Iam Tongi on winning ‘American Idol,’ WA ties, future plans
It wasn’t a surprise to students and teachers at Federal Way’s Decatur High School Sunday night when senior Iam Tongi was crowned this season’s “American Idol” champion.
They’d long known about his musical talent — “The kid walked around the school hallways with his guitar,” says Matt Vaeena, Tongi’s current English teacher — but when Tongi first appeared on the ABC competition, they were surprised by how he introduced himself.
“We were watching in class after his first audition, and he said, ‘Iam,’ and we’re just looking at each other,” Vaeena says. “I don’t know if that’s a previous nickname from his family, but in school everyone just knows him as Will or William.”
Whatever name he uses, Tongi is now the first Hawaiian and Pacific Islander to be crowned an “American Idol” winner since the show began airing in 2002.
“It’s been crazy,” Tongi says of the whirlwind experience that took him away from home for almost two months beginning with the “Idol” live shows in early April.
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Tongi started this week in Los Angeles winning “Idol,” then flew to New York to appear on “Good Morning America” Tuesday morning. Now he’s back home with his family and his pet bulldogs trying to juggle interviews while catching up on schoolwork.
“We’ve built a plan for him to be able to meet the graduation requirements that he needed to and have the opportunity to walk with his class” at graduation, Vaeena says. “He’s definitely a kid that I had to wrangle a couple times and really get on for getting things done, but he was able to get everything he needed to get done in the first semester and I’m sure in the next couple of days he’ll be able to wrap up the second semester as well.”
Connection to the Seattle area
Watching “Idol,” a viewer wouldn’t necessarily know about Tongi’s ties to the Seattle area. The reality competition series focused almost exclusively on Tongi’s Hawaiian roots. Sunday’s finale followed Tongi back to his former high school in Kahuku, Hawaii, where “the pride of Hawaii” received an honorary diploma.
“Even though I moved, this is my home,” Tongi said in Sunday’s telecast before his big win.
Tongi, 18, explained earlier in the season that he moved from Kahuku to the Seattle area in 2019 when his family was “priced out of paradise.”
After winning “Idol” and its $250,000 grand prize (plus a record contract), might he return to Hawaii?
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“We’re gonna move back one day, but right now I’ll stay in Seattle because my dad is buried over here,” Tongi says.
His father’s 2021 death following kidney failure became the thrust of Tongi’s “Idol” narrative.
“When he went to ‘American Idol,’ that was one of the things that he wasn’t sure how it was going to play out, but he was fairly certain that at some point [his father’s death] was going to come up,” Vaeena says. “Obviously, it didn’t just come up, it was the center of his story.”
For his “Idol” audition, Tongi sang James Blunt’s emotional, father-son-themed song “Monsters,” which Tongi dedicated to his dad. In Sunday’s finale, Tongi sang “Monsters” again, this time as a duet with Blunt.
“It was a surreal moment, right? He’s such a cool guy and I’m glad I got to work with him,” Tongi says, acknowledging that he will likely have to sing Blunt’s “Monsters” at every concert going forward. He’s fine with that. “I’m not complaining, man. That song is such a beautiful song.”
In addition to his monetary prize and record contract, Tongi also won a Disney cruise, though he has no idea when he’ll have time to go on it. He’s busy writing songs to follow up his first single, “I’ll Be Seeing You,” written by Francisco Martin. That song quickly zoomed to No. 1 on iTunes.
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“It includes the lyrics ‘I’ll be seeing you wherever I go’ and that really relates to me with my dad because when we see places he loved to go, that reminds us of him,” Tongi says. “The other line of the chorus is ‘I’ll be with you,’ almost like my dad talking to me. I just really love the lyrics for this song. I hope it resonates with people in the way it resonated with me.”
A longtime connection to music
Vaeena says Tongi’s musical reputation preceded him before Vaeena first got to know Tongi last school year as an adviser of the Decatur High Pacific Islander’s club.
“Everyone has a TikTok or an Instagram [account] or whatnot, so when he first moved to Federal Way, he would pass the time recording his covers or him playing guitar,” Vaeena says. “He had gone to Federal Way High School [before transferring to Decatur] and that’s the first time that he started to pop up in terms of kids recognizing how good of a singer and guitar player he was.”
Music has always been Tongi’s primary interest, Vaeena says, including a performance at a multicultural carnival last year that had to be canceled when Tongi got sick.
“As far as he was concerned, he was gonna get through it because he promised the group of guys that he would get it done,” Vaeena recalls. “But he had a migraine and you could just tell he wasn’t himself, and so we actually had to send him home and he was just broken about it.”
Tongi’s success on “Idol” has been “a huge deal around the school and around the town and in the Polynesian community here; it’s almost been a life of its own in some circles,” Vaeena says.
Pre-“Idol,” Tongi exhibited “a really good vibe people are just drawn to even beyond the music thing,” Vaeena says. “He’s got a pretty unique sense of humor, a little more dry and dark than people realize and he’s got a lot of sarcasm.”
The Tongi of “Idol” proved less of the “quick-witted kid who’s fast with a comeback” and more “a little nervous up there on TV, which was a first for a lot of kids [to see],” Vaeena says. “I’m sure when he gets a chance to stop by the school, he’ll find that for a lot of the students and friends he’s always just gonna be William no matter what he’s achieved on ‘American Idol.’ ”
Source: The Seattle Times
