Well, the fallout from the cross battle formatting fracas continues, as The Voice has now officially become The Blake Shelton Show, and Adam Levine doesn’t get to play anymore.
There’s still a very good chance that no one from Blake’s team will win in the finale, given the frontrunner(s) still carrying things away over on John Legend‘s end, but at this point, he’s guaranteed to have at least one contender in it. Meanwhile, Adam will be sidelined for the next two weeks with no contestant in the running at all.
On the bright side, though, he’ll now be able to provide some very honest feedback to the remaining contestants for the next two weeks.
Until then, let’s take a closer look at how the Top 13 results shook out.
In order of announcement by host Carson Daly, America picked seven to go through without a fight tonight, like so:
Maelyn Jarmon (Team John)
Dexter Roberts (Team Blake)
Gyth Rigdon (Team Blake)
Rod Stokes (Team Kelly)
Shawn Sounds (Team John)
Carter Lloyd Horne (Team Blake)
Andrew Sevener (Team Blake)
Of the six remaining contestants, the bottom three, who wouldn’t get a shot to compete for the instant save, were a bit of a surprise. Jej Vinson, one of Kelly Clarkson‘s favorites from the very beginning, was joined on that list of early send-offs by John Legend’s remaining recruit Celia Babini and Team Blake’s Oliv Blu.
That meant both members of Team Adam, Mari Jones and comeback artist L.B. Crew, would get to sing for an instant save spot in the semifinals alongside Team Blake’s Kim Cherry, which is good news. However, it also meant that Adam would be faced with deciding whether to again prop one contestant over the other and repeat his much-maligned show of favoritism from last season (the difference here being, of course, that both performers actually got to sing this time).
Kim Cherry kicked things off with a song that’s right in her well-established wheelhouse, “My Lovin’ You’re Never Gonna Get It” by En Vogue, and while there was clearly a bit less wind in her sails, she woke up part-way through and brought as much flare as she could to the stage. Her vocals weren’t as strong as usual, and she didn’t even get to rap, but her personality was still completely there in the showcase.
Then, Mari Jones stepped forward to present her version of “Latch” by Disclosure ft. Sam Smith, and while there were a few too many notes out of her range, she delivered enough lovely and crisp runs to get people punching that RT button during the commercial break. Last up was L.B. Crew, whose take on Khalid’s “Better” featured a little less silkiness than his previous performance but was a little more consistent. Rather than earn the ire of the internet again, Adam stated that both of his contestants deserved to go through without even having to vie for that spot and encouraged audiences at home to save both of them — which, of course, they could not possibly do.
There’s no telling whether Adam’s split support tonight was an inadvertent boon for Team Blake, but despite Mari’s tallies inching ever nearer to the votes Kim collected, it’s Kim Cherry who was chosen to advance to the semifinals.
And with that, we have our Top 8 semifinalists for The Voice Season 16.
TEAM STANDINGS:
Adam Levine (0):
Kelly Clarkson (1): Rod Stokes
John Legend (2): Maelyn Jarmon, Shawn Sounds
Blake Shelton (5): Gyth Rigdon, Kim Cherry, Carter Lloyd Horne, Dexter Roberts, Andrew Sevener
Related content:
The Voice recap: Blake Shelton’s team dominates the Top 13
The Voice recap: The Top 24 try to hang on ahead of the cutthroat eliminations
The Voice recap: The cross battles close out on a crushing note
A rotating chair-full of judges search for the next great superstar singer on this NBC reality show.