‘The Voice’ finale: Why Team Blake’s 3 artists are more in danger than you think
Tuesday night’s results show of “The Voice” semi-finals revealed that for only the third time in 22 seasons will a coach enter the finale with three artists in contention. While that feat is impressive, Blake Shelton should be worried because the other two times it’s happened — once on his watch and once on Adam Levine‘s — that coach lost. Team Blake will enter the Season 22 finale of “The Voice” on Monday night with bodie, Brayden Lape and Bryce Leatherwood all competing for the win, but history says they could be in danger and that Team Camila Cabello‘s Morgan Myles or Team John Legend‘s Omar Jose Cardona might prevail instead.
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Acknowledging outright that every season is different for a number of ways, it still can’t go unnoticed that according to precedent Team Blake will be in a tough spot on “The Voice” finale night. While Gwen Stefani will be sitting the finale out with no artists competing, John and Camila will have their armies in full support of only one artist each. Blake’s team will have three competing, and even though they’ve been strong enough to survive every vote until now, there’s no denying that vote-splitting among the demographic of audience tuning in to support Blake (and country music) is at play. But don’t just take our word for it, there’s precedent — so let’s dive into the past!
In Season 7, Team Adam entered the finale three strong with Chris Jamison, Damien Lawson and Matt McAndrew all singing for the win. Blake was the only other coach with a finalist, the eventual crowned winner Craig Wayne Boyd. Now, it’s important to consider that at that time the structure of the live shows was very different, taking on a playoff format and still including streaming numbers in the final tallies. But even with those stats, there was never a clear frontrunner between the four artists.
In the first week of the live playoffs, Adam saved Chris from elimination, but was firmly in the public vote after that. At the same time, Matt and Craig alternated weeks as the streaming chart leaders with their performances and Damien had a hit in the quarterfinals, but then was the instant save winner in the semis. With the artists so close week-to-week all season, it’s hard to assume that Team Adam didn’t split votes between themselves, making enough room for Craig to slide in for the win.
SEE ‘The Voice’ winners: All seasons
In Season 16, Team Blake was in the opposite scenario with three artists in the finale. Andrew Sevener, Dexter Roberts and Gyth Rigdon all sang against Team Legend’s Maelyn Jarmon and lost, giving John his first and only win. This time the game was very different, with only three weeks of public voting prior to finale night.
In the first week, Gyth had the biggest song in streaming and earned the vote multiplier, but in the second and third weeks of voting Maelyn did. In that sense, Maelyn had the most momentum heading into finale night, but because both Dexter and Gyth had consistently been within the public vote each week there was no telling who had the most support. In hindsight, this one might have been a little more clear cut than Season 7, but remains the second of two examples where a coach with three finalists has lost.
For Season 22, we no longer have the streaming tallies to take into consideration when predicting who will win. Instead we can only gauge by how they’ve performed in the public votes up until now. With that in mind, we might safely consider that Omar is the least likely to win because he polled lower than the other four in the semifinals and had to sing for the Instant Save in order to make it to the finale. (Is there an Instant Save curse?) Morgan, bodie, Bryce and Brayden have all been saved by the initial public vote each week, but we have no true indication as to which could be ahead of the other. And yet, if we trust the precedent, Team Blake enters with three male artists, two within the same genre of music, against a female from another team (taking Omar out of the equation) with a coach looking for their first win. Sound familiar?
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