Kelly Clarkson knows a thing or two about taking home the top spot on a reality show. Clarkson, who won the first season of American Idol, guided Jake Hoot, her team member on The Voice, all the way to the top spot and crowned the victor on the Tuesday, Dec. 17 finale of The Voice season 17. Hoot bested Rose Short from Team Gwen Stefani, Katie Kadan from Team John Legend and Ricky Duran from Team Blake Shelton. This is Team Kelly’s third win as a coach on The Voice.
“It means the world,” Hoot said about the win. “Having Kelly believe in me from the get-go and be here tonight is just an incredible thing.”
Clarkson was the only coach who turned her chair during Hoot’s blind audition.
“I keep making fun of the other coaches because I’m like, ‘Why didn’t you turn?’ He was a one chair turn,” Clarkson said in a press conference after the win.
Clarkson said a lot of people assume she did a lot of behind-the-scenes management of Hoot’s rise to the top, but she downplayed that at the press conference. “He picked that beautiful Christmas song we sang yesterday. I’d never heard of it, it was so beautiful. And you picked your songs and you were, like, really into them,” she said. “I lucked out!”
In the video above, Clarkson praised Hoot for being a good person, as well as his ability to project his voice while singing. “I’m not joking, there’s like a microphone in his vocal cords ‘cause it’s like, how you project, I have worked on this,” Clarkson laughed. “And it’s just innate in you. It’s just a really cool thing to just be reminded of how someone just genuinely loves music, loves singing and everything is very pure and there’s no hidden agenda. And he just wants to be here because he loves singing. That’s a good reminder for us all that get jaded sometimes, you know?”
Click play on the video above for more. The Voice will return to NBC.
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