‘The Voice’ Top 11 Results: I’ll Stay Here With You Until This Dream Is Gone

Last week on The Voice, Season 10’s quirkiest and coolest contestants, Team Pharrell’s Emily Keener and Team Adam’s Owen Danoff (both four-chair auditioners), shockingly landed in the bottom two – with Emily eventually going home. This week, I was hoping that an endorsement from none other than James Taylor – who made a rare exception and cleared his beloved ballad “Fire and Rain” just for Owen – would keep Owen out of danger and give the sensitive singer-songwriter a much-needed iTunes boost.

But, no. This Tuesday, on The Voice’s top 11 results show, Owen again bottomed out in the voting – and on the iTunes charts. His “Fire and Rain” recording surprisingly got no higher than #100; the only contestant who charted lower was Team Pharrell’s Daniel Passino with “Time After Time,” at #107. (To be fair, it was tough for any of the top 11 finalists to crack the upper echelons of the iTunes chart this week, with Prince’s back catalog and Beyoncé’s Lemonade dominating; Paxton Ingram was the highest, and he only made it to #18.)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, based on the above-mentioned damning iTunes stats, Daniel was the other contestant in the bottom two Tuesday – even though, ironically, this had been Daniel’s best week. And I have to admit, when Daniel and Owen faced off in the Twitter Instant Save showdown at the end of Tuesday’s episode, Daniel had a better night. His performance of Nick Jonas’s “Jealous,” while so corny and cheesy that it may as well have been sponsored by this tasty snack item, was confident, with nary a flubbed note or lyric. Being up for elimination on live television, despite his recent PTSD-inducing Voice experiences like singing against Alisan Porter and being a Coach Comeback artist, didn’t seem to rattle Daniel’s nerves one bit. I’ll give him credit for his ability to keep cool, even though I don’t think he’s actually cool.

Conversely, Owen – doing Cam’s “Burning House,” which was such a breakout moment for Emily Ann Roberts last season – completely cracked under the pressure of having to sing for the Save again. His voice cracked, actually. And he forgot his words, too. His struggle was very real. “I’ll stay here with you until this dream is gone,” he warbled weakly. And soon – spoiler alert – his dream would be gone, indeed.

“Owen, I don’t want you to beat yourself up too much about being in this position two weeks in a row. I saw you getting frustrated there with a lyric that wasn’t coming to you. Man, this is a lot of pressure,” said a kind and sympathetic Blake Shelton. “To be in this spot two weeks in a row, that only adds to that. I want to say to you, one artist to another, I believe in you, and I think you’re on the right path.”

I too still believed in Owen and his path… even if it now seemed highly unlikely that that path would lead all the way to the Season 10 finale. I believed in Owen’s potential, his artistry, and the unique style he brought to a season otherwise filled with big, booming outdoor voices. So I tweeted #VoiceSaveOwen. Again. I may as well have retweeted my posts from last week.

This time, it did not work. Daniel prevailed. Honestly, I wonder if Owen still would have lost this sing-off even if his “Burning House” performance had been perfect. He just never really connected with America, for some reason. Oh well. Hopefully this won’t be the last we hear from Owen… but hopefully the next time we do hear him, he’ll be singing his own original material. Maybe a program like The Voice just wasn’t the right showcase for his troubadour talents.

Final note: Shortly after I learned that all my #VoiceSaveOwen tweets were in vain, I heatedly tweeted that this is the “Worst. Voice. Season. Ever.” Having had a chance to step away from my not-always-smart-phone and calm down, do I still feel that way? Well, sort of. While this season’s surviving top 10 are undoubtedly a vocally blessed bunch, few of them are all that interesting. My only hope for a redeemed 10th season is if the actually excellent Alisan Porter, Adam Wakefield, Laith Al-Saadi, and Hannah Huston all make the top four finale. If any of them go home before then, I may actually RT myself… and repost that “Worst. Season. Ever” tweet. Watch this space.

Follow Lyndsey on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+, Amazon, Tumblr, Vine, Spotify