THE VOICE Winner on Their Unconventional Original Song

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for THE VOICE season 18 finale.]

When THE VOICE’s Todd Tilghman won the reality competition on Tuesday, May 19, his original song had a special tie to the country world and NBC: “Long Way Home” was developed by songwriters Ryan Innes and Ester Dean on a season 2 episode of SONGLAND for Lady Antebellum.

Understandably, Team Blake’s Tilghman has been in the thick of his own competition, but when it came his way for the finale, he did a bit of research on its origins.

“What I did was I went back and watched just that particular song [online],” Tilghman told reporters after the win. “Actually, I didn’t even really have the presence of mind to do that—my wife thought about that. She’s like, ‘Oh, let’s look it up and listen to it on SONGLAND.'”

On SONGLAND, Innes worked on his original song (above) with Dean to craft it into what Tilghman would eventually perform, which allowed him to see how it evolved and why. (To great success: The single has not left the iTunes Top Ten since the finale performance episode aired.)

“I even loved a lot of it in its original state,” he said. “The words to the song and the progression and the melody and everything was just, for me, so perfect for circumstances that I’ve been in. [So] we went back and found the clip on YouTube. And I’ve gotten to, virtually, know Ryan Innes a good bit the last couple of days, so that’s cool.”

What did you think of Tilghman’s take on “Long Way Home”?

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