Shelton Sticks To What He Knows On 'The Voice'

Well Blake Shelton certainly has a type. No, I'm not talking about his rumored romance with Gwen Stefani — I'm referring to his artist-of-choice on The Voice. In the final night of The Voice Knockout Rounds, Shelton chose to keep Emily Ann Roberts over Nadjah Nicole proving that young, aspiring country artists are his favorite type of artists to coach. This isn't shocking since Shelton was once a young, aspiring country artist himself, but in this particular battle there was a clear winner and it wasn't Roberts.

The odds were against Nicole from the moment she chose to join Team Blake. In her mind, she might have thought that being the only R+B artist on a team of country artists would give her an advantage. But unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Shelton has proven season after season that he likes to stick with what he knows. Though Nicole was clearly the stronger performer in her Knockout Round against Roberts, she got the boot due to the fact that Shelton doesn't know what to do with her. Nicole had the potential to go far on this show — she has a strong, unique voice and isn't afraid to take chances. Unfortunately, Shelton took that potential away from her because he doesn't like going out of his comfort zone.

As much as it stinks for non-country artists that find their way on to Team Blake, choosing the same type of artist seems to be a good strategy for Shelton. With the highest number of The Voice wins of all the coaches, Shelton has proven that he's good at what he does. Because he stays in his wheelhouse, he's able to concentrate more on passing down his country wisdom and less on trying to figure out how to coach an artist who wants to break into a genre he's not used to. Will Roberts be his winner this season? He seems to think so. And if he's able to transform her performances the way he was able to transform Danielle Bradbery's, it's quite possible that he could be right.

Image: Trae Patton/NBC