Troy Ramey talks 'The Voice': Gwen Stefani and I didn't agree on everything

Troy Ramey was eliminated from The Voice's twelfth season during Tuesday night's live results broadcast in which the Top 11 were determined on NBC.


Troy from Sea Cliff, NY, landed in the bottom two with Mark Isaiah from Mt. Pocono, PA, based on home viewer votes cast following Monday night's Top 12 performance show.

After both artists sang a survival song, America tweeted via the show's "Instant Save" format to keep Mark in the competition. Mark continues to represent coach Adam Levine's team going forward, while Troy was on coach Gwen Stefani's team.

Troy performed "Drift Away" for his "Instant Save" song, while Mark followed that up with a performance of "When I Was Your Man" by Bruno Mars.

During a Wednesday conference call with reporters, Troy talked about his time working with Gwen on The Voice. Below is what he had to say.


I noticed that sometimes you would follow Gwen's advice and other times, you'd stray from it, especially when it comes to changing up a song and making it your own. Could you talk about that?     

Troy Ramey: There are certain choices I made melodically on the show that I never would have done in my real life. Gwen is really serious about singing the melody dead on, never changing it. I had to try to pull myself towards that thinking a little bit, which was very unnatural for me.

But ultimately, I really respect her opinion on that -- and I think a lot of people might feel that way -- but that is something that I disagreed with completely and I always will. I always have. Because some of my favorite artists, when they cover a song, sounds nothing like the original song. That's the beauty of it. Because they reinterpreted that song and gave it a new life.

Like, you know, Ryan Adams is a great example of that. My favorite song that he's done is "Wonderwall." And, you know, an Oasis cover. It sounds nothing like the original but it's absolutely beautiful.

And John Mayer -- the reason I picked "Free Fallin'" is because I wanted to do the John Mayer version of that song, and when we got into rehearsal, Gwen wanted to hear the Tom Petty melody. So, I ended up singing that song in a totally different way than I would have -- which is okay, you know, I have to make compromises because of the situation.


But I totally respect that way of thinking, but it's not my way of thinking. And people that love my music and my type of music would never care at all if I changed the melody of the song. They would probably respect it.   

I think your strength in the competition was your ability to rework songs in a different way. It made you unique.

Troy Ramey: Well, thank you so much. I appreciate that. Because, you know, I'm not the type of singer that can, like, I kept telling them on the show, "I'm not Mr. Power Note," you know? "I'm not Mr. Big Note, like this theatrical singer."

This is why I was kind of happy and surprised that I made it so long in the show. But like, that's what a lot of people think makes a great singer. And in my opinion, you don't have to be acrobatic with your voice to be a great singer. You just have to be honest and original and true to what you feel.

And that's the most important thing for me in music, and I'll always feel that way. So, I don't regret changing things up at all because if I didn't, then no one would've cared about me at all. I would never have made it this far. And to be quite honest, Gwen never would've turned around.


If I sang "Wild World" the exact way that Cat Stevens sang "Wild World," I guarantee none of those coaches [Gwen, Adam Levine and Blake Shelton] would've turned around. Because it would've sounded awful. And so, while I 100 percent respect Gwen's opinion and her guidance, it's not a part of who I am. It's not the way that I sing.  

What's next for you now? You're on your way back home. So, what do you do now?      

Troy Ramey: Next, I got a lot of stuff planned. I'm going to be playing a ton of shows. You know, I got a lot of meetings to set up. And things are going to be -- things are already are on fire for me. You know, I came here. I turned down multiple record deals before I came to The Voice. And I really, you know, a record deal doesn't mean success. 

A record deal, it has to be the right deal, you know? And so fortunately for me, I've been able to achieve a pretty good level of success on my own with no money, no budget, no team around me. Like before I came to The Voice, I already had millions of plays in the last year of my own music on Spotify and thousands of downloads of my original music on iTunes.

So I'm just going to continue with what I was doing because it was working. People connect to my songs. And you know, I'm so grateful to The Voice because I was able to reach a huge audience and now I have them in my -- I have their attention.


So, I'm going to continue to try to make everybody proud and be me and sing songs that I wrote about my life and songs that I love and put 100 percent of me into it and just see where it takes me. And I know that it's going to continue to take me from stage to stage.

To read what Troy had to tell Reality TV World about his bottom-two finish and elimination, click here. Check back with us soon for more from Troy's post-The Voice interview.






About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski