Budjerah On Not Turning A Chair On ‘The Voice’: ‘I’m Glad How It Turned Out’

Budjerah has scored a massive opening slot for Ed Sheeran, won Rolling Stone Australia’s Best New Artist award, performed with the legendary Tina Arena, won a bunch of ARIA awards, and recently put on a show at the Sydney Opera House as part of Vivid LIVE.

It’s safe to say that his career is booming right now, and he didn’t need The Voice to get here.

Starring on the Fitzy & Wippa with Kate Ritchie show this morning, Budjerah revealed that he auditioned for The Voice season eight in 2019, but his soulful tone didn’t turn a single chair.

He didn’t make it past the Blind Auditions. “How embarrassing for them,” Wippa quipped, while Ritchie concurred, “Exactly. And then, like, you just played the Opera House last week. So, it's just incredible how things turn out.”

“It’s pretty crazy,” Budjerah replied, “I’m quite glad [with] how it turned out, yeah.”

“When you did say 2019, I think it was when nobody turned around,” Wippa inquired, “What were the steps then that put you where you are now, selling sold-out shows at the Opera House?”

Budjerah, ever the humble star, said, “I just decided to keep singing. That's really all I do.

“You know, I was working at Maccas, I quit Maccas and I just did gigs in my local cafes and kept writing songs.”

Later in the interview, Fitzy asked Budjerah how he met Ed Sheeran and scored those support slots. “The Ed Sheeran thing – how did that come about?,” Fitzy started, “Did you get told by the record company that he's a fan of your work or what, how did it come about?”

“I’m still trying to figure out how that happened too,” Budjerah answered. He added about the whirlwind experience, “It's pretty crazy. They took us like down and like to see how the stage works.

“It’s crazy how they put all that together and I heard he had to sign like 70,000 CDs because he was getting ready to release his album. [The] first time I met him in Brisbane he gave us like two minutes and I was like two minutes is a lot of time when you have to sign 70,000 CDs.”

You can listen to the full interview below.

"Oh man, I was a little bit nervous [when receiving the news about opening for Ed Sheeran]," Budjerah told The Music earlier this year. "This is like the biggest tour to ever come to Australia in history - it's over a million tickets."

He was already in shock that he recorded the 2Step remix with Sheeran, "So I was like, I guess this is the next thing. I'm still in the same state when I heard the news. It doesn't make sense to me. Why me? I don't know. But I'm really grateful."