American Idol Winner Trent Harmon: I Didn’t Expect to Win, but I Prepared to Win

Mississippi farm boy and blue-eyed soul singer Trent Harmon was crowned the last American Idol on the farewell episode of the FOX competition series. It was a surprising victory over La’Porsha Renae, who had been a frontrunner all season.

“I really feel like it hasn’t sunk in yet, because this morning when I jumped out of bed, got in the shower and started doing my warm-ups, and started practicing my song, I realized, ‘Hey, I don’t have to do that anymore,'” Harmon told reporters on a conference call the morning after his win. “I am realizing I need to decompress a little at a time. I don’t know how long it will take. It may be a week or it may be a month until I come out of — I hate to say — PTSD, but I am still in that mode, where I think I can get cut. But I can’t get cut anymore.”

Harmon sang a variety of styles of songs on the show, but he says when the choice was his, he almost 100 percent picked a country tune. So, he thinks that is the direction his album will take, plus it is the advice he is getting from Scott Borchetta, founder of Big Machine Records, for whom he will record.

“I sing blue-eyed soul. I talked it over with Mr. Scott, and he said, ‘Justin Timberlake is thinking about making a country album, so define country in 2016. I think  it could be whatever you want to be.’ So, we are going to try to make an album that supporters will pick up. Country people, they go to shows, they go to festivals, they buy CDs. If you can make it country, you can have a career.”

Here is more of the interview with Harmon:

Is it safe to say you were surprised to win? Did you consider yourself the underdog? And what did you say to La’Porsha as you were hugging her onstage in that moment?

I didn’t consider myself the underdog. When I auditioned in July, I didn’t expect to win, but I prepared to win at every facet of this competition. I told La’Porsha that no matter what names comes out of Ryan Secrest‘s mouth, we are going to hug until they separate us. We just won a car, and you don’t win cars every day, so we are going to be okay.

Who did you get to hang out with among the Idol alumni after?

You name it. If they have been on the show, I got to hang out with them. Some bucket list people I got to hang out with, I got to hang out with Jordin Sparks, and  I got to talk to David Archuleta for a awhile. I got to have a pretty long conversation with James Durbin and he was great.

Borchetta said in an interview that you were the hardest working contestant on the show. Why is that?

If I am awake or asleep, I am rehearsing. If I had two minutes to myself to do anything, I was in rehearsal mode. I didn’t know what I was doing, but that’s what it took. I was too dumb to know I was in go-mode all the time, but it paid off.

How old were you when you discovered your falsetto?

I really learned that I could do things with my voice that I didn’t know I could do in the middle to the last few years of college, so the last two to four years. I think I always heard the notes in my head, while I would be listening to Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, or The Temptations. My grandma played a lot of Temptations and Jackson Five back in the day when she would be cooking. I could hear those notes in my head and I wanted to sing, but I didn’t try to do it. And one day, they just jumped out of my mouth.

What is your relationship to country music?

I was just telling Mr. Scott last night, I said, “I don’t think you realize how much country music I listen to. Because whenever I really got the opportunity to pick the song myself, 100 percent, I was doing country songs on the show. They were sprinkled in very rarely, because we would get to pick our own songs, but there would be influence from other people as well. I sang a couple of Chris Stapleton songs. At that point, it was realized that this guy is confusing enough as it is. He talks so country, but he is actually a soul singer, but now he’s singing country. I have always enjoyed all the classics. I love Conway Twitty. I am a big Elvis Presley fan. He did country. I am a big Ray Charles fan and he made a country album. I feel like being able to sing multiple genres is going to help me make a country album that will be palatable to a lot of different people.