Spoiler alert! The following contains spoilers for the Top 9 Performances of The Voice, Season 20. If you haven’t watched the show, you might want to stop reading.
Another live show, another Cam Anthony lights-out performance. The soul singer on Blake Shelton’s traditionally country team owned the stage again during The Voice’s Season 20 Top 9 Performances, solidifying him as a frontrunner and validating the cowboy’s decision to clear a path for him as the only singer of his genre on Team Blake. If Anthony’s journey on the competition show is any indication, a victory on The Voice would just be icing on the cake, as Anthony seems destined for success regardless.
Cam Anthony killed it again in The Voice’s Season 20 Top 9 Performances, singing the Boyz II Men classic “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye” as if he had already won the competition and was already on his own tour. When he belted out the first lines of the song a cappella, I legitimately wondered if the rest of Boyz II Men were going to join their should-be-new-bandmate on stage to provide harmonies. The confidence that Anthony carried on stage to sing such a classic song with very little accompaniment is very rare on The Voice, especially with such flawless execution. Check out the performance for yourself:
All four coaches gave Cam Anthony a standing ovation after his performance — no small feat for Nick Jonas, who revealed that he’d hurt his ribs in an accident and was visibly in pain during the live show. John Legend, who was blocked from working with Anthony in the Blind Auditions, noted how he keeps taking iconic songs and knocking them out of the park. Kelly Clarkson echoed Legend’s sentiments, saying that Anthony has continued to up his game throughout the season.
But most of all, his own coach Blake Shelton echoed his sentiments from the previous week’s competition, saying Cam Anthony was going to go down in The Voice history.
I’m gonna double down. This guy’s a superstar. He is 19 years old, America. This young man is going to go far, very far, in this business.
Last week, after Cam Anthony’s Top 17 performance of “Take Me to Church,” Blake Shelton had some pretty strong words pertaining to Anthony’s future, telling him that he "could be the first superstar that we launch off this show.” Anthony could very well end up winning Season 20 of The Voice, but he seems likely to become a star no matter who takes the top prize of the NBC series this season.
What makes me think that Cam Anthony will be one of the artists to find long-term success on The Voice is that Anthony has been receiving these kinds of authentic comments from the coaches all season, and it’s not common for coaches to be super gung-ho about contestants who aren’t on their team. John Legend told Anthony he was jealous of the choices he made on his Knockout Round performance of “Feeling Good” — a song the EGOT winner himself sang at Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration.
Cam Anthony even looked comfortable on stage during an otherwise mediocre trio performance of “Fooled Around and Fell in Love.” He seems to be enjoying the whole process as if he’s got nothing to lose. And frankly, I don't think he does. Tune in at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday on NBC for the Top 9 Eliminations leading into next week's Season 20 finale. And in the meantime check out our list of big upcoming TV finales to make sure you don't miss your favorite.
