Idol Chatter & Voice Views

But the song choice wasn’t all that unusual for him.

He performed Sam Smith’s “Lay Me Down” during open call auditions in Little Rock. And when he tried out for The Voice back in 2014, he performed Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me” and Nick Jonas’ “Jealous.”

He didn’t land a spot on a team on The Voice, but he sure impressed the Idol judges with his smooth R&B delivery, earning a unanimous golden ticket to Hollywood.

Jennifer Lopez said she was “so blown away” by his performance. Harry Connick Jr. called it “bar none, my favorite audition since we started. The competition needs you.”

Don’t remember Trent. He’s the guy who works on his parents’ 400-acre farm in Mississippi. The farm with 300 to 350 head of cattle. The one with a restaurant called The Longhorn.

“In order to do anything in music, you need to leave the farm,” Trent, 25, told Idol. “You can sing to cows all you want. And I’ve been doing it for a long time. But they don’t clap. They don’t care. They don’t buy albums.”

Trent hasn’t totally left the farm yet. In fact, he told his hometown newspaper he might wind up working at the restaurant on the night his audition aired.

He also told the Monroe Journal that he auditioned on a whim, having just returned from a month-long mission trip to Belize.

Oh, and he remembers watching Idol way back in Season 1.

“I remember the night of the finale, we had a tornado warning that came through Amory, and we had to get in the hallway, and I was thinking, ‘We can’t have a tornado because ‘American Idol’ is on.’”

Trent doesn’t appear to have released any music yet. But his YouTube page is loaded with covers, and I’ve embedded two below.

You can follow him on Facebook and Twitter, where he is @TrentWHarmon.

“Lay Me Down” cover

“Jealous” cover