Did Morgan Wallen win ‘The Voice’?

There hasn’t been a country singer in a long time as popular as The Voice, but did he win?

Morgan appeared on the sixth season of the NBC competition show The Voice after he auditioned with the song “Collide” by Howie Day in 2014. In an interview with Outsider, Wallen revealed he always wanted to sing country on the show but he felt like the producers wanted him to perform a pop song, so that’s what he did.

He explained that he felt like the people on the show were “really smart people” so he would give it a shot. He sang some pop songs and made it into the Top 20 on the show, but when it came time to pick a song on his own he ended up going with “Stay” by the Florida Georgia Line. Take a listen below.

“I picked a country song and they kicked me off,” he said. However, the appearance on the show raised his profile and he ended up moving to Nashville a year later. So when he looks back on the experience he looks back fondly. “It’s been good to me.”

In an interview with Country Countdown USA, Wallen said that he got redemption for his appearance on The Voice, when he sang that Florida Georgia Line song. “I sang their song and got kicked off. It shows you how things come full circle. Now I have a song with them.”

What’s fun to think about is what could have been. If there are infinite universes, then there’s one where Wallen sang a pop song and didn’t get eliminated and who knows, maybe he even won the show. Would his career have headed down a pop-focused trajectory if had he chosen a different song? We’ll never know!

You could make the argument that getting kicked off the show is what put him on the path to superstardom. Regardless, Wallen continues to have a career 99% of singers could only dream of having. Just this last year, he had the No. 1 spot on 12 of the country year-end Billboard charts. He’s already one of the biggest artists ever, and he’s just getting started. It just goes to prove that being kicked off a reality TV show can still open many doors.