Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Iam Tongi will return to American Idol for a performance Sunday night. (ABC Photo)

American Idol’s Top 24 are performing at Disney’s Aulani Resort in Hawaii.

So Idol did the logical thing and invited Season 21 champ Iam Tongi to perform on Sunday’s show.

After all, Iam’s the first winner of Idol from Hawaii. Not to mention one of the most popular Idol contestants in recent memory.

Think I’m exagerating?

His audition video of James Blunt’s “Monsters” has been viewed 26 million times on YouTube.

No one from the very talented Season 22 cast had cracked the 3-milion view mark with their audition as of April 1.

And from my perspective, Iam has done just what an American Idol winner should do in this day and age.

Which means strike while the iron is hot.

Iam toured relentlessly last fall and winter and he’s resumed a busy tour schedule in 2024.

He has seven tour dates set for April so far, including a sold out show tonight in Rocky Mount, Va., and an appearance at the Holo Holo Music Festival in Nevada at the end of the month.

His music is being well received too.

Iam’s released version of “Monsters” has more than 4.5 million streams on Spotify. “I’ll Be Seeing You,” his official Idol single, has more than 5 million.

And Iam has four other songs with more than 1 million views on the site, including “Why Kiki?,” the first original he released after show.

That’s the song he’ll be performing on Idol on Sunday night’s Top 24 show.

One thing Iam hasn’t done at this point is announce the release of more original music.

But snoop around his Instagram page for a couple of minutes, and you’ll stumble across some impressive sounding unreleased originals.

Writes Iam alongside a snippet of an original called “Come Through”: “Aye guys I’ve been working on a lot of new music and I’m super excited!!! … I got more songs in the works and I’m hella excited. Stay tuned.”

Head here for Iam’s upcoming tour dates.