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"Cherie Oakley became a member of Team Christina Aguilera on The Voice after a blind audition performance of Miranda Lambert&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;Gunpowder and Lead&amp;#039;. The singer/songwriter, who wrote Reba McEntire&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;Turn On The Radio&amp;#039;, was then pitted against Lily Elise on the fourth battle round for a duet performance of Kelly Clarkson&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;Since U Been Gone&amp;#039;. Unfortunately, it marked the end of Cherie&amp;#039;s time on the show, but did give her the opportunity to finally meet Reba, who is serving as Blake Shelton&amp;#039;s mentor on the series.  Cherie recently spoke to reporters about her history with Reba, working with Christina and her plans for the future:  Do you think your previous success played into Christina&amp;#039;s decision to choose Lily over you and give her a chance? &amp;quot;I have no idea. I hope not, because you don&amp;#039;t want to feel like the opportunities that you&amp;#039;ve had in the past hinder you in any way in the future. I hope that on a show that&amp;#039;s called The Voice, and supposed to be about the voice, that it would be about people moving forward because they did base it on someone&amp;#039;s performance rather than someone&amp;#039;s background. I definitely hope that&amp;#039;s not the case, but you never know... I honestly felt, strangely enough, like the complete underdog on the entire team regardless of my experience or the opportunities that I&amp;#039;ve gotten to have, just because I honestly felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb coming from a country background, which was pretty drastically different from every single person on that entire team. I just hope that Christina wouldn&amp;#039;t have let that enforce her decision in the end either. You never know what people are thinking or what they want. I know Christina&amp;#039;s been very vocal about country being something that&amp;#039;s out of her comfort zone and that she does gravitate towards a pop-driven, more soulful voice. So at the end of the day that&amp;#039;s probably what her ear gravitated towards.&amp;quot; How was it working with Christina? &amp;quot;I felt like I could take so much with me from just standing back and watching her. Her professionalism just blew me away. She was so sweet and so genuine and she really did seem personally invested in each and every one of us. The way that she carried herself was something that I was just blown away by and will definitely hope to emulate in my own career if I&amp;#039;m given the chance. I did feel a little like the sore thumb that stuck out on the team and like the underdog just because of different things that she had said in the past about what she gravitates towards musically and stylistically, and I sort of wondered if my background in country music would hinder me from going forward. I struggled a little bit with my confidence at first and she was so encouraging and warm and supportive. I was able to email her and she emailed me, and she just really helped me through the show. It meant the world to me to know that she believed in me. I think that definitely helped me in my performance for sure.&amp;quot; Can you elaborate on your relationship with Reba? &amp;quot;I wrote this song &amp;#039;Turn on the Radio&amp;#039; shortly after the flood happened in Nashville and I wrote it at the time for a blink-of-an-eye record deal that I had. Everything with my record deal sort of started to crumble at the same that Reba heard the song and wanted to sing it, and so obviously I gave her the song and the song climbed the charts. She&amp;#039;d got my permission for the song over the phone, and I did give it to her with the stipulation of, &amp;#039;I want to meet you some day and I want to know that this song will be a single!&amp;#039; She called me to let me know that the song was going to be a single and then called me to celebrate the number one. We had tried many times to meet and it just never happened.&amp;quot; Did you get to spend any time with her behind the scenes that we didn&amp;#039;t see? &amp;quot;It was pretty packed as far as one battle after another, so I didn&amp;#039;t get to talk to her after the show - I would have loved to, but it didn&amp;#039;t happen. After we all flew home I finally had the experience of going to her big corporation Starstruck, and they had a big number one party there, so I got to hang out with her and talk. She ran up to me and gave me the biggest hug and has just been incredible. She sent me the most amazing beautiful vase from Tiffany&amp;#039;s and a card and she&amp;#039;s just, she&amp;#039;s my favorite person in the whole world! I was such a huge fan of hers - she&amp;#039;s been an idol of mine my whole life - and God just works in such mysterious ways and I&amp;#039;m just so thankful to experience this journey. It&amp;#039;s just been unbelievable. Yes, I&amp;#039;m ten times the fan of Reba McEntire&amp;#039;s now that I&amp;#039;ve gotten to know her character.&amp;quot; What is next for you as an artist? &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve already written some new songs since I&amp;#039;ve been back, and there are a couple I think I&amp;#039;d like to send Reba&amp;#039;s way. I definitely would love to continue pitching songs to other artists - it&amp;#039;s the coolest thing in the world to hear somebody sing your song and the way that they interpret it - but I do want to use this opportunity, platform and exposure to finally make my dream happen and get a record deal. I&amp;#039;m going to pursue that like nobody&amp;#039;s business! I&amp;#039;m going to pursue every record label in town. I&amp;#039;ve worked for so many years and I worked so hard and I&amp;#039;ve had a lot of incredible things happen but I&amp;#039;ve had a lot of painful things happen too. I feel like I&amp;#039;ve come too far to walk away and give up at this point in time, so I&amp;#039;m just thrilled and thankful for the exposure. I definitely want to use it to my advantage. I&amp;#039;ve already got a couple of gigs that I&amp;#039;m in the middle of booking because of the show and I look forward to making my first record this year.&amp;quot; The Voice continues Tuesday at 9/8c on NBC Watch a video of Cherie Oakley&amp;#039;s battle round duet with Lily Elise below:  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/the-voice/interviews/a322780/the-voice-eliminee-cherie-oakley-qa/>