Liberty Student Gets Golden Ticket On “American Idol”

Luke Taylor is a 20-year-old student at Liberty with an exceptionally deep voice. This deep voice has given Taylor a TikTok following of over two million people, under the handle @luke.the.voice. 

But even more so, it allowed him to receive a call one Saturday morning last year from producers of “American Idol,” asking him to come audition. And audition he did, making it through the first round of the show and part of the second round during Hollywood Week. 

“My dream has always been to be a musician and to perform and to sing. Having that door open for me on such a grand scale is just crazy. I mean, nothing really feels real to me anymore,” Taylor said. 

His mother Carol Taylor agrees with this sentiment. 

“If you had told me three years ago this was going to happen, I would have laughed,” she said. 

More than the surprise they had in finding out he made it, the way Luke made it onto the show is equally impressive. 

There are over 100,000 applicants to the show every year, and only 130 applicants go to Hollywood Week. For most “American Idol” hopefuls, they apply for the audition process themselves, then wait for months to find out if they were accepted. 

But for Luke, it just was an out-of-the-blue phone call, leading to a Zoom audition with the producers.

On the show, he performed for judges Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and Lionel Richie. As he came on stage for the first audition, the judges were blown away by his voice. 

Taylor told host Ryan Seacrest that he has been told he has a good movie trailer voice. Seacrest told Taylor to tell the judges, and they asked him to voice a movie trailer about Bryan and also sing the song “Frosty the Snowman” because of his deep voice. 

Once the initial introductions were made, he performed his intended song. He sang “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash. He received a yes from judges Richie and Bryan, earning a golden ticket to move on to the next round.

Among all of the exciting aspects of being a part of the show, Taylor’s favorite part was the people. 

“I think my favorite part of being on ‘American Idol’ was probably getting to meet everybody. Because yeah, it’s cool to be on TV, but I’ve been on shows before, and I just haven’t had this kind of experience, where you can make genuine friends,” Taylor said. “I feel like that’s something really powerful, just meeting people from across the country to get together and make music.”

He noted his surprise about how down-to-earth the people he met were. 

“I thought everyone was going to be a lot more stuck up, but everyone was just like, ‘yeah, I mean, we’re here. Like, we don’t know why we’re here, but we’re here and we’re just here to have fun.’ And everyone was really welcoming. The staff was wonderful too,” Taylor said.

Taylor made it to Hollywood Week, but he did not make it any further. His Hollywood Week performance was not featured on the show.

While Taylor didn’t make it to the end of “American Idol,” he is staying busy, involved in musical groups at Liberty and working on his music. Taylor is the bass singer for Liberty’s acapella group “Shine” and sings bass in the choir Chamber Singers. He is also hoping to go down to Nashville over the summer to record a few songs with his manager. 

“Right now, I’m on the road every other week because I’m a part of three different musical groups with Liberty and then for my own personal music. It’s great, though it does make catching up for class times hard,” Taylor said. 

Yet despite all of these things, Taylor remains a mostly typical college student.

 “I don’t have class until noon, so I get to sleep in. I usually just get those over with, and then I go get dinner at the ROT — it’s a classic. Then I go home, do what homework I need to do, then practice guitar every day for 30 minutes and watch TV,” Taylor said. 

 For the future, Taylor’s mother hopes that he will go where God leads him. 

“I pray about it a lot. I wouldn’t want fame for any of my children necessarily because fame changes people … but now that these doors have opened, I don’t want to get in God’s way,” she said. “He really loves country music … I hope he does country, and that God’s doors open for him to do that.” 

Taylor himself is happy with how life is progressing. 

“I’m realizing that I’m starting to get a good foot in (the music business),” Taylor said.

Wineman is a news reporter