- Luke Taylor auditioned for "American Idol" with the song "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash.
- Taylor is well-known on TikTok, where his deep voice has helped him amass 2.1 million followers.
- He first went majorly viral for a sea shanty duet with Scottish singer Nathan Evans.
TikTok-famous vocalist Luke Taylor, who's known for his incredibly deep voice that he frequently lends to musical chains on the app, appeared on Sunday's episode of "American Idol" and sang "Ring of Fire" by Johnny Cash in his audition.
Twenty-year-old Taylor has 2.1 million followers on TikTok, where he's known by his handle @_luke.the.voice_. In December 2020, he went viral with a bass line duet of Nathan Evan's cover of "The Wellerman," the song that sparked the sea shanty craze that swept TikTok in early 2021.
Taylor's duet video has been viewed over 16 million times to date, and used in over 6,000 videos on the app.
On Sunday's "American Idol," he shocked the judges — Lionel Richie, Katy Perry, and Luke Bryan — with his incredibly deep voice. In addition to covering "Ring of Fire" as part of his audition, he pretended to voice a movie trailer about Bryan. At Bryan's request, he also sang "Frosty The Snowman."
Perry voted to not send him to Hollywood, saying that she worried that Taylor's voice would be "funny but not seriously able to compete. Both Richie and Bryan voted to send him onward, allowing him to continue in the competition at Hollywood Week.
"I didn't always have such a low voice," Taylor said on the show. "My voice started to drop around 16 or 17, the beginning of my junior year... It was a very dramatic drop. I went from being four foot 11 and singing alto to being six foot one and singing below bass."
Taylor's distinctive voice is well known on TikTok, where he frequently adds his signature low bass to duet chains, where musicians add their own voices on top of each other in subsequent videos. One duet chain cover of "How To Save a Life" by The Fray, features Taylor adding his voice to users @jonathantilkin, @apsloan01, and @jarethmarlow.
@_luke.the.voice_ #duet with @marlowj15 @apsloan01 #fyp#foru#foryou#xyzbca #xyzcba#stitch#viral#blowthisup#bass#basssinger#lukethevoice ♬ original sound - jonathantilkinThat particular cover has become frequently memed on TikTok, where users overlay it with melodies like "Unravel," an opening theme of the anime series "Tokyo Ghoul," as well as "Seven Nation Army," played loudly and off-beat on a tuba.
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