Now that The Bachelor Presents: Listen to Your Heart has been whittled down only to serious couples, host Chris Harrison announced the next phase of the competition — and what the Listen To Your Heart winners get. For the next several episodes, the couples will perform songs together and be judged on both their musical and romantic chemistry by a panel of Bachelor Nation stars and music industry members. The last couple standing wins the opportunity to jump start their career and the chance to do a Listen to Your Heart tour together.
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As Chris explained, the winning couple will be both the best at performing "but also the most committed couple ready to share their lives." That way they can continue into the next phase of their professional career together. After the last couple is crowned, they'll get to work with a "noted producer" to write and record their own original music together. After that, they'll take the show on the road with a tour. There are no set touring dates as of April 26, though Refinery29 reached out to ABC and will update this story if we get a response. That said, I think it's pretty safe to say the winners' tour is probably a ways off. Unfortunately, the coronavirus pandemic doesn't really care if someone just won a TV show — the tour can't even begin to land dates until social distancing restrictions are lifted across the U.S.
Right now, no musicians are touring and Chris made it pretty clear to Glamour that getting The Bachelorette filming underway is the network's first priority when things begin to open up again.
"First and foremost, when we get back, we have to safely figure out how can we produce The Bachelorette," he said when asked if summertime staple Bachelor in Paradise's schedule would be affected. With The Bachelorette as everyone's initial concern, it would make sense to put the LTYH tour on the back burner for a bit.
Then there's the fact that the winning couple will need time to write and record the songs to sing on tour. They could already be doing that via video apps, or ABC may have sanctioned them quarantining together as long as they keep it secret, but at the very least, our winners are likely still waiting to get in the studio together with that "noted producer." It's possible that some work had been done before things started to shut down, as LTYH finished filming in February, but it's unlikely any planning made pre-social-distancing can be enacted exactly as planned now.
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Presumably, the producers of Listen To Your Heart will want the tour to happen sooner rather than later so that the couple is still fresh in fans' minds. Generally, there's a gap in Bachelor Nation content from September when BiP ends, running until January when The Bachelor premieres. Perhaps that's when we can expect the LTYH couple to begin touring — and since The Bachelorette air dates are definitely going to be delayed, the series could even help serve up a little promotion for the tour the way Listen To Your Heart is still helping Clare find suitors.
A lot is up in the air right now, so we'll all have to wait a beat before we can begin planning which stop of the tour we'll attend.
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