Luke Bryan is More Confident With Upcoming ‘American Idol’ Season

Luke Bryan will soon return for Season 17 of American Idol, marking his second time to join Lionel Richie and Katy Perry as judges, and the singer admits he is much more confident now that he has a little experience.

“Second season of Idol – I’m more excited this year because I know what to expect,” Bryan explained. “I’m not going to be scared the whole time. The fact that me and Lionel and Katy and Ryan we have one season under our belt, we know how much we can have fun with one another. We know how serious the contestants take it. We’re excited. I know we’re more excited than last year, just because we know what to expect. It’s gonna be a lot of surprises and a lot of fun.”

Bryan’s role on Idol took him from a country superstar to a TV star as well – an unexpected perk to being on the show that he didn’t anticipate.

“The main thing is that you gotta understand, there’s a segment of the world that doesn’t even listen to the radio,” Bryan told PopCulture.com and other media. “They just watch TV. So, the people that watch TV just learned who I was. You can divide country radio into one quarter of the population of radio listeners.

‘You’ve got your ABC people, your NBC people, and then you got your Netflix and the whole whatever,” he continued. “You can break it down however you want to. So when I’m walking, when I hop in a cab somewhere, and a foreign cab driver is like, ‘I know your voice. Ooh, you’re a judge on American Idol,’ that’s when you see that there’s just a whole other segment of people.”

Not that being on American Idol is easy. The 42-year-old admits the days are long, especially in the beginning.

“The auditions are about 12, 13 hours and they are long but they are fun,” Bryan said (quote via Taste of Country). “It’s so exciting because you are giving people tickets to Hollywood and all that, so it flies by. We are locked in and focused on what we are doing.”

“When we get to live recordings, those are only two hours,” continued the singer, “so after two months of 12 hour days when we get to [live shows], it’s like it flies by and you don’t even know it. It’s like you are on vacation.”

Like Ryan, Richie is also eager to return to the American Idol set. He recently posted a photo on Instagram of the three judges, saying, “Countdown. I’m back on the road with the children,” tagging both Bryan and Perry, adding in parentheses “Pray for me.”

Online auditions for American Idol are open and can be found here. A premiere date for Season 17 has yet to be announced. More information can be found at AmericanIdol.com.

Photo Credit: Getty images/ David Livingston