‘American Idol’ Hopeful’s Audition Prompts Luke Bryan to Belt Out a Broadway Tune [Watch]
Luke Bryan is used to belting out his hits for fans onstage night after night, but a Broadway musical song is different fare for the country superstar. He showed off a little bit on American Idol on Sunday night (March 7), though, and, honestly? It was impressive.
It was an audition from 19-year-old Abby LeBaron that prompted Bryan and his fellow Idol judges Katy Perry and Lionel Richie to begin singing showtunes. The social media manager from Springville, Utah, admitted to the trio that while she's made a career of handling others' public images, she's not big on social media for herself because "I just didn't ever want to, like, come off as, like, showing off or anything."
"We are in the show-off business," Riche replied, as Perry began playing off his words and singing "There's No Business Like Show Business," the famous song from the 1946 musical Annie Get Your Gun. Richie and Bryan joined in for a few lines, before Perry prompted, "Sing it, Luke!"
"You wanna hear a good one from Annie Get Your Gun?" he asked, then put on his best Broadway voice and offered a few lines of "I'm a Bad, Bad Man." Exaggerated hand gestures helped sell the performance, but so did an impressive ending note:
"Did I get the lyrics right to that?" Bryan wondered afterward. "Even if I didn't get the lyrics right, I showed off!"
The whole point was to get LeBaron out of her shell a bit -- and it worked. Seated at the piano, she performed "All I Want," originally by the Irish rock band Kodaline, receiving nods of approval from all three judges.
"Showoff!" Bryan teased after she finished, adding, "When you started, I had chillbumps everywhere."
Bryan, Perry and Richie offered an honest critique of LeBaron's performance -- she'd messed up a line, and they noticed -- but offered her a unanimous "yes," sending her to Hollywood.
American Idol airs on Sunday nights at 8PM ET on ABC. Sunday night's episode showed this season's third set of auditions, filmed in California in late 2020.
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