If you’ve been tuning into American Idol at all this season, you won’t be surprised to hear that Iam Tongi lit up the stage Sunday night (April 30) with a performance of Sam Cooke’s “Bring It on Home to Me.”
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Tongi is now among the Top 10 contestants for Season 21 of Idol. For his latest performance, the young singer stepped out from behind the guitar that he normally plays during his performances on the show and owned the stage with newfound confidence.
Prior to his performance, Tongi set down with Idol-alum Adam Lambert for advice on how to say goodbye to his fellow contestants with eliminations every week.
“How did you get through saying goodbye to your friends,” Tongi asked the Queen frontman, to which he replied, “I guess I was just a little bit more eyes on the prize maybe. I was like ‘I ain’t here to make friends!'”
It’s Tongi’s pure approach to the competition (paired with his hypnotizing vocals of course) that has made him a standout on this season of the show.
Lambert also offered up some advice to Tongi about leaving his late father’s guitar at home for the performance.
“If you’re going to do it without your guitar and you’re still feeling untethered, a mic stand is a great way to hold on to something,” Lambert said. “I do that too.”
His final bit of advice was the most crucial: “If you’re singing a song with any weight, imagine the person you’re singing to is at the back of the room. It adds a realness to it.”
It seems Tongi took that advice to heart during his performance, as it held every bit of weight Cooke’s original version did. Tongi has flexed his soulful vocals many times while on the show but, his rendition of “Bring It On Home To Me” has to be one of his best.
The crowd, the judges, and the rest of the Idol hopefuls jumped to their feet after Tongi wrapped up his final notes. “I mean I don’t even need to talk, there’s the audience,” Katy Perry said referencing the crowd chanting Iam’s name.
“This is what it’s like when Iam gets on the stage,” she continued. “You are magic.”
“I’ll keep this quick,” Luke Bryan added. “There is no way people can’t love you. People just love you buddy, and that’s special.”
Check out Tongi’s performance of “Bring It on Home to Me,” below.
(ABC/Eric McCandless)
