‘The Voice’ Recap: Christina Aguilera, Adam Levine, Cee Lo Green + Blake Shelton Show Off Their Ears

Pop stars Christina Aguilera, Adam Levine and Cee Lo Green, and country singer Blake Shelton, showed off their ears and artist relations skills tonight on the debut episode of NBC's new singing competition 'The Voice.'

Each of the four celebrity coaches listened to over a dozen amateur singers over the two-hour program, and we mean "listen" literally. The four stars were seated so as to hear but not see each of the performers, forcing them to decide which contestants they wanted for their teams solely based on (get it?) 'The Voice.' If more than one coach chose a singer, that person got to pick whose team they would join.

This led to some friendly competition between the stars, who each have to gather eight team members over the next two weeks. Tonight, they all got three. You can read about the assembly of Team Aguilera, Team Levine, Team Cee Lo and Team Shelton by clicking on their names in this sentence.

The interaction and varying recruitment styles of the four coaches made for at least as compelling a storyline as the actual singing, which as you can imagine varied significantly but did feature some strong performances.  Christina dominated much of the proceedings with her friendly but assertive interjections, Shelton played the gracious funnyman, and Cee Lo had kind words and a big smile for even the most fully rejected singers.

Maroon 5 frontman Levine seemed to start off slow, often losing desired singers to the other coaches, but made a big comeback in the second half, scoring two of the early favorites to win it all for his team and staying true to his instincts despite much teasing from his panel mates.

After the coaches finish assembling their squads next week, they'll be forced to cannibalize a bit, pitting their own singers against each other in order to whittle their teams down to fighting trim. Then it's on to actual live episodes, with home viewers helping pick which amateur goes home with the record contract and a $100,000 prize.

Be sure to stay tuned to PopCrush for all the latest news and recaps of each week's 'The Voice.'