Meet Emily Ann Roberts of The Voice Season 9

The Voice

Meet Emily Ann Roberts of The Voice Season 9

September 27, 2015 By Mark Franklin 0

Her audition: Emily Ann Roberts, 16, of Knoxville, Tenn., auditioned with Lee Ann Womack’s “I Hope You Dance.” Adam turned around early in the performance. Emily’s big glory notes on the chorus prompted Blake to turn his chair as well. He said she “lit the place on fire.” Emily opted to join Team Blake.

Her background: She says she’s been singing her whole life and started performing in seventh grade. “My dad brought an old guitar out of the closet; I fell in love with it,” she recalls. “Then I did a talent show at my school and won.” Now a junior in high school, she’s been playing in restaurants and doing small-town competitions for the past four years. She says she loves bluegrass and classic country music because of the emotion in it. Her dad says people “says she’s got an old school” because of the old-school artists she covers. Adds Emily: “I get a lot of surprised looks from the older people. They’ll be eating dinner and they’ll look up like, ‘Is that girl singing Folsom Prison Blues?’ It catches them off guard.” She’s looking to learn from her time on The Voice because she’s never had a vocal lesson and dreams of making a living playing music. “Today, there’s not much meaning in music,” Emily says. “I want to create music that means something to people.”

What the show didn’t show: Emily’s bio on The Voice website offers up another reason the junior at Karns High School appreciates older music. It says Emily and her grandmother are the only members of her family who sing, and some of her fondest memories are of singing old hymns with her grandmother. It was after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s that Emily became serious about music. And in an interview with the NBC affiliate in Knoxville, her mom says Emily and her dad have always shared a love of bluegrass. “She (Emily) was singing bluegrass in the car seat,” Kelly Roberts told the TV station.

Her blind audition song choice was a bit risky. After all, Lee Ann Womack’s mega-hit has been performed a number of times on TV singing shows. But in a conference call interview with the media, Emily said she couldn’t resist taking it on because “that song has such a special meaning and the words are really beautiful. I love singing music that has a ton of meaning and that really touches people so I really love that song. I knew that it had been done a lot, but I try to add my little spin on whatever I do.”

Oh, and she also admitted that Adam Levine, in his never-ending quest to keep country singers from joining Team Blake, almost won her over. Especially with his argument about how Team Blake is stacked with country singers. “But I think that I knew that I would relate with Blake more and that he would understand me and my style of music more than maybe Adam would, so I ended up picking Blake,” she explained.

On iTunes: Just her performances from The Voice.

Update:
Battle round: Defeated Morgan Frazier, singing “That Kind of Girl.” Morgan was stolen by Pharrell Williams.
Knockout round: She defeated Nadjah Nicole. Emily Ann sang “Cowboy Take Me Away” by the Dixie Chicks and cracked the iTunes Top 200.
Live playoffs: She sang “In the Garden.” The song hit number six on the iTunes’ Top 200, the second best performance of 24 live playoff songs. But Emily Ann needed the Team Blake save to make the Top 12.
Top 12: She sang “Blame It on Your Heart” and was voted into the Top 11. The song hit number 20 on the iTunes Top 200 (fifth best of the night) and number 5 on the county singles chart.
Top 11: She cracked the Top 10 on iTunes for a second time, reaching number 10 with her cover of The Judds’ “Why Not Me.” That was the third best performance of the week on iTunes. She was voted into the Top 10.
Top 10: She covered Patsy Cline’s “She’s Got You.” The song hit number five on the iTunes Top 200 and Emily Ann was voted on to the Top 9.
Top 9: Emily Ann was voted into the finals after performing Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5.” The song hit number four on iTunes and number one on the site’s country chart. It marked the fourth time in five weeks of live shows she cracked the Top 10.
Top 4: She finished second on Season 9. On performance night, she sang “Burning House,” which hit number two on the iTunes 200; “Blue Christmas,” which hit number 13; and performed “Islands in the Stream” with Blake Shelton, which hit number 6.