Six years ago, Adam David had just played Austin’s South by Southwest festival for the first time, an opportunity that should have been an exciting career breakthrough for the rising roots-rock singer-songwriter. But because he was in the depths of his addiction back in 2019, things went awry. However, this rock-bottom moment was a breakthrough of another kind — one that led to David penning his new original single, “Savior,” and then, after starting out as a one-chair, Instant-Save underdog, becoming the surprise champion of The Voice Season 27.
“I felt really good about myself [after playing SXSW], but I was using heavily and I didn’t sleep for days — which was normal for me at the time,” recalls David, now age 35, who’s “definitely still a bit in shock” as he processes his hard-won Voice victory. “And on the way home, I was just coming down and feeling really, really awful. And I was crying on the plane watching Elf, just to give you an image — it’s my favorite movie, still my go-to for a plane ride. And I got home and I had no money. My car had been broken down before I left, so I essentially was stranded at the airport. And I realized I don’t want to come home to do the exact same thing, like, ‘I am so tired.’ And I didn’t know how I was going to get out of that. I felt very much trapped. And I called my mom. My mom’s always been there. She’s the one I called. She knew I was struggling. And I was like, ‘I think I’m done. I need to figure this out.’ And that began the process of reaching out to MusiCares and starting the application process. And in a couple weeks, I was in treatment.”
Before that epiphany, David “had made a lot of 5 a.m. phone calls to treatment centers: ‘Hey, so how much do you guys cost?’ ‘Oh. Cool. Yeah, I’ll look into it…’” When he finally got in touch with MusiCares and was waiting for his application to be approved, those were “probably the most dangerous two weeks [of my life]. I was in full-on senioritis, very one-track-mind, like, ‘OK, whatever I gotta do to make it through.’ Two weeks can kill someone, you know what I mean?” But it was while David was in that scary holding pattern that “Savior,” a song he didn’t actually release until he was in the middle of his Voice season in spring 2025, was fatefully created.
“‘Savior’ was a song that I wrote the night that I sent off the initial [MusiCares] application. I wrote half of it that night,” David reveals. “It was like 5 in the morning. I sent [the application] off, and the first half of that song just fell out of me. I just wrote it down. It was talking to me. And then I went to treatment, and I was trying to finish it, but it wasn’t coming. And the day that I got out of treatment, my mom was picking me up to get out of treatment, and I was in the treatment center and I finished the second verse. I finished the song. And that’s ‘Savior.’ That’s a very important song to me.”
David admits, “I’m very much very protective of myself,” and he is aware that reality shows like The Voice can sometimes exploit a contestant’s sob story for TV gold. But it never dawned on him to not be open about his history of addiction and recovery. “It’s a part of who I am. It’s part of my story and it’s been such a major part of my life,” he explains. “I really wasn’t trying to play a character. I was just trying to be myself.” And while David never wanted to exploit his story for ratings or votes, he does admit that it probably endeared him to Voice viewers and, along with his peaking-at-the-right-time Season 27 performances, “maybe played a factor” in helping him win.
“People are suffering; they want to see someone who has suffered do well,” he muses. “I believe very strongly that when you are vulnerable, you’re open and honest, you are yourself, you’re authentic, that the universe responds in kind. I think that we’re living in a really weird time, and I think that all of these things, like addiction, it’s a family disease. Everybody is touched by it in some way, and every time I’m open about it, someone says, ‘Hey, I’m actually in recovery,’ or, ‘My father struggled [with addiction] and passed away.’ It’s affected everybody. … I think underdogs are more common than anything else.”
Now David is finishing up some new tunes (“I’m working with a couple of different writers and we’re getting a camp together,” he says), and as a “performer” first, who “grew up playing” and was well-prepared for The Voice due to his years of touring and working the bar-band circuit, he’s “going to hit the road as soon as possible, just start playing everywhere. That’s my goal.” But David will never forget where he came from, so he’ll continue to work closely with the Recovery Unplugged charity, and he hopes to work with MusiCares as well. And he hopes that his redemption story will resonate with the public, long after The Voice Season 27 finale confetti is swept away.
“When I did get clean, my purpose changed,” he says. “It’s not grandiose or anything. I just think I’ve had so many experiences where when I leaned into the scary, when I leaned into the vulnerability of saying, ‘Hey, I don’t really know what I’m doing.’ … I lean into the vulnerability, and every time I do, I have amazing things happen. And this [Voice win] is just one more reinforcing experience. So, I want to encourage everybody to lean into their vulnerability, because most of the time you’re just saying what the next person wants to say about whatever they’re dealing with. But by you saying it, you give [other people] the courage to say it too.”
photo: Griffin Nagel/NBC
