Australia. Let's be real about our complicated relationship with The Voice.

Last week, we came to a realisation.

Everyone in Australia pretends they don’t watch The goddamn Voice but literally everyone does and go ahead and say you don’t but the ratings show otherwise you liar. 

Seriously. All the metrics say that every Australian is sitting at home watching The Voice on at least four televisions at once and it’s time we owned it.

Watch Denzel’s very controversial performance on The Voice. Post continues below. 

Perhaps we’re hesitant to admit it because deep down we have no idea whatsoever why we watch The Voice.

To start with, most people passionately dislike at least two out of the four judges. Boy George doesn’t blend his eyeshadow at all and wears hats indoors, Delta Goodrem always sings over the top of people who are given literally like seven seconds to audition, Kelly Rowland consistently name drops Beyonce and Guy Sebastian, well. Guy Sebastian doesn’t start nearly enough fights for prime time TV.

And he knows it. 

On top of that, the show itself is a contradiction in terms.

It's called The Voice but it has very little to do with anyone's voice and everything to do with mining people's elaborate and emotional backstories so the judges can cry when they perform a frankly average rendition of Miley Cyrus' The Climb.

We want less interviews with the family and more singing all the songs from A Star is Born. Do you understand?

As if that isn't bad enough, just last week Kelly forced a grown man to sing and dance to 'I Just Can't Wait To Be King' with a f*cking guitar before ELIMINATING him on NATIONAL TELEVISION.

How was that ever going to end well, Kelly? How? Is there anything more undignified? (No)

But despite the show's shortcomings, every Sunday, Monday and Tuesday night, Australians sit down to watch people sing songs that have had the first verse chopped out and finish out of nowhere 30 seconds later.

There's our dad, who watches it while half asleep on the lounge, regularly asking mum, 'Was that person good?' while she explains, 'No Pete, they were flat for the entire second verse'.

There's our housemate, who feels the need to explain to the TV, 'Delta, you like the SONG not the ARTIST don't get confused'.

Then there's the woman at work, who quietly mutters in the kitchen, 'Hang on, didn't Boy George go to prison that one time?'

Yes, Nicole, yes he did. For holding a male escort hostage.

It's a complicated show with a very complicated audience.

But the one thing we have in common is that we all like listening to people sing the songs we know from the radio. And we thoroughly enjoy judging them. And yelling that they didn't quite hit that note. Even though most of us are clinically tone-deaf.

We might like to pretend that at 7:29pm the television finds itself on Channel Nine and oh once you've started watching an episode you might as well finish it, but it's time to admit that maybe the reason The Voice is always on in our house is because we turn it on. With the remote. When we realise it's time for The Voice to start.

It's at once the very worst show on television but also the very best.

Australia. Let's own our very guilty pleasure.