“I thought I’d done everything that they’d pushed me into doing.”
Australian Idol is approaching the point end and while that means we get a bunch of brilliant live performances, the downside is that we have to say goodbye to a couple of talented contestants each week. Last night, the Top 10 became the Top 8 after contestants Harry Lamb and Wanwue Tarpeh received the least amount of votes and were eliminated from the competition.
While Harry tells TV WEEK that he’s sad the opportunity has come to an end, the 27-year-old barber from Ballarat
This week on Australian Idol, the Top 10 were tasked with singing classic Australian bangers. For Harry, this meant bringing The Living End’s classic hit “White Noise” to the stage. After weeks of being told that he wasn’t confident enough on stage, he vowed to get up there and bring his A-game. While he felt that he gave it his all — and had a blast — judge Kyle Sandilands didn’t like his performance — and wasn’t afraid to let Harry know.
While he took the feedback like a champ, Harry admits that he was “disappointed”.
“I thought I’d done everything that they’d pushed me into doing,” he explained. “I was a bit taken aback by the fact he didn’t receive it well.”
According to Kyle, Harry wasn’t cut out for a rock performance.
“He said I was a little bit too soft and happy, and that the performance needed more angst to it,” Harry explains. “But to be honest, I had the best time doing it, it was hard to hide how much fun I was having.
“It was pretty hard feedback to take. I think if I was younger, like some of the other guys, I might have struggled to stay composed but in the music industry you get criticism all the time so it’s part of life. Just not always on live TV.”
Although Kyle wasn’t a fan of Harry’s Living End cover, there was one person who had glowing feedback — Chris Cheney, the lead singer of The Living End — who messaged him after seeing his live performance and Kyle’s feedback.
“He just said to be authentic, and that people can really feel if you’re trying to be something you’re not so just lock in to what you want to do,” Harry shares.
“He said he loved it and don’t listen to Kyle, which is quite funny. To be honest, I was upset about what Kyle said but then when Chris, who wrote the song, really loved it, it was a pretty awesome way to feel better.”
For Harry — and the other contestants — one of the biggest challenges throughout the whirlwind Australian Idol experience was navigating online hate. Despite the thousands of fans cheering them on in person and online, Harry seemed to be the target of quite a bit of criticism online. While he’s proud of himself for locking in and tuning out the bad vibes, he admits that at times, the negativity did get to him.
“I impressed myself with how resilient I was with online criticism. I think I really copped a lot more negative stuff online than everyone else so to be able to tune that out and lock in to the next songs each week,” he said.
“People don’t think that we see what they’re saying online, but we see all of it. No one loves that.”
Despite being out of the running to win Australian Idol 2026, Harry doesn’t have any plans to slow down.
He’s already planning an Australian tour and has a heap of music ready to be released into the world in the next coming month.
“It’s just the start of the journey for me, so I hope people follow along on socials,” he says with a laugh.