By Karen Moul
The Voice's final battle round made headlines for The Kiss. Emily Valentine stunned the judges and the audience by sharing a romantic smooch with competitor Curtis Grimes.
"Neither of us have ever sung a duet before," says Valentine. "And by 'singing a duet' I also mean 'kiss on stage.' "
She says the feelings between her and Grimes are real, but the kiss was part of the performance. "We kind of thought about well, how can we utilize the best of this opportunity?" she explains.
"Curtis and I are very like-minded in the business sense of our careers and recognized that it was such a unique experience," battling each other after growing so close. "And at the ninth hour," continues Valentine, "Curtis was like 'Let's just do it. Let's do a kiss at the end of our song.' And I was like 'Oh my God, I can't believe this is going to happen!' "
Cherie Oakley got a surprise of her own when coach Blake Shelton introduced her to Reba McIntyre.
"I wrote this song [called] 'Turn on the Radio' shortly after the flood happened in Nashville," Cherie tells Scifi Vision. "And everything with my record deal started to crumble at the same that Reba heard the song and wanted to sing it.
"And so obviously I gave her the song," Oakley adds, "and the song climbed the charts...We tried many times to meet and it just never happened."
And then fate and NBC intervened to put Oakley and McIntyre on
The Voice.
"I got to meet her and share one of the coolest experiences of my life with the entire world, Oakley concludes. "It was so surreal. It was crazy."