And 'The Voice' Season 7 Winner Is…
The odds may have been stacked in Adam Levine’s favor on this Tuesday’s The Voice finale, since three of the four finalists were members of Team Adam. But in the end Adam’s archrival, Blake Shelton, scored again, guiding his one remaining contestant, country crooner Craig Wayne Boyd, to a Season 7 victory.
Despite the odds, it wasn’t a huge surprise that Craig was this season’s winner. It was actually more surprising that the country veteran had to go on The Voice to become a household name or land a major recording contract. An incredibly polished and charismatic performer, Craig had been knocking around Nashville for a decade, playing with the likes of Jamey Johnson, Bryan White, and Randy Houser and signing a publishing deal with EMI, but never getting his big break. But the Texas-bred 35-year-old’s perseverance finally paid off. Clearly Craig meant business when he titled his 2013 independent album I Ain’t No Quitter.
This was the fourth Voice victory for Blake Shelton, who gloated unabashedly (blithely ignoring the fact that he’d actually let fellow coach Gwen Stefani temporarily steal Craig away during the Battle Rounds). It was also Blake’s third victory with a country artist. A disgruntled Adam Levine had to settle for second, third, and fourth place, respectively, with his team members: alt-rocker Matt McAndrew, pop heartthrob Chris Jamison, and soul belter Damien.
But truthfully, this was an extremely competitive Voice season, and all four very different contestants were worthy. It remains to be seen if any of the others will get deserved record deals of their own, or if Craig will really be any better off now than he was before in Nashville. (The post-show track record for Voice contestants hasn’t been very impressive, to say the least, especially with older singers, but its most successful winners have been Team Blake country singers.) However, Blake did once tell Craig, “You may be one of the guys who’s going to come out of this and be a superstar in country music” — and he just may have been right.
Group-performance highlights of the two-hour finale included Craig doing the Georgia Satellites’ “Keep Your Hands to Yourself” with sassy finalists DaNica Shirey, Sugar Joans, and Taylor Brashears; Matt’s own “bring back” performance with Taylor John Williams, Taylor Phelan, Mia Pfirrman, and Sugar on Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way”; and Damien doing “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” with Anita Antoinette, Elyjuh René, and DaNica.
Matt, Damien, and Chris respectively, successfully dueted with Fall Out Boy, Jennifer Hudson, and Jessie J. (Unfortunately, Craig’s duet with Lynyrd Skynyrd fell a little flat, but that was more the band’s fault than his own.) The four coaches also got in the seasonal Season 7 spirit, singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”
However, it was Bruno Mars who upstaged them all, singing Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk” in gold hair curlers. It was such a hot performance, almost everything that followed, even the winner announcement, seemed a little anticlimactic.
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