Ben Sheehy faced down the pop and took his rock all the way to the top 6 in this year’s return of Australian Idol. His singing career started right here on the Lower North Shore.
In the comeback series of Channel 7’s Australian Idol, rocker Ben Sheehy was constantly referred to as the “Brissie boy”. But Ben is truly one of our own, having grown up on the North Shore. Schooled at Pius X College in Chatswood, Ben learnt to sing at Big Music in Crows Nest, where he got inspiration to form a band in Year 12, called Devalero.
Before his stint on Idol, Ben was working in retail and studying composition at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He had not sung publicly since performing with Devalero. So when he saw an ad on Channel 7 publicising the return of Australian Idol after 14 years, he jumped at the chance.
“Australian Idol is a cultural phenomenon,” he says. “All of the stars that you still see now have come from Idol or one of those shows. So I thought, ‘why not?’ I thought, ‘I have sung before, so surely I haven’t lost it!’
Ben’s audition, to A whole lot of love by Led Zeppelin, impressed the producers which gave him access to the judges, which this year included international superstars Harry Connick Jr and Meghan Trainor.
“Being invited to audition in front of the judges was really crazy,” says Ben. “And I thought, ‘this could really happen.”
But given his rock style, he was facing an uphill battle against the pop domination. “I was not sure if it was something that would be appreciated on a show like Idol, which is very pop-oriented,” he says.
“So I wasn’t sure how far like I would go. But I was surprised that they really enjoyed it and were blown away.”
Despite Ben’s quiet, laid-back persona – at one point, Megan Trainor called him ‘a sweetheart and gentle’ – he was not worried about what people would think when belting out tracks like Wolfmother’s Joker and the Thief.
“I was prepared for the shock I get when I open my mouth and sing… because the way that I speak and the way that I sing are very different. People say it’s like a Jekyll and Hyde thing.”
Judge Kyle Sandilands was not convinced, saying in one of the final rounds that Ben had a great voice, but “rock has slowly been dying”. Ben countered this, by highlighting the numbers of children who sent him videos of themselves rocking along to his songs.
“I was very humbled by the positive response of everyone,” he says. “To hear the judges, who have had really successful careers in the industry, say, ‘you deserve to be here,’ I think that really validated me.”
He advises aspiring musos – or anyone with a passion – to work hard at it. “The things that you dream about doing are never easy. You’ve got to have a big support network and you need to be flexible. You need to go outside of your comfort zone.”
For now, Ben is going to give the live rock gig a go, in between a ‘regular’ job, and is working on writing his own songs.
Watch the last season of Australian Idol on 7Plus.