by the sophomore-season debut of its blind-audition singing star search "The Voice."

Speaking of that distinctive make-it-or-break-it weeding out process, host Carson Daly has given fans a walkthrough from the time contestants enter the soundstage, through waiting in the wings and making an entrance to greet the chair backs of mentors Christina Aguilera, Blake Shelton, Cee Lo Green and Adam Levine, to meeting waiting loved ones offstage.

Give "The Voice" this much: the concept certainly lends the show's aims credibility. "American Idol" and "The X Factor" auditions can make someone start rolling eyes quickly because so many contestants play up the sizzle to mask the lack of steak. For those who have never seen "The Voice," each contestant starts singing and when a mentor hears something he or she likes, the mentor turns around as something of a seal of approval.

Nothing against Lady Gaga doing right by David Bowie and Madonna's legacies of captivating imagery and ever-evolving personas, but it's refreshing watching a concept play out in which whether or not one can actually sing is the decisive way through Opportunity's door.

"It's been hard for me. I've been at it for a while and I've tried to sort of shrink my voice down to fit," said a contestant, sounding like he's battling back tears, whose performance clearly struck something within Green. "But I decided for this show I was just going to sing like myself."