To most viewers, newly crowned The Voice champion Aiden Ross might have seemed like an obvious frontrunner throughout Season 28. After all, his four-chair Blind Audition was the first to air on the premiere; his social media and YouTube stats were always among the contestants’ highest; and of course, he performed in the finals’ coveted “pimp spot,” spectacularly closing the show with “The Winner Takes It All.”
That song, of course, seemed prophetically titled. But Ross tells Lyndsanity that he chose the deceptively bittersweet ABBA ballad because “it’s not a song about winning at all. It’s a song about the loser’s perspective — about losing everything.”
Ross elaborates: “I did ‘Mamma Mia in high school my junior year… the song always spoke to me, the lyrics. That meant a lot to me, because being a senior in high school, knowing what I wanted to do, but being too scared to do it — the whole music thing — I threw in the towel. And I went to go be an engineer at A&M [University], which ended up being a great decision because I made incredible friends, learned a lot about myself. … But I never want to forget that feeling like I had lost everything.
“I had just been ready to let go of music and just go be an engineer and just go live that life — which I don’t think would be a bad life, but I don’t want to forget that feeling, because that reminds me of why I’m here and why I’m now pursuing what I love,” he continues. “And so, I wanted to share that with people and I wanted people to be able to relate to it, because everybody’s been a loser at some point. You can’t be a winner without losing at some point.”
The 20-year-old pop stylist and college sophomore, who grew up on a strawberry farm in College Station, Texas, had performed in theater and a cappella groups through high school, but he never realistically thought he could do music for a living — which is why he had given up that dream at a surprisingly young age to pursue an engineering degree instead.
“I’m not from Nashville or L.A., so I don’t have any neighbors that are just super-successful in music, that are artists, or that are even in the music industry. So, there was no light at the end of this tunnel,” he explains. But then, when Ross submitted a Voice audition video during his freshman year at A&M and made it through, “a candle was lit. And that candle turned into a flame, come the Blind Auditions. And it began to burn brighter and brighter, until I won the show. And win or lose, I’ve proven to myself that music isn’t just something I love, but it’s the thing I’m meant to do. And so, that’s really just been my calling, and the decision that I’m at right now.”
Ross actually first auditioned for The Voice during his senior year of high school (he received a callback, but didn’t make it onto the air), but he never considered giving any other TV talent shows a shot (unlike this season’s runner-up, Ralph Edwards, who’d not only tried out for The Voice a whopping 11 times, but had also auditioned for American Idol, America’s Got Talent, The X Factor USA, and even The Four).
“The Voice was the only one I ever auditioned for. I would definitely watch the others, but my family and I, we grew up watching The Voice,” says Ross, who’s been a fan of the show since Season 1, when he was just 6 years old. “American Idol was cool, but it was a little bit messier — which is kind of entertaining sometimes! But I appreciate how The Voice, they only want to get the best of people, which I really respect about them. They don’t want the drama. They want to be of service to you and of your brand, and I really respect that about them and their community. And so, it was a no-brainer for me.”
Ross saved the drama for the stage, starting with his stunning four-chair audition of Adele’s “Love in the Dark.” And he felt an immediate “big brother/little brother connection” and sense of Voice community and mutual respect with the coach he picked, Niall Horan, that was “really, really special” — particularly because Horan had competed on a similar talent show, The X Factor U.K., at a young age.
“I think one thing [Horan] really helped me with was with these songs and these competitions where they’re set up, I have two minutes to essentially pour my heart on the floor and do all these things, and so I’m quick to do all these big runs and all these high notes and stuff like that. But I would be quick to sometimes lose sight of the story, and he would keep me grounded. He would be like, ‘Look, man, the heartbeat of the song is what makes the song,’” Ross reflects. “It’s not ‘don’t do the runs’ and ‘don’t do the big notes,’ but do them within the context of the song and when it feels right to you — do them because it fits this song, not because you need to show off, essentially.
“And that was the best advice he gave, as well as just enjoying the moment, being happy to be here and loving what I’m doing. Your best performance is going to be the one where you’re having the most fun and you love what you’re doing. I think that’s advice that he learned from being on his show — that he wishes he would’ve slowed down then and just loved the moment and loved the time, rather than taking it so seriously.”
Horan saw a bit of himself in Ross, and he believed in Ross so much that he designated him as his one Team Niall pick during the Playoffs, thus fast-tracking Ross straight to the finale. But this was a double-edged sword, in a way. Because this Voice season was truncated, with four of the top six finalists being handpicked by their respective coaches, Ross advanced all the way to the finals without ever once having to perform for America’s votes. So, he had no idea what sort of fanbase he had when he finally did have to compete this week — and he truly didn’t see himself as a frontrunner.
“That was a little bit scary, because I wasn’t voted for anything else, because I didn’t have the chance to be. It was a little bit of unproven, this. I hadn’t been voted for something yet, so I didn’t really know. I hadn’t seen the votes in real time, and so that was a little bit of uncharted territory,” Ross admits. “And so, in some ways I was less focused on whether or not I thought I would win, and more so focused on ‘I want to leave everything I have out there on that stage. Win or lose, I’m happy to be here.’”
Ross says he still wants to take online classes at A&M University “just because I think it’ll be good for my brain,” and he actually believes that his engineering studies gave him an advantage on The Voice with “arranging these songs and navigating and being able to figure out, even from an emotional standpoint — how I connect to this song and where I should do my runs and my big notes and where it makes sense I think engineering has really helped with that.” But he confidently vows that he’s now “ready to give everything to music.” And in retrospect, he realizes that even if he hadn’t made it onto The Voice, let alone won, he would have eventually pursued this Plan A dream.
“I’d like to think that there would’ve been another candle that was lit in some other resource, in some other space,” muses Ross, who recently released the song “Everything and More” and teases that “some really, really special content” will be coming out in a few days, with a new single slated for next month. “If I hadn’t gone on the show, I would love to teleport to that universe and tell myself, ‘Dude, you don’t need The Voice.’ The Voice has been an incredible opportunity, it’s been such a platform, but the success doesn’t just come from the show. It comes from me and do I believe in myself? Do I want to do this?
“And yes. I absolutely want to do this.”
