The good thing about finale night of a reality singing competition is that we get to find out who the winner is, the moment we’ve been waiting for all season. The bad thing is that we have to go through hours of unnecessary programming before the results are announced. With an hour recap of Monday’s episode and then a two-hour finale, in which the results weren’t announced until the last five minutes, it’s safe to say there was a lot of filler last night on The Voice. Was it nice to see eliminated contestants come back and sing with the Top 4? Sure. And of course, it was fun seeing the Top 4 perform with some of their idols. But the rest of the night was filled with promotion for other artists and various sketches that took away from the purpose behind the night: to celebrate the final four contestants.
Finale night started off with a performance by the Top 20, singing a medley of fun. songs. Putting that many voices together is never going to sound great, but it was still nice to see everyone return (even the ones we had completely forgotten about). Later in the night, each of the Top 4 got to choose a group of eliminated contestants that they wanted to sing with. This was a great way to see what friendships had formed behind the scenes of The Voice while also showcasing how much talent this season had.
Joshua Davis brought back Brian Johnson, Deanna Johnson, Corey Kent White, and Kimberly Nicole in a performance that didn’t quite work because of the variety of voices. Meghan Linsey brought back Sarah Potenza in a duet that was well suited for both of their powerful voices. Koryn Hawthorne chose Lexi Devila, Tonya Boyd-Cannon, Caitlin Caporale, India Carney, and Mia Z to sing with her, showing off the girl power this season. Their performance confirmed that a few of these contestants should have gone much farther than they did. Finally, for Sawyer Fredericks’ bring back performance, we got to hear from Mia Z again, along with Lowell Oakley and Brooke Adee. Each of these four young artists can nail a soul performance, and it was great to see them together.
Throughout the night, each of the Top 4 also got to sing with an established artist, an incredible opportunity for all of them. Koryn and Meghan both sang duets with Kelly Clarkson, though it was clear that Kelly’s genre is much more suited towards Koryn. Both girls showed their power and held their own with Kelly, not a small feat. I do find it ironic that Kelly Clarkson, original winner of American Idol, appeared on The Voice finale, but I’m such a fan of hers that it doesn’t really matter. Sawyer had the chance to sing with legend John Fogerty in a medley of songs. This was so much fun to watch as Sawyer seemed to be having the time of his life. Joshua David also seemed in shock that he got to perform with the great Sheryl Crow, whose voice matched his perfectly in a beautiful rendition of one of her songs.
The rest of the night featured performances by Meghan Trainor, Maroon 5, Luke Bryan, Ed Sheeran, and all four of the coaches together. We also saw sketches of Christina doing impersonations, the coaches making fun of Adam’s love of sports, the Top 4 being given brand new cars, Adam being ‘mentored’ by Pharrell and Reba, and Blake’s interesting coaching techniques. For an episode that ran two hours long, they needed plenty of filler, and this is how they decided to fill the rest of the time. Some of the sketches were almost cute, but mostly they were just pointless.
After all the performances and sketches, we finally got down to the results with only minutes remaining of the episode. Carson started by announcing fourth place and then third place before finally revealing the winner of this season of The Voice. Anyone could have predicted how these results played out, with Koryn Hawthorne landing in fourth place, Joshua David in third place, Meghan Linsey in second place, and Sawyer Fredericks taking home the title. For a kid like Sawyer, who only cares about being able to make music, the actual title probably means nothing. The fact that he now has a record deal is what really matters to him because it guarantees that he’ll get to do what he loves. Everyone surrounded him, expressing their congratulations as Sawyer took the stage one last time, singing his new single.
[Photo credit: Trae Patton/NBC]
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