{"id":2320178,"date":"2026-03-09T19:15:21","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T19:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2320178"},"modified":"2026-03-09T19:15:21","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T19:15:21","slug":"luke-bryan-on-american-idol-alum-willie-spences-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/luke-bryan-on-american-idol-alum-willie-spences-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Luke Bryan on American Idol Alum Willie Spence\u2019s Death"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<p> Harry Styles Shares How He\u2019s Honoring Liam Payne More Than One Year After Bandmate\u2019s Death<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"segment-text-only\">\n<p><strong><a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/luke_bryan\">Luke Bryan<\/a><\/strong> still has <strong>Willie Spence<\/strong> close to his heart.<\/p>\n<p>The <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/american_idol\">American Idol<\/a> judge reflected on the untimely death of the season 19 runner-up\u2014who <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/1350102\/american-idol-runner-up-willie-spence-dead-at-23\">passed away at age 23<\/a> in an October 2022 car crash\u2014as he discussed what he would change about his time on the ABC singing competition.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would have cherished more moments with Willie Spence,\u201d he told <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.billboard.com\/culture\/tv-film\/carrie-underwood-luke-bryan-american-idol-season-24-1236189969\/\">Billboard<\/a> in an interview published March 6. \u201cThat\u2019s a biggie to me\u2014losing him and knowing how much he touched me in that room, in that space, watching him perform week in and week out. It was truly breathtaking.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The fatal incident hit particularly close to home for Luke, 49, who shared that he is often reminded of the late performer to this day.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe was from Douglas, Ga., which is an hour from my hometown,\u201d he continued. \u201cThat loss really affected me.\u00a0From time to time, I\u2019ll see a clip of him singing and it breaks my heart for him and his family, and I can only imagine what his career might have been.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.eonline.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Harry Styles Shares How He\u2019s Honoring Liam Payne More Than One Year After Bandmate\u2019s Death Luke Bryan still has Willie Spence close to his heart. The American Idol judge reflected on the untimely death of the season 19 runner-up\u2014who passed away at age 23 in an October 2022 car crash\u2014as he discussed what he would [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2320179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2320178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Luke-Bryan-on-American-Idol-Alum-Willie-Spences-Death.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2320178"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2320180,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320178\/revisions\/2320180"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2320179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2320178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2320178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2320178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}