The Voice Season 10 Runner-Up Adam Wakefield’s Final Interview

On Tuesday at noon when the vote was being counted to determine the winner of Season 10 of The Voice, Adam Wakefield had the No. 1 song on iTunes. It was the song he had written and performed on Monday night: “Lonesome, Broken and Blue.”

So, for a while, he looked as if he might be this year’s winner — but when the final announcement was made on Tuesday night, Adam finished in second place behind Team Christina’s Alisan Porter.

After his three performances on Monday night, Parade.com had the opportunity to speak with the runner-up and final member of Blake Shelton‘s team about his music, the album he hopes to make and more. Here is what he had to say:

How long did it take you to write “Lonesome, Broken and Blue?”

I wrote the first two lines lying on a beach. They just came to me. Honestly, I was lying on the beach and I didn’t want to be writing songs, so I said, “I’ll just put these two lines in my phone.” Every time as a songwriter, when I would sit down with a cup of coffee and say, “What have I got in my phone? What am I working on today?,” I would scroll through, and I would say, “These are the best two lines I have written in a very long time,” and I would skip them.

I didn’t want to write anything to follow those two lines because I knew it wouldn’t live up to it. Honestly, I didn’t know what to do with it because they weren’t chorus lines. It was a verse. I was, “What do I do with a verse like this?” It took me a long time and I let it sit and simmer.

Country songwriting is all about the hook. It’s all about the payoff when you get to the end of the chorus, so you set it up, you set it up, you set it up, then the hook comes, and bam, beautiful, you’ve got a ribbon on it. You send it out and people will buy it.

With this song, this was the best part, so what do I do? I went bluegrass on it, so the chorus stands on its own from the verses, which makes more sense in bluegrass. It took me a while to figure that out and I was writing a lot of bluegrass at the time. It naturally came about. No, none of the other lines are as good as that line, but it was cool. I had crafted a kind of song I had never written before.

When you performed, Carson Daly said it was a combination of bluegrass, pop and country and that is what you had been doing in Nashville for the past 2½ years. Is that what your album will be?

No. I feel this song, for me, showcases both sides of stuff, but I am kind of a genre Nazi, so if I was going to cut that song and put it on a record, I would probably put it on a bluegrass record where there were no drums or anything. But I wanted something that would cross some genre lines Monday night so the extreme country fans would be into it. I wanted something that had a pulse to it, something that people want to put on when they’re in the car.

For me, what I want to do as an artist, I would put out a bluegrass record or I would put out a country record. I wouldn’t be against putting some bluegrass on the country record, or anything like that, but for me, I like keeping them separate. There’s a beautiful symbiosis to the bluegrass set up with the mandolin, the banjo, the fiddle, the bass and the guitar. I feel like that is a band.

It is cool to do an original country song that is more bluegrass oriented than rock oriented, because everything is … don’t get me wrong. I love country music and I plan on putting it out, but it was cool to see people’s reaction to that.

What does it feel like when you get up to perform?

For me, there’s a little pressure that I put on myself as far as Blake really wants me to win, and I want him to win, and I want to win, so for me it was about delivering the way I wanted to, and I think I did.

When we talked last week, you sounded as if you had some reluctance about the business side of the music business. You really do want this, right?

I do want it. My thing is I don’t want to deal with the business side of it. A big thing for me is I want time to fish and play bluegrass music with my friends. I want to do that kind of stuff. If I win The Voice, you won’t see me downtown in clubs. I will be at some crappy bar down the street, watching the game and drinking a beer. I think that comes with age, too. If I was 22, 23 years, I would be downtown.

You can hire people to do the business things.

Honestly, that was why I was willing to do this. I had a couple of people say, “Hey, man. You should do your own solo career.” I am not trying to manage or do any of that stuff. I did that for a long time with a band back in Baltimore. I was over that, but I will go for broke. If I win The Voice, I won’t have to do it. Hopefully, I can find people to work with me.