Gina Castanzo competed on season 10 of The Voice as she joined Team Blake Shelton and she’s now revealed all about her time on the show, including some backstage secrets

Gina Castanzo competed on season 10 of The Voice (

The Voice has soared in popularity as it’s helped kickstart a number of careers, with fans often wondering what actually goes on behind-the-scenes.

The hit NBC show is how singer Gina Castanzo, who goes by her stage name Gina Zo, started her career. Gina was only 17 years old when she took part in season 10 and gained a spot on Team Blake Shelton.

While she’s credited The Voice for “being my confidence moment”, Gina admitted it was a lot of hard work and told The Mirror US all about what contestants go through. “It really is full on, we do have a vocal coach when we’re on the show so that’s outside of Blake, we have one that we are working with daily,” she revealed.

Gina Castanzo competed on The Voice ( 
Image:
NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)
Gina added: “And Blake we see once a week. And so it really is intense. You are doing media training, you’re doing rehearsals, you’re doing interviews, outfits. Outfits were my favourite part like going to get dressed, you get all your clothes. And so it really is intense.”

The singer admitted she didn’t know what to expect when she first went on The Voice and said the hardest part was “trying to find your place”. She explained: “You’re with like 50 people, well in the beginning before you do your blind audition, you’re with 100 other people and you don’t really know them.

“And being 18, like, I didn’t go to college yet. I was like, ‘I don’t know who I am’. And a lot of the people have careers already. So to be someone who has no career, really no idea who I am, it was really exciting but really scary. It was the first time I was ever on my own outside of my house so it was nerve-wracking.”

She now performs in a band called Velvet Rouge ( 
Image:
velvetrougeband/Instagram)
Despite the hard work involved in being part of The Voice, Gina said it was all worth it. She explained: “I really credit The Voice to being my confidence moment. And what I mean by that is I was 17 when I started my audition process with them and you know, when you’re 17 you most likely have no confidence, or you have a very false confidence and for me when I got on the show, I was like, ‘Oh my God. Okay wait. There’s a career here, I can do this’.”

She added: “To have someone like Blake Shelton, who was my coach, and Gwen Stefani, who was our mentor on the show, to have them actually think that I was good and really didn’t feel like fluff, like no one has to turn their chair and for producers who run the show, those people are the most important behind the judges, I just felt like I could do this and it really set me up for that mental success.”

Gina is now performing in a band called Velvet Rouge, who have just announced the release of their debut single. Gina said her songs aren’t “your standard love story” as she focuses a lot of her writing on “the love you have for yourself”. She added: “So for this, the inspiration really came from my struggles. I was working at the time when I started writing this and it was that balance struggle, like how do I live a normal life and then how do I also do my music life.”