Rolling Stone did a write up explaining the judging:
http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/l...-show-20120524
Kelly Clarkson, Jennifer Nettles, John Legend and Robin Thicke have each handpicked their amateurs from auditions that the superstars set up after browsing YouTube videos or having friends and family refer contenders. The superstars will work with these unknowns to select songs, coordinate vocal arrangements and stage presentation and, ultimately, perform live on each Duets episode. For the show's first five pretaped episodes, the eliminations will be decided by the judges. After one of the superstars sings with their partner, the three superstars who did not perform will rank the performance on a scale of 0 – 50, taking into account both the amateur's performance and presentation.
At the end of the episode, the two lowest ranked amateurs will take the microphone for an a capella showdown. The judges will vote and the amateur with the lowest score will be immediately sent home. Starting with the sixth episode, which airs on June 28th, the shows will run live and voting will be open to America. The judges will continue to provide their feedback and rankings, but the public will decide which amateurs leave and which continue on.
(HMMMM Robin said that the eliminations start the third week??)
Kelly Clarkson (Superstar)
Who She Is: Most well-known as the first American Idol, Clarkson has gone on to release five albums, sell 20 million records worldwide and win two Grammy Awards, two American Music Awards, two MTV Music Awards and 11 Billboard Music Awards in her career thus far.
Reality Show Cred: In addition to Idol, Clarkson placed second in the 2003 World Idol competition, and has appeared on both X Factor and Canadian Idol. Most recently, she served as an advisor to Blake Shelton's team on season two of The Voice.
"There Wasn't a Cattle Call": "I was at an award show actually singing a duet and some of the producers came up to me and said, 'We have this idea about doing a whole collaboration show.' At first I was like, "I've already done this" – but then they explained it more and told me that I got to pick my own contestants, anybody I wanted. There wasn't a cattle call for us at any one table."
Virtual Insanity: "We held several different auditions while I was on tour, but the main thing I really wanted everybody to do was submit videos online. I didn't have any money when I auditioned for Idol; they happened to be in Dallas for my audition and if it would have been anywhere else, I wouldn't have had any money to do that. I wanted to make sure everybody had a chance to audition, so I had people submit videos and I watched a hell of a lot of them."
Control Freak: "We found all our own people our own way. It put a lot of the control in our hands and I love that. I also love singing harmony, so they won me over on the aspect of being able to collaborate. It sounds cheesy, but I didn't have anybody helping me. I love that I can do this for these two kids that I picked."
Words to Live By: "How I looked at it on my show, [and on] every show is, somebody might be watching, like a manager or a label head, and [to my amateurs] I'm like , 'We need to make you shine how you want to shine, so if you don't make it, somebody will come calling from that.'"