page_title: Guy Sebastian
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Guy Sebastian / Early life
caption_attribution_description: Guy Sebastian performs at the Australian Gospel Music Festival on Easter Sunday 11 April 2004 to a record crowd.
context_page_description: Guy Theodore Sebastian AM is an Australian singer and songwriter who was the winner of the first Australian Idol in 2003, and a judge on Australia's The X Factor in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015 and 2016. He represented Australia at the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest, finishing in 5th place. Sebastian is currently a coach on The Voice Australia as of 2019.
  Sebastian has released nine top ten albums, including two number ones. The first seven all gained either platinum or multi-platinum certification. He has also achieved twenty two top twenty singles, with thirteen reaching the top ten, including six number ones. He is the only Australian male artist in Australian chart history to achieve six number one singles, and places third overall for all Australian acts. Nine of his singles have been certified multi-platinum, including the 11× platinum "Battle Scars". His debut single "Angels Brought Me Here" was the highest selling song in Australia in the decade 2000 to 2009. With 65 platinum and five gold certifications and combined album and single sales of over 4.7 million in Australia, he has the highest certifications and sales of any Australian Idol contestant.
context_section_description: Guy Sebastian was born in Klang, Selangor, Malaysia, on 26 October 1981. His father Ivan was also born in Malaysia and is an ethnic Malaysian Indian of Tamil origin and Ceylonese descent with distant colonial Portuguese roots, while his mother Nellie is an ethnic Eurasian of English and Portuguese descent and was raised in India. 
   They met while Ivan was studying geology in India and they married a year later. Sebastian is the second of four sons. His older brother Ollie was born in India, and his younger brothers Chris and Jeremy were born in Australia after the family migrated there in 1988, when he was six years old. They lived in Melbourne, Victoria, for several years before eventually moving to Adelaide, South Australia, due to Ivan's work as a geologist.
  As a child Sebastian took violin lessons; he would later learn to play guitar, drums and piano, although he has had no formal training in these other musical instruments. He attended Paradise Community Church, an Assemblies of God church and one of the largest churches in Australia, and he became one of their main worship singers. He also sang with the Paradise Community Church Youth Conference Planetshakers, performing both lead and backup vocals for their 2002 and 2003 conferences and albums (After winning Australian Idol he recorded on two of their albums, Adore in 2004 and Set Me Free in 2005). Sebastian attended King's Baptist Grammar School. He then began studies in Medical Radiation at the University of South Australia, but left to pursue a career in music. He taught vocals at Temple Christian College and other high schools while also working as a recording engineer and studying Music Technology at the University of Adelaide's Elder School of Music.
caption: Sebastian performing at the Australian Gospel Music Festival, April 2004
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