7-year-old Shaney-Lee Pool did the most adorable version of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” on The Voice Kids in a performance that quickly went viral, racking up 63 million views. The Bristol schoolboy quickly had the audience up on their feet with his take on the John Denver classic while singing with a dear, angelic voice.
English pop star Pixie Lott turned her chair for Shaney-Lee at the end of his performance, securing him a place on the UK show. The young singer has a great love for country music, which is perfectly fitting as he lives on a farm near the Bristol Airport, with a huge array of animals including his Shetland pony Bobby Brown, which he rode to the studio in the video.
In the interview for his audition, Shaney-Lee named country and Western music as his main jam and said he’d seen Texas country legend Kenny Rogers live two years prior. Clearly music runs in his blood, as he said: “I listen to music on the radio, at my nan’s house and on YouTube.” Shaney-Lee’s mum and dad Shane and Tamara are his biggest supporters, with Shane saying “whenever Shaney-Lee sings it does make you very proud. The places we go, the people we see, they always ask him to sing.”
Shaney-Lee really knows how to work a crowd and his performance had the crowd up on their feet straight away. The crowd and judges also couldn’t get enough of his adorable interview after the performance. For a real cuteness overload check out Shaney-Lee’s performance in the battle round, where he sings “ABC” by The Jackson 5 alongside fellow contestants Lilia Slattery and Jimmy Rey.
The battle round was the end of Shaney-Lee’s journey on the second series of The Voice Kids, where he was knocked out by top six finalist Lilia Slattery. While watching Shaney-Lee talk and perform you can see that he’s mature beyond his years, which is something his mother noted, saying “he’s certainly got a lot of confidence. More confidence than me for sure. He’s definitely an older person in a little man’s body.”
Shaney-Lee had a checklist for his performance going into the blind audition, stating beforehand that “I’m gonna make sure that number one, smile, number two, dance, number three, hold the microphone and number four, tap my foot.” And after his performance was such a hit with music fans in the studio and online, who’s to argue with his winning formula?
The young Bristolian certainly did a great job with his version of “Take Me Home, Country Roads”, especially with adapting the range to fit his voice compared to Denver’s original tenor performance. The song was the country star’s breakout hit single, going Platinum in the UK and x2 Platinum in the UK in 1971.
“Take Me Home, Country Roads” is from Denver’s fourth album Poems, Prayers & Promises. The song remains the late singer-songwriter’s most popular hit, with 763 million streams on Spotify, which is more than triple the number of streams of his next most popular track, “Annie’s Song”.