Why Kyle Sandilands believes he has earned his place on Australian Idol
Kyle Sandilands was out of his comfort zone on his first season of Australian Idol in 2005, but back for his ninth season of the hit show `he knows he’s earned his place.
Entertainment
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Kyle Sandilands was out of his comfort zone the first season he filmed Australian Idol in 2005, questioning whether he belonged on the panel at all. Tomorrow he’s back on our screens in his ninth season of the hit music show and, like fellow judges Marcia Hines and Amy Shark, he’s earned his place.
“I remember the first year I ever did it, I thought: ‘F--k, what am I doing? Like, what am I supposed to say?’,” he recalls.
“Marcia didn’t like me.
“Mark (Holden) was weird and he and I would get stoned on the sly — everything was just a bit odd.
“I was out of my comfort zone — and I was sitting there for 16 hours a day where I’d normally do three or four radio hours — and I’d say something and Marcia would go: ‘I disagree completely’ and I’d think: ‘do I not know what I’m talking about? I just say what I think.’”
That’s the quality that saw him and KIIS FM co-host Jackie O sign a landmark $200 million 10-year radio deal. Speaking to Insider on holidays, a 52-year-old Sandilands has not-so-baby Otto on his lap, soaking in family time before the rush of ratings and Idol starts for the new year.
“He’s good — he’s been to the park, he’s got his hair up in a little elastic band, he’s just roaming around, painting things,” Sandilands says, apologising for not switching from his Otto-inspired baby voice sooner.
For Christmas, he took Otto and wife Tegan to the Central Coast for a week.
“Teegy, me and Otto went up to Copacabana just for a week, so we just went and rented a house on the beach up there and that was nice. He played with his cousins and it was very family – had the paper hat on, the whole thing,” he says.
“You know the kids love the wrapping rather than the presents and we just seem to take way more home than we took up there, so it was a real jigsaw puzzle to pack the car.
“The whole normal Christmas drama.”
Just a week into 2024 he’s happy to be back into work zone, albeit at home so he can watch Otto scoff his lunch and listen to Bluey. Again.
And he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Since we had Otto, I think everything slowed down a lot,” he says. “So anything that used to just fill up time for entertainment before has just been flicked — we don’t go to that red carpet, we’re not going to that premiere — and we don’t care.
“They’re all fun to go to if you want to see something, but we’d rather spend time at home, watching Duggee and Bluey — it’s very weird.
“At the beginning of it all too, I was like: ‘God, these kid songs are starting to piss me off’ — you know they’re very repetitive — and I thought: ‘I don’t think I’m going to be able to handle this’. Now I’m singing and doing all the actions.
“I’m like one of those YouTube Kids presenters … but it’s fun. It’s just a different way.”
Having Otto softened the notoriously outspoken radio personality, he’s the first to admit that. So when Seven released its first clips for the upcoming season and Sandilands is crying like a baby, there’s no real surprise.
And having Marcia back — well, that was his idea.
“It’s great on a few fronts this year. It’s very lovely to have Marcia back — she said to me: ‘My brother, how long’s it been?’, because we catch up every now and then. I went to her birthday dinner for her 70th. We’ve been texting and we see each other from time to time,” he says.
“And we couldn’t get her on that first season because she had like 9000 different RSLs that she was touring around — the woman never stops. She’s just a real, great success story in entertainment in Australia from so young to still at 70, on the road non-stop.
“So with Meghan (Trainor) off having the second child and everything, we met with Seven and I was like: ‘Wouldn’t it be great to have all Australian judges on Australian Idol? Do we really need an international?’
“And Harry wasn’t sure whether he was going to start up or not he had tours planned — so they went back to the drawing board and they were like: ‘Yep, that’s a great idea, Marcia’s back’.
“And then the talent that rolled through this year – wow.
“Because every year you think, are we drying up? But the tables have turned this year and we could have probably put two seasons together, just out of the good talent.
“The sad thing for me was there’s not enough Goonies.
“You know, the ones we’ll have a laugh at? I mean they’re there, but it used to be full of them, but now it’s turned into a very serious music contest.
“So most people that show up are people that probably wouldn’t have shown up in the back in the day in the first lot because they were like: ‘It’s a cheat’s way to get in’ – but there’s a million ways to get in, there’s so many different platforms, and just getting noticed on any platform is any artist’s desire.”
He says Idol is vastly different to The Voice, with two very different types of people auditioning for the talent shows.
“It feels like Idol are the real musicians, the ones that have got no plan B in life. They have to be an artist, and most of them will fail, which is sad, but that’s just the way that will work. And then The Voice has Jenny with the three kids whose husband’s a brickie and she gave up her singing career at 16 – and she’s never going to be a star, she just wants her time on the stage.
“The Voice doesn’t ever pump out any big achievers, you know what I mean? They’re both great shows and The Voice rates its ass off – it’s a great entertainment show, but Idol is setting up a career.”
And that’s what the judges are there for too, he explains.
“We’re not in a contest with each other – the whole format is very different – so I think it attracts more serious musicians that really think: ‘Wow, if I win this …’ and I always tell them winning is easy – it’s sustaining a career, decade after decade, that’s the tough part.”
Like him in his first season, he says Amy faced her own doubts.
“Amy’s really shining this year as well. Last year she said to me: ‘I find it very hard to judge someone’, and I was like: ‘Amy, you’ve come from the scrappy kid on the Gold Coast, thrashing out songs and playing in pubs, to an ARIA-winning, legitimate commercial music artist – you do this for a living now’,” he says.
“You did the same thing the way Jimmy Barnes did it, but I said, you’re the new generation. These kids aspire to you, they want to hear what you have to say.
“Don’t think it was judging, think of it as advice. And she’s like a different Amy this year – she’s just owning the chair.”
He may not be a singer himself but he knows what works on radio and why. He’s often consulting to mates about which will be hits – in fact, he’s waiting on mate Guy Sebastian to send him his new track.
“I’m good at picking a song that’s going to do well in the charts,” he says. “A few friends run big labels in America and they come to me because for 30-odd years I’ve only dealt with hit music songs. Only the good ones. I hate album tracks. I don’t have a favourite artist. I don’t like going to concerts.
“I just like what’s on the radio now and then it’s burned, for me – it’s a different ear. I’ve just got my own ear in my industry.
“So they started sending me like Katy Perry songs or Gaga songs and go: ‘Which out of these songs should be the single’ – and I’d go ‘the second one for sure’.
“Like Chris Brown’s return song after all that drama with the beating and shit with the Rihanna whole bullshit – I consulted his team as well, and him personally, about what songs he should bring out.
“Because he had all these love songs and I was like, you can’t be putting out love songs, you just bashed your girlfriend, that’s no good. You have to put these big anthem songs out that people are dancing to.”
Idol will come up against Married At First Sight this season, and even against the Channel 9 juggernaut, he says the show will put up a good fight. “I even said to Seven: ‘Why the f--k would you put us up against MAFS’?,” he says.
“And they were like: ‘What are we going to play, Gilligan’s Island? We’re not going to surrender the night, we have to have something sexy for the advertisers. We have to have a good show. We believe in this show’.
“And I was like: ‘Oh, fair enough’.
“You can’t just surrender.
“It’s different audiences – the whole family’s not sitting around watching MAFS together like they do Idol’.
Australian Idol premieres tomorrow on Channel 7 and 7plus
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