Christian Cuevas has revealed that, despite his somewhat surprising elimination, making it to the semifinals on The Voice's eleventh season was a blessing in itself.
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Christian, a 20-year-old college student from Rochester, NY who currently resides in Orlando, FL, sang a religious hymn called "To Worship You I Live (Away)" by Israel & New Breed on Monday night's Top 8 performance show. The song felt so close to his heart that he began crying halfway through his performance.
"I'm getting to go home because of a song that I wanted to do for so long, and God is the reason I'm here. And if God is the reason I'm leaving, then I'm cool with that," Christian told Reality TV World during a Wednesday interview.
Although he was very proud of his vocal delivery and received excellent feedback from The Voice coaches on Monday night, Christian admitted making the finals still "felt like a long shot for me."
Christian had even told his coach Alicia Keys that he didn't expect the song to be a massive hit with home viewers.
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"It was something that I told Alicia, I said, 'I accepted the fact that it's a song that maybe a lot of people may not know or I'm going to get a lot of backlash from due to the fact that it was a praise and worship song'," Christian explained.
Since Christian didn't even know if he was going to pass his initial Blind Audition, he said he accomplished what he came on the show to do.
"All of us come in here expecting to keep going to the next week without even knowing if we're going to make it to the next week. So when we got into the live shows... I was thinking, 'Man, it's not even up to my coach anymore. So it doesn't really matter what my coach thinks of me. It's up to America and if I [gave] them something that they enjoy weekly and everything,'" Christian said.
Well, America certainly enjoyed his performances because Christian survived all the way to the Top 8.
"Making it this far was something great, and I'm glad that I got to go," he noted.
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On Tuesday night's live results show, home viewer votes determined that Christian needed to sing for the "Instant Save" against Ali Caldwell and Josh Gallagher. Christian belted out "I Can't Make You Love Me" by Bonnie Raitt, but America decided Josh should stay in the competition instead, resulting in his ouster.
"With my 'Instant Save' song, I felt like I did the best that I could, and I feel like it was also another song that I had at the top of my list to play on the show. I would've done it a little bit differently [though]. But it's one of those songs that you can't really get the message across with just a minute and 50 seconds," Christian told Reality TV World.
"I mean, I'm happy with how it came out and I'm happy with the decision. I'm so happy for [the four finalists], because everybody that's in this competition is like a family member to me -- my brothers and sisters -- and that's 100% honest."
Christian reiterated how he's "completely okay" with the semifinals results because the outcome could not change the strong relationships the contestants had made on the show.
"It doesn't matter. If nothing changes, we still love each other and we don't have hate for each other. No matter who keeps going, I'm staying true to that," he said, adding that "everybody deserves to win."
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"Everyone that is involved with this whole experience ends up winning no matter what stage you leave in," Christian continued. "This is an opportunity that... no one else in the world can say they were on Season 11 of The Voice. And that's a win, and we won last night too."
About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski