Luke Bryan is back for another season of American Idol along with Katy Perry and Lionel Richie.

For the show’s 18th season and third season in a row Luke, Katy and Lionel are serving as judges for the talent competition. Luke says he and his fellow judges on American Idol can be fun to watch on the show. However, he feels it is the contestants who are the real stars of the show.

“What I love about American Idol is me and Lionel and Katy, we could tell jokes all day long, and have antics and be goofy and all that. But, when an amazingly talented kid walks in that room, that’s when the show starts happening.”

Luke feels that now in their third year as judges, the trio are a bit more picky about who advances in the show.

“We know what’s going to survive the later rounds. You know, sometimes we’d send a kid to Hollywood just as an experiment, and those experiment don’t really work. So, we’ve learned not to waste some of these kids’ time.”

Below are a couple of auditions from last night’s (2/16) season 18 premiere of American Idol.

Will you be watching season 18 of American Idol?

By: Buck Stevens