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The season premiere of “American Idol” concluded with an emotional audition that left Carrie Underwood in tears.
During Monday’s episode of the singing competition show, the judges were introduced to Heather Wyatt, a mother who lost her 13-year-old daughter to suicide in 2023.
“I’m here to introduce Khloe … a young girl who, about a year ago, wrote and performed a song in honor of my daughter, Aubreigh, who we lost to suicide in 2023,” she told the judges.
“I first heard Khloe’s song about a year ago and immediately cried,” Wyatt told the cameras during a confessional. “It was beautiful. It was what Aubreigh had gone through. Aubreigh is my forever 13-year-old daughter. She is bright, beautiful, talented, and she endured years of bullying and social media pressures and took her life on Sept. 4, 2023. It was very unexpected.”
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Before her audition, Khloe told host Ryan Seacrest the inspiration behind her song, “Forever 13.”
“Something kept telling me to write that song, so I did,” said Khloe, who had never met Aubreigh. “I felt it so much in my heart to write this song.”
“This is my first time meeting her and thanking her for the song,” Wyatt told the judges, before Khloe entered the room. The two immediately embraced in a big hug.
“Music is very powerful, and it can help let people know that they’re not alone,” Underwood told Khloe before the 15-year-old sang her original song dedicated to the late Aubreigh.
“I am just so moved,” host Lionel Richie told Khloe after her audition. “That’s a gift right there. That’s God looking back at you.”
“I feel like the maturity that you possess is quite incredible,” Underwood said, before choking up. “The way you had your heart broken for someone you didn’t even know and take that and basically say, put something positive is going to come out of it and potentially even think about all the people that hear that and see you and hear the story, maybe decide to change their mind about something, you know. It’s pretty incredible.”
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Luke Bryan added that the way Khloe wrote about what Heather was going through without knowing her shows potential in her “as a singer and songwriter and someone that can really do a lot of good in this world.”
All three judges gave Khloe a pass to move on to the next stage of the competition.
This wasn’t the first time a contestant emotionally moved the judges.
Jesse Findling — a 20-year-old college student with a severe stutter — left the judges in awe after giving a “beautiful” performance despite the debilitating condition that has left him feeling embarrassed at times.
“I’ve been singing ever since I was little with my brother and sister,” Findling told the judges. “We would pull up karaoke tracks, and we would just sing with each other, and since then I did choirs in school. If you haven’t noticed, I have a stutter and that’s really where kind of my love for singing came.”
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“I’ve had a stutter ever since I was little,” Findling said during his confessional. “It’s something that I’ve struggled with since elementary school. It was something embarrassing for me, and it was something that I really had a hard time with. I wouldn’t raise my hand in school, and it was just something that made me feel alone and something that I felt like I had to hide. So it was definitely hard.”
Findling said that singing has always “felt freeing” to him because his stutter disappears.
“When I sang, it was a way for me to express myself in a way where I didn’t have to worry about being embarrassed or what people would think, or if somebody would laugh,” he said. “It was an outlet for me when I was little, and it’s still an outlet for me now.”
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During his performance of Bensen Boone’s “In The Stars,”, all three judges were visibly shocked at his approach.
“I don’t think I blinked one time,” Bryan said after the audition. “I mean, wow. You’re a real singer. Thank you, man. I’m really proud of you. I love this show. I love this show because we get to meet kids like you.”
“Your voice is beautiful,” Underwood added. “You have a beautiful vibrato, a beautiful tone. We could understand everything you were singing, and you were in the song emotionally, which just took us right there with you, so it was beautiful.”
“Problem. What problem?” Richie asked. “You don’t have a problem. The only thing wrong with you is you’ve got to figure out how you’re going to navigate this career.”
“American Idol” airs Mondays on ABC and streams the next day on Hulu.