Down to the final three contestants, Grace Kinstler, Willie Spence and Chayce Beckham, performed for the last time on Sunday’s nailbiter.
“I will tell you, it’s quite close in the present time. You can not assume that your favorite is secure,” host Ryan Seacrest announced during the first hour of this Season 19 finale.
Finally, Beckham won; he’d topped Apple Music’s country chart last week along with his single”23,” an autobiographical song about his battle with alcoholism. On Sunday, Beckham said of the song,”When you’re sober for the first time, performing for quite a while, moving in, I was a broken man. I came out the other side just a little bit more healed.”
Before Seacrest revealed Beckham had won, ago contestants took the stage together with Fallout Boy and Chaka Khan.
One of judges Katy Perry, Lionel Richie and Luke Bryan, Perry was openly pulling for Kintsler, who recieved a standing ovation when she covered Whitney Houston’s”I Have Nothing.” Byran said of their performance,”I wanted to stand on the desk, since just a standard standing ovation wasn’t appropriate. I wanted !”
Richie said,”I’m just sitting here trying to determine how you just took a Whitney Houston sing and took it two, three additional octaves? Young woman, you have outdone yourself.”
But it was left to voters, who crowned Beckham the winner.
