The Voice finale: About Dexter Roberts’ ‘Looking Back’ original song

Dexter Roberts

Tonight on The Voice season 16 finale, we’re getting a chance to hear all of the final four perform their original songs for the first time! This is a bit of an annual tradition, and it’s one that we wish led to some of these people finding even more success.

For the sake of this article, we’re putting the spotlight on Dexter Roberts and his song “Looking Back” — it’s a tune with some serious country-rock vibes, and we think that it’s actually the best of the country originals in the finale by a mile.

Want some more The Voice video coverage, be sure to check out our pre-finale rankings at the bottom of this article! Once you check that out, remember to subscribe to CarterMatt on YouTube for some other updates, and also be sure to view our series playlist!

One of the things that we love about this song, at least via the iTunes recording that we heard going into the finale, is that it’s really all about telling a story. It doesn’t focus solely on familiar genre tropes and is instead about a man trying to hold on to a memory. It’s the most mature we’ve ever heard him, vocally and lyrically, and it does really show the culmination of a journey that began many years ago on American Idol. He’s more of a fully-formed singer now, and we get a sense now that this is a guy who has gone through some stuff and is still fighting to keep the dream alive.

We’ll admit that for most of the live shows, Gyth Rigdon was really the country singer we were prioritizing more than any other as the favorite to win. After all, he’s the one who felt the most current for the country-music industry and he had so much confidence on stage! Yet, there is something about Dexter’s performances in the past few weeks that have drawn us closer to him. He’s not necessarily the obvious country star of the group but there’s something so vulnerable about him — when you listen to him, you believe him and he makes you think that he’s gone through whatever it is that he’s singing able. Within the world of country music, it’s hard to even properly explain just how important that is.

It’s hard to say that any country star has a huge chance of specifically winning this season, given the popularity of Maelyn Jarmon and then also the possibility that some of them could all end up collectively splitting the vote. Yet, there is something about Dexter as a performer where you want to believe he’ll do some great stuff after the show, even if he doesn’t end up emerging as the champion when the dust settles.

For some more news when it comes to The Voice…

Be sure to visit the link here with more scoop, including analysis on some other original songs.

What do you think about this original song? Be sure to share right now in the comments, and stay tuned for some more finale coverage. (Photo: NBC.)

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