Two months of listening to Christina Aguilera's inanity. Two months of watching her and Adam Levine do some competitive back-and-forthing that made her look increasingly worse and more childish with each exchange. Two months of watching Cee Lo Green slowly become one of the coolest guys you know. Two months of watching Blake Shelton be more serious than you've ever seen him. Two months of paring down some really talented young singers. And then on Wednesday evening, NBC's hit reality singing competition "The Voice" crowned a winner -- Javier Colon.
After the four finalists competed Tuesday in a two-song-each sing-off (one original and one a duet with their vocal coach), the phone lines opened for voting. Going into the final round, the professional oddsmakers at Bodog.com had Colon as the favorite to win at 1/2 odds. He was closely followed by Dia Frampton at 3/2.
Before the final reveal, each of the finalists got to sing a duet with a major recording artist. Vicci Martinez sang "Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me)" with Patrick Moynihan of Train. Colon performed "Landslide" with Stevie Nicks. Beverly McClellan then did "Good Life" with OneRepublic's Ryan Tedder. And Dia Frampton performed "The House That Built Me" with Blake Shelton's wife, country star Miranda Lambert.
Host Carson Daly kept everyone on the edges of their sofas at home after all the singing was done. He brought out all four final contestants and announced that the voting had been extremely close, with the top two vote recipients placing within 2 percent of each other. He then named the Top Two: Dia Frampton and Javier Colon.
To ramp up the tension, Daly announced that Colon's original song, "Stitch By Stitch," had placed No. 2 on iTunes. Frampton's original song, "Inventing Shadows," had hit No. 1.
"The Voice" then crowned its Season 1 winner -- 33-year-old Colon (which made Adam Levine the winning vocal coach). A frontrunner since he sang Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" in the first blind audition at the show's beginning, Colon, the only male singer to make the final cut for the four-person finale, had consistently wowed the coaches and the audience with his vocal stylings throughout the competition. After a full round of hugs with his fellow contestants and the coaches, he tearfully thanked the fans and his family for their support along the way.
"The Voice" was a ratings hit for NBC, something the network has seen little of out of its new shows of late. Daly announced that it would return for Season 2 in the winter.
As winner, Colon received $100,000 and a recording contract with Universal Republic. The Connecticut singer will join a stable of artists including Colbie Caillat, 3 Doors Down, and Owl City, but it won't be his first big label album. During the '00s, Colon recorded two unsuccessful albums with Capitol.
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Sources:
"The Voice," NBC Televison
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