Reba McEntire couldn’t hold back the waterworks during Tuesday night’s episode of The Voice, and it wasn’t just the music that broke her. The country icon lost it when 16-year-old William Alexander spun a breathtaking version of Lizzy McAlpine’s “Ceilings.” But it was his words after the last note faded that hit her like a freight train. “I sang that for my granddad who passed last year,” Alexander revealed. “He always swore I had something special, and being here now—it’s unreal.”
Reba, still reeling, asked, “Were you picturing him the whole time?”
When Alexander nodded, she marveled at his strength. “I can barely croak out a tune when I think of my mama,” she confessed, her voice cracking. “I’ll start choking up and the song’s done for. How’d you pull that off?”
The teenager’s answer was simple but heavy. “I just imagined him listening, watching me up here. It made me proud—like I was doing this for him.”
Reba dabbed at her eyes, struggling to keep it together. “Now you’ve got me all misty,” she said, her tone pitching high. “I’m fighting to talk normal, but you were incredible. That voice of yours is pure magic, and I’d kill to have you on my team.”
Reba’s no stranger to channeling grief into song. After her mom passed, she almost hung up her mic for good—until she found a way to honor her through music instead. Her video for “You Never Gave Up on Me” is a love letter to her roots, winding through her Oklahoma childhood and the spark of her stardom. She even carried her parents with her at this year’s Super Bowl, sporting her dad’s championship belt buckle and her mama’s bracelet like quiet talismans.
She’s seen tears flow on The Voice before, too. Last year, Lennon VanderDoes turned John Legend into a puddle with Jason Mraz’s “I Won’t Give Up,” and Reba was the one passing out tissues. “When another singer cries over your song, that’s the highest praise you can get,” she told him then.
Alexander felt the weight of Reba’s reaction. “Seeing her get choked up was wild,” he said later, grinning in disbelief. “That’s when it clicked—we’ve got something real. I knew right then I was picking Reba.”
Catch The Voice Mondays and Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC.
