We get it, nobody likes to revisit their painful past.
Especially one as traumatising as 987 DJ Joakim Gomez’s time on the second season of Singapore Idol back in 2006.
For those who weren’t on this earth yet, the then 17-year-old Joakim had managed to make it all the way to the Top 5, despite heavy criticism from then judges, Dick Lee, Florence Lian, and Ken Lim.
Not to mention a constant stream of acidic comments by viewers constantly thrown his way.
It got so bad that years later, he admitted to once getting into a fight with hecklers in public.
It is now 2025 and almost 19 years later, the 36-year-old jock revisited these memories in the latest episode of the CNA series The Assembly.
One of the interviewers, Stephanie, started off by apologising to Joakim as she would be asking a very sensitive question.
She went on to admit that she “used to be a former hater” of his before the camera panned to an unsure yet resigned-looking Joakim.
Yikes!
We wonder how Joakim felt in that moment.
“I didn’t think you deserve to be in Singapore Idol in the first place,” Stephanie said. “At least I didn’t think you deserved to get as far as you did.”
She then asked Joakim how he managed to deal with the hate during that time to which he stoically replied, “I would have hated myself on Singapore Idol as well.”
“How can the better singers be eliminated and not this Joakim Gomez guy who is so terrible?” asked Joakim
He went on to credit his close friends and family who cheered him up during a time when he was “very angry” and “felt the entire world was against [him].”
Joakim, however, refused to “victimise himself” and in addition to his support system, added that “therapy [was] always available”.
That wasn’t the only time Joakim was made to answer questions about his Idol days.
Earlier in the interview, someone asked Joakim if he was still remembered as the “failed singer in Singapore Idol”.
Explaining that it was during a time before the age of social media, he said it was as recent as 2022 when somebody posted a TikTok video of him during the contest and it went viral.
“I was like, “Oh no! What is this doing here?” he said, before explaining that it was not something he wanted to run away from but instead he would rather “let it be in the past”.
Joakim said even though people might remember him as the “failed singer” still, he is fine with it.
“I’m okay with it, because that’s the truth. I wasn’t a good singer on Singapore Idol, like the better singers kept getting knocked out instead of me,” he explained.
Joakim said he did “a 360 change” on what it was that he wanted to show people as well.
“You see the negatives, but I hope you see the plus,” said Joakim.
For what it’s worth, Joakim, we think you’ve done pretty good for yourself since Idol.
Watch the ep here: