Jesse Findling reaches top 14 singers on 'American Idol'

Young Massapequa Park singer Jesse Findling continues his upward climb on this season of "American Idol," breaking through from the top 20 to the top 14 on Monday night’s live show, following the results of viewer votes.

Six acts were cut immediately in the episode, based on what host Ryan Seacrest said were 17 million votes cast, leaving a top 14 that was set to be winnowed to 12 by the end. But in the episode’s final moments, Seacrest announced, to the studio audience’s vocal surprise, that because of the sheer number of votes the show had received, they would hold off announcing the two additional eliminations until the April 6 show in order, he said, to ensure accuracy.

At the start of the show, Findling, 20, had been the last name Seacrest announced to remain in this week's Songs of Faith round, in which each contestant performed a spiritual or religious piece.

Carrie Underwood, one of the trio of judges, told Findling later, "They made us wait for you. I was holding my breath" in suspense over whether his name would be called.

He was the second singer to perform after 29-year-old Pensacola, Florida, music teacher Keyla Richardson. Findling delivered a rendition of Rascal Flatts’ "Bless the Broken Road" that earned accolades from the trio of judges.

"You really did make that your own. I love the arrangement, I love what you did with it," Underwood told him. "You made that song suit your voice and you did it really fantastically."

"I love everything you’re doing," enthused fellow judge Luke Bryan. "Your voice is very controlled and very perfect," he said, before advising Findling to "keep pushing and dig more and more, because we’re getting into the serious part of the competition."

Judge Lionel Richie admiringly told him, "There’s a purity about your voice and a sincerity about your voice that just comes right through [from the] first note," and then echoed Bryan: "Just remember ... it’s down to 14. Give it to us."

Findling is the son of Joy Findling, a reading teacher in the Roosevelt School District, and Scott Findling, a senior vice president of the multinational media conglomerate Viacom.

On the Jan. 26 season premiere, he had scored a Golden Ticket to Hollywood Week with his audition performance of Benson Boone’s "In the Stars." "You have a beautiful vibrato, a beautiful tone," country-pop star Underwood told him, admiring how "you were in the song emotionally, which just took us right there with you."

Then his sterling rendition of Adele’s "Love in the Dark" during the Hollywood Week episode March 2 placed him in this season’s top 30. In the following episode’s Ohana Round — named for the Hawaiian word for "family" — at Disney’s Aulani resort in Ko Olina, Hawaii, he performed Ed Sheeran’s "Photograph" to reach the top 20.

On the March 16 show — part one of the two-episode Top 20 Round — Findling sang The Fray’s anthemic ballad "Your Found Me." At that point eliminations, which had been the sole province of the judges, took a back seat to viewer votes.

Adding to Findling’s achievement is that the 2023 Massapequa High School graduate — currently on a spring-semester break from Binghamton University, where he is a junior majoring in biology — is a lifelong stutterer. Stuttering generally does not occur while singing, for reasons the Stuttering Foundation of America says include that the vocal cords, lips and tongue are used differently when singing than when speaking, and that the brain may function differently in the two modes.

The competition's next round is titled "90s Judges’ Song Contest."