A beloved former American Idol contestant has died aged 31.
C.J. Harris, who auditioned for the present in 2014, handed away in Jasper, Alabama, over the weekend, as reported by TMZ.
A spokesperson for Walker County Coroner confirmed the unhappy information with the outlet, with a member of the family additionally revealing Harris died of an apparent heart attack.
The father-of-two was rushed to an area hospital by ambulance, however CPR efforts had been unsuccessful and he died in hospital. Harris was 31.
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Fellow American Idol alum Jessica Meuse, who was a contestant on Season 13 of the present alongside Harris, was among the many first to pay tribute to the star on social media.
“Your talent and smile will be missed, and the world is definitely a darker and eerily quieter place without you in it,” she wrote of Harris, who performed sixth within the competitors that 12 months.
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“I’ll miss your random phone calls asking for life advice and talking about the music world… There are a lot of things I realize I will never understand – you leaving us so soon is one of those things.”
Harris auditioned in Salt Lake City, Utah, earlier than judges Jennifer Lopez, Harry Connick Jr. and Keith Urban, with the latter giving him a lot reward for his rendition of the Allman Brothers hit Soulshine.
Watch the audition above.
“You know what it was for me, was that you have to sing not because you want to sing and I mean that in the deepest way,” Urban stated on the time. “That’s why it’s so believable and real. And it’s greater than the sum and the parts. I just believed it and I felt it.”
That similar 12 months, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Harris revealed he first auditioned for Idol in 2010 however didn’t make the primary spherical. Subsequent audition makes an attempt on The X-Factor and The Voice had been additionally unsuccessful.
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“I was always on the internet, trying to find a break, looking for which producers I could send my stuff to. I searched for American Idol and I saw they were doing the bus tour and they were going to be 30 minutes down the road from me,” he recalled.
“I said, ‘You know what? I’m going to give it another chance. I’ve gotten so much better, my voice has matured and my playing has gotten so much better.”
Harris went on to launch the only In Love in 2019 and on January 1 he introduced on Facebook that he had “new music coming soon”.
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