After months of competition and the top five contestants singing for the win, Team Blake singer Bryce Leatherwood was crowned winner of season 22 of The Voice on Tuesday (Dec. 13).
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The Georgia native beat out fellow team Shelton contestants Bodie and Brayden Lape, John Legend’s Omar Jose Cardona and Camila Cabello’s Morgan Myles. Leatherwood’s win marks a record ninth victory for coach Blake Shelton, who will retire from the show following season 23 in 2023.
The 22-year-old singer first auditioned for season 22 with Conway Twitty‘s 1988 hit “Goodbye Time.” He later performed Morgan Wallen’s “Sand in My Boots,” Billy Currington’s “Let Me Down Easy,” and Justin Moore’s “If Heaven Wasn’t So Far Away” throughout the competition.
Leatherwood is also a Voice alum, first competing on season 6 and landing on Team Usher before getting stolen by Adam Levine. Eventually, the country singer was eliminated during the Playoffs.
Before the top five were reduced to one, the two-hour finale of The Voice was full of performances from the contestants and their judges. Cardona and Legend took on Stevie Wonder‘s 1970 hit “Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours),” while Cabello performed her 2018 hit “Never Be the Same” with Myles.
Leatherwood and Shelton took on the coach’s 2011 hit “Hillbilly Bone.” Shelton, who performed a total of four times throughout the finale, did double then triple duty with his Team Bake contestants, first performing Alan Jackson’s “Chasin’ That Neon Rainbow” with Lape and finally with Bodie on a smoldering rendition of Shelton’s 2019 No. 1 hit “God’s Country.”
During the second half of the show, Kane Brown, who joked earlier in the night with host Carson Daly that he was going to be performing with his “dad” Shelton, duetted with the coach on the title track from Brown’s third album Different Man.
Maluma gave an electric performance of his hit “Junio,” while OneRepublic performed “I Ain’t Worried,” and Adam Lambert covered Duran Duran’s 1993 hit “Ordinary World,” which will appear on his upcoming fifth album High Drama.
Lambert dedicated his dialed-back piano-led rendition of the ballad to the victims of the November shooting at the LGBTQ Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colorado. During Lambert’s performance, rainbow lights brightened up the stark all-white setup.
Season 21 winner Girl Named Tom also returned for a performance of their holiday song “One More Christmas,” off the trio’s debut EP, and Breland also made his Voice debut with current single “For What It’s Worth.”
Former coach Kelly Clarkson, who will be returning for season 23 of The Voice, closed out the night of performances with a solo version of her Ariana Grande Christmas duet “Santa, Can’t You Hear Me,” off her When Christmas Comes Around… album.
Season 23 of The Voice returns on March 6, 2023, with Shelton and Clarkson, along with new coaches Chance the Rapper, former One Direction member Niall Horan, and host Carson Daly.
Photo: Trae Patton / NBC
