NBC’s ‘The Voice’ iTunes results: We McDonald, Billy Gilman, Ali Caldwell strong

We hate to say we told you so … well, actually, we’re glad to say that we told you so. We McDonald delivered a really-strong performance of “Take Me to Church” on Monday night’s new episode of “The Voice,” and early returns on iTunes suggest that we’re looking at someone who could be in the top pole position and go really this season.

We’s cover, as of 10:45 a.m. Pacific time, is sitting pretty at #16. This is out of that coveted top 10 position, but with the popularity of the show fading over time, it may be a little more few-and-far-between this season that we see a decline in some of the performances that we end up seeing make it that high on the list.

As for some other strong performers, you can go ahead and consider Billy Gilman safe thanks to his “The Show Must Go On” at #24, while Ali Caldwell delivered a “Did I Ever Love You” performance that hit #25. Given that this was our favorite of the entire night, we’re incredibly-psyched to see that she did this well. Josh Gallagher is at #36 with “Why,” whereas Sundance Head is one spot behind him with “My Church.” While neither one of these performances are necessarily iTunes knockout-punches, at the same exact time we feel fairly confident that the two of them are going to be strong enough to make it into the next round. Remember, country artists tend to rank a little bit higher in the internet / phone voting than most other artists, and that will probably boost them as well.

From here, there’s a pretty big drop-off, but we’d say that Brendan Fletcher’s “Whipping Post” at #57 could be enough to save him, given that he also performed at the end of the show and that tends to be a great spot for artists to feel secure.

Did you buy anyone’s song off of iTunes this week on “The Voice”? Let us know in the comments! Also, we’ll have another look at the other side of the potential results a little bit later in the day at the link here. (Photo: NBC.)