Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Will Moseley and Top 24 mentor Jelly Roll on American Idol.

Will has released a new single called “Why,” a song he wrote with Will Richardson and Nate Baker.

He uses his rasp to great effect on a song about a man in despair because he’s been done wrong, presumably by a woman.

Released April 1, the song has nearly 19,000 streams on Spotify to date.

You’ll recall that Will auditioned with another of his originals, “Gone For Good.”

That song now has more than 500,000 streams on Spotify.

And that audition was the first step in Will establishing himself as a front-runner on Season 22.

He delivered another standout performance during the Top 24 show that aired Sunday night, bringing the Idol judges to their feet with his rendition of Otis Redding’s “(Sitting on) The Dock of the Bay.”

And apparently, he got to spend some time in Hawaii with Jelly Roll, even though Tori Kelly was his official mentor.

Will posted a photo of the two of them together on Instagram Monday, writing:

“Thank You for treating me like a human when I was really just being a fan. You are the best person I’ve ever met! Thank you for all of the advice, and I hope that we can sit down together again! You’re the man. They say never meet your hero’s, but I did and you are still just that. My hero!”

Fans will find out Sunday whether that performance was enough to get Will into the Top 20.

Idol will announce which four singers head home at the beginning of a three-hour Top 20 show.

After that comes another round of performances and another chance to vote for your favorites.

Here’s betting Will’s fans will be voting again. I can see him going very deep into this competiion.

Meanwhile, huge kudos to Idol for allowing contestants to release music while appearing on the show, something unheard of in Idol’s early days.

Will joins a growing list of Season 22 contestants to do so, including Abi Carter (“It’s All Love”), Blake Proehl (“Closure”), Emmy Russell (“Like That”), Jennifer Jeffries (“You Were a Child”) and Kaibrienne (KB) Richins (“Girl I Am Now”).

Then there’s Kayko, who dropped a six-song EP called “Poser” on April 1 and has now performed three of those originals on the show.