With the end of another season, we have a new reigning champion of The Voice! The NBC hit announced the winner of season 8 on Tuesday, May 19 during a two-hour finale featuring performances from Maroon 5, Luke Bryan, Kelly Clarkson, Sheryl Crow, Meghan Trainor, Ed Sheeran, John Fogerty, and this season’s top 20.
Four finalists competed for a recording contract — Team Pharrell Williams’ 16-year-old Sawyer Fredericks and 17-year-old Koryn Hawthorne, Team Blake Shelton’s 28-year-old Meghan Linsey, and Team Adam Levine’s 37-year-old Joshua Davis. Christina Aguilera is the only coach to not have an artist competing in the finale this season.
On Monday night’s final performance episode of the season, and for the first time in Voice history, contestants each debuted an original song. Linsey and Davis both chose songs they penned themselves, while Fredericks’ idol Ray LaMontagne wrote his and Williams himself wrote Hawthornes’ tune. Both Fredericks’ and Linsey’s original songs reached the iTunes Top 10 shortly after their performances — earning them each a boost in voting — with Davis’ and Hawthorne’s originals hovering just outside the coveted spot.
After all of the excitement of the night, it was finally time for host Carson Daly to announce the newest winner of The Voice. And the winner is…
Sawyer Fredericks! No stranger to the iTunes charts throughout the season, the farm boy from Fultonville, N.Y. was shocked when competing coach Shelton deemed him a frontrunner ahead of the finals. “I was not expecting him to say that!” he told Us Weekly after receiving the compliment from the country superstar. “We’re all amazing original artists here.”
Humble, just like his coach Williams, who championed both of his finalists after their performances Monday night. “They move people and they don’t take any credit for it. They know it comes from somewhere else,” the hit maker told Us. “That — there’s nothing bigger than that.”
Tell Us: Did the right singer win?
