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Emily Ann Roberts shared the unforgettable advice she received from Blake Shelton when she competed on The Voice in 2015.
The East Tennessee-born country star finished in second place when she joined Team Blake on season 9 of the NBC competition series a decade ago. Roberts, 26, reminisced on her career-launching run on The Voice in a recent conversation with Southern Living Editor-in-Chief Sid Evans on an episode of the publication’s Biscuits & Jam podcast.
Roberts said when she was on The Voice, “I sang a lot of traditional country music because that's what I love… And Blake pulled me aside and was like, ‘Don't let anybody change you. You know, the music that you make and what comes out of you naturally, that's what you have to follow, and that's what you have to honor.’ And that meant so much to me to have someone as successful as he is tell me to stay true to myself, you know, just the way that I am.”
“And that was something that I pulled from for years when I got to Nashville because the music that I wrote didn't sound like what Kelsea Ballerini was doing and what Maren Morris was doing,” Roberts recalled. “They were, like, huge at the time when I was in town for the first time. And so, it was really tough because I had a lot of opinions and voices telling me like, ‘You need to sound more like this in order to be competitive,’ and all that. But it's very cool how it seems like, 10 years later, things have come back around.”
“Emily Ann Roberts grew up in Karns, Tennessee, just outside of Knoxville, with hardworking parents who had deep roots in both faith and music. She went to the church her great-grandfather founded more than a century ago— the same place where she sang in public for the very first time. Her dad introduced her to the rougher side of music, too, playing a lot of Johnny Cash and David Allan Coe as they drove around backroads in a pickup truck. After performing for years in a Mexican restaurant and then being discovered on YouTube, she went on to become a finalist on The Voice, but she soon discovered there was plenty more work to do. These days, she’s making her mark as a fresh new voice in country music, releasing gritty new songs like ‘Scratching Out a Living,’ and touring with Megan Moroney. Sid talks to Emily about her love of Southern cooking, her alter ego Yeehaw Memaw, and the advice from Blake Shelton that’s guided her every step of the way.”
Roberts reunited with Shelton when she joined him on his headlining “Back to the Honky Tonk Tour” last year. Roberts recalled 15,000 fans crowding into the venues at each show to see Shelton perform, and each night, “I will go out and stand at front of house, and we'll just marvel at how he makes a room of 15,000 people feel like they are in his living room and like he is talking just to them. And that is something that I don't know if you can learn how to do.
“And there's not a right or wrong, but I will say it's really neat to be a part of a show where you feel like the artist is talking to you, you know? And Blake does that really well, and that's an incredible lesson that I've learned from watching him.”