Christina Aguilera hopes Nashville role will increase street cred among country contestants on The Voice

Christina Aguilera is determined to challenge Blake Shelton to land aspiring country singers for her team on the new season of The Voice after scoring a role on music drama series Nashville.

The Beautiful hitmaker has yet to win any of the talent competition's seasons and she is convinced part of the problem is Shelton's dominance of the country genre, as so many contestants in that field tend to select the Boys 'Round Here singer as their coach.

She says, "At this point, he's got that big country vote, he's locked that down. Me and Pharrell (Williams, fellow coach) were just saying, we need a zipcode (base) in Nashville just to get certain country singers from the blinds (blind auditions), because as soon as you hear a country song, it's like, 'Do I really want to push my button right now? Do I really want to go head-to-head with Blake's territory right now?' You will, like, give up before you even start! You get shy!"

However, Aguilera recently landed a guest appearance on TV series Nashville as Jade St. John, a pop superstar with country music dreams, and she is hoping the show will help her cause when she goes up against Shelton during the current eighth season of The Voice, which debuted on Monday (23Feb15).

She adds, "I'll be able to have something under my belt to get certain steals for these country artists. I'll be like, 'Well, I'm actually on the show Nashville, recording in Nashville'. Maybe that'll give me some pull with some of these guys."

Country star Shelton scored his fourth win on the talent competition in December (14) with his protegee Craig Wayne Boyd.