Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Kason Lester from The Voice Season 23

The Voice returns to NBC on Monday, March 6.

Here’s more about Kason.

* Season 21 of American Idol is loaded with former Voice contestants, so it’s only fair that Season 23 of The Voice includes someone who was previously featured on Idol.

* That someone would be Kason, who impressed the Idol judges back in Season 17 with his performance of “Hold Her” by Chris Janson. Katy Perry was so impressed, she said Kason had the potential to be a Top 10 contestant.

* He didn’t make it quite that far, but did advance to the Top 40 showcase round in Hawaii before being cut. Those episodes aired in the spring of 2019; Kason was 28 at the time.

* At the time of his audition, he and his brother were running Lester Farms, a 200-acre spread near Lebanon, Tenn. Their main crop was strawberries.

* And Kason got lots of support from his hometown, which hosted a packed-house watch party at the Capital Theatre the night his American Idol audition aired.

* Prior to Idol, Kason had already released a country EP called “Born and Raised.” “Love You Yet” from that project has more than 350,000 streams on Spotify.

* Since the show, he’s released more music, including an EP called “Unseen” in 2020 and some covers, including rousing versions of The Beatles “Come Together” and Post Malone’s “Take What You Want.” Writes Kason: “The rock side has to come out sometimes.”

* Kason is a 2017 graduate of Belmont University, where he studied music business and production.

* In an interview with the Wilson Post around the time of his Idol appearance, Kason explained: ““I’ve tried to do other things, to take other routes, but it always came back to this, my love for singing and songwriting.”

* He’s also developed quite a following on TikTok, to the tune of more than 50,000 followers and nearly 300,000 likes.

Kason on social media:
Instagram
TikTok
Twitter
Facebook
YouTube