Some performances shake you.
Some awaken something buried.
And then… there are the rare few that leave you questioning the nature of reality itself.
That’s what happened during the 2014 season of The Voice: La Plus Belle Voix, when a little-known performer named Spleen stepped onto the stage to perform Britney Spears’ Toxic — a performance that would change the fate of the show… and perhaps more.
The Man in the Velvet Hat
Spleen wasn’t your typical contestant. He walked onto the stage wearing a deep maroon velvet hat, oversized sunglasses, and a floor-length coat that shimmered faintly under the studio lights. Everything about him felt out of place. Even his name — Spleen — conjured mystery, melancholy, and maybe madness.
The audience exchanged amused, curious glances. The judges, casually poised in their red chairs, expected either brilliance or catastrophe.
No one was ready for what came next.
A Voice from Elsewhere
As the first notes escaped his lips, the air seemed to shift.
Gone was the chirpy playfulness of Britney’s hit. In its place: a jazz-noir soundscape dripping in shadow and tension. Spleen’s voice cracked, rose, growled, and fluttered — all within seconds — like he was channeling multiple personas at once. There were no background dancers. No pyrotechnics. Just Spleen, a mic, and something that felt… sentient.
The coaches turned their chairs one by one, faces shifting from confusion to awe to something close to fear.
Even Mika, the judge known for embracing the eccentric, sat frozen in place, mouth slightly ajar.
Then, something strange happened.
The Glitch
During Spleen’s final note — a falsetto so pure it sounded like crystal shattering — the lights flickered. Not the theatrical kind of flicker. A genuine power fluctuation. Cameras momentarily cut to black. Microphones caught a low-frequency hum that hadn’t been part of the track.
Some viewers at home reported their televisions glitched or their smartphones rebooted at that exact moment.
And then… the lights returned. The song ended. And Spleen simply said:
“This isn’t the first time I’ve sung this.”
Confused laughter rippled through the audience. A joke? Performance art?
He bowed and walked off the stage without another word.
The Tape That Shouldn’t Exist
The broadcast went viral almost instantly — not just because of the performance’s quality, but because of what people thought they heard during the blackout.
Some claimed they heard whispers in the static — French words like “répétez” (repeat) and “au-delà” (beyond). A few conspiracy theorists on forums alleged that if you slowed the final note to a crawl, you could hear a second voice harmonizing in reverse.
TF1, the network behind The Voice: La Plus Belle Voix, dismissed the rumors.
But an intern in the editing department leaked something unusual: an alternate version of the audition tape. In this cut, the performance is exactly the same, but the judges’ reactions are reversed — as if they were watching a completely different performance.
In one frame, Mika turns his chair, then appears unturn it — something physically impossible on set.
Theories exploded.
Time loop? Parallel reality? Audio manipulation?
Then, someone found it.
The 1994 Recording
A retired sound engineer in Toulouse claimed to have an old cassette from a college jazz bar dated April 3rd, 1994 — exactly 20 years before Spleen’s audition. The tape contained a live recording of an unknown performer singing… Toxic.
But Britney Spears didn’t release Toxic until 2003.
The song was exactly the same. Same lyrics. Same melody. Same eerie tone that Spleen used. And most chilling of all, the voice?
Identical to Spleen’s.
Even then, he said the same closing line:
“This isn’t the first time I’ve sung this.”
The Interview
Spleen vanished after his audition. He withdrew from the competition two weeks later without explanation.
He resurfaced in a surprise interview on a Parisian podcast known for its focus on art and the occult. When asked about the Toxic performance, he smiled softly.
“That song doesn’t belong to anyone. Not Britney. Not me. It finds the voice it needs in each cycle. I was just this cycle’s vessel.”
The host laughed nervously. “Cycle?”
Spleen leaned forward.
“This dimension isn’t as linear as you think. Some voices echo forward. Some… backward. Some awaken memories of other timelines. My job is to keep the frequencies in tune.”
The episode was removed within 24 hours.
The host later claimed the studio’s entire hard drive array was wiped.
The Final Broadcast
In 2025, a YouTube account titled EchoUnit94 uploaded a high-definition version of Spleen’s audition with one change: the video was inverted — visually and sonically. Played backwards, the performance revealed a ghostly counter-melody, sung in what sounded like Old French.
Linguists translated it roughly as:
“The song of decay renews the cycle. Toxic binds. Spleen sings.”
That same day, The Voice announced a special anniversary episode celebrating the show’s most iconic moments.
Spleen’s performance was not included.
But during the broadcast, at exactly the same timestamp as the original audition — 43 minutes and 27 seconds — televisions across Europe blinked.
Just once.
And in that blink, a single frame was captured by viewers with slow-motion tech:
Spleen, standing center stage.
Smiling.
Whispering:
“Encore.”