In his new bombshell autobiography, Devout: Losing My Faith to Find Myself, pop singer David Archuleta writes with heartbreaking candor — admitting that at times he even wept while typing — about his life-long battles with poor self-esteem, extreme people-pleasing, scrupulosity (a subtype of OCD characterized by religious obsession), guilt and denial regarding his closeted queerness, and eventually suicidal ideation, before he finally came out at age 30 and then left the Mormon church.

But he says the two topics that were the most difficult for him to write about were actually his ”terrifying” run on American Idol (memories of which he’d almost entirely blocked out) and his fraught relationship with his notorious father and “dadager,” Jeff Archuleta.

“I had not yet processed my time on American Idol, which I think I associate a lot with my relationship with my dad,” he explains softly.

Back in 2008, when David was a frontrunner on Idol and the show still dominated pop culture, Jeff practically made TMZ and VoteForTheWorst.com headlines more often than David did — all about being him an overbearing “stage dad” who quickly created enemies on the Idol set (and was even ultimately banned from the set). And Devout reveals that such gossip was actually true. A man with deferred dreams of his own greatness, Jeff forced his talented but extremely shy child into the spotlight — dragging David from Utah to Los Angeles (where they often slept in parked cars instead of hotel rooms) to audition for Star Search and loiter in hotel lobbies hoping to network with American Idol Season 1 contestants and executives.

Such aggressive tactics actually worked, and David ended up competing on Idol Season 7, when he was just 16, making it all the way to second place. But David resented his controlling father’s pushiness and manipulation (as did the rest of the Archuleta family; Jeff’s laser-focus on his son’s singing career alienated not only David’s four siblings, but David’s own adored mother, Lupe). It was understandably stressful for someone so young and introverted to perform for votes on national TV while fearing he’d be “exposed” for being different and effeminate; to feel responsible for fulfilling his dad’s ambitions; to feel pressured to be a Mormon posterboy; and to eventually become the family’s breadwinner, after he signed a deal with Jive Records and continued to be managed by Jeff. It was only many years later, when a Mormon church elder warned David that he was being emotionally abused by his father and advised that David go no-contact, that David realized how extreme the situation truly was.

However, it was when writing Devout (which he was inspired to do by his good friend, former child star and I’m Glad My Mom Died memoirist Jeanette McCurdy) that David finally unpacked the secret that lay at the heart of his familial dysfunction. “[Jeff] was wrongly accused of things in my family that I didn’t really get a clear picture on until I was older, putting everything together and realizing, ‘This is a messy situation. This is complex,’” he says.

When David was 9 years old, a vindictive family friend on Lupe’s side falsely accused Jeff of sexually molesting David’s sisters, which had tragic, lasting ramifications for the entire family — especially for David, who came to fear and mistrust his father for years, long after Jeff was exonerated. And while David may never forgive the people who spread these vicious lies (as he discusses this family scandal during his Lyndsanity interview, his anger is evident), by writing Devout, he came to understand Jeff’s trauma… and forgive his father.

In the emotional video interview above and text Q&A below, David also opens up about watching his American Idol episodes for the first time in years and feeling newfound compassion for his younger self; how his fellow Season 7 contestant, the openly queer Adore Delano, made him “so seen and safe” during his Idol experience; and how he finally started living for himself at the late-blooming age of 30.

LYNDSANITY: We’ve done a lot of interviews in the five years since you came out and reinvented yourself professionally and personally. But as I found out from reading this book, you’d lived nine lives before that happened. You lived several lives even before American Idol. But it seems like you really started living at age 30.

DAVID ARCHULETA: It very much was like starting life again. In ways I was a late bloomer, but in other ways a lot of life had already been lived. There’s a lot of challenges. There’s a lot of public knowledge of parts of my life, while other parts I felt like I had to do everything to hide. Not just my family dynamics, but hiding from myself, with trying to figure out whether I was gay or not, and landing on bisexual — I just say “queer” now, to be broader, but it’s basically bisexual — and just feeling like I always had to live my life for someone else, for someone else’s approval. “Are you giving me the OK? Did I do this right?” I guess it was performative. Always performing. And I guess I never turned the performative part off until I reached my thirties. It was kind of like learning how to just finally exhale, after holding your breath for so long, and just saying, “OK, what’s it like to just be myself, regardless of what others may think of that?”

And it’s terrifying. It’s scary, because up until then, my whole identity was, “Do you like me? Do you approve of who I am? I will do whatever I need, I will be whoever you need me to be, in order to be accepted by you and approved by you and to be told, ‘Good job.’” To turn that off was terrifying, because I didn’t know how to live my life in another way.That’s why it was like restarting, because it’s like, “Oh, I’m going to live my life based off of what feels right to me.” Something I never believed I could trust, really. But yeah, it’s been so fun and exciting to just live. I feel so excited about life. Before, I was always so afraid of life.

Yes, a recurring theme in this book is you were a people-pleaser, whether you were trying to gain the approval of the Mormon church, American Idol voters, or especially your dad. As I said, I’ve interviewed you several times in recent years, mostly about either your sexuality or your changing relationship with religion, which are of course big focuses of Devout. But today, I want to talk about what you say were your two hardest things to write about: your father and American Idol. I’ll start by asking, why was that the case?

It’s probably because I already processed my sexuality, but I hadn’t yet processed the dynamic with my dad. And I had not yet processed my time on American Idol, which I think I associate a lot with my relationship with my dad. The way I coped to move forward with my life was simply to cut out a lot of that. Originally I didn’t [write] as much about American Idol [in Devout]; I talked more about my family dynamics and my religion, my growing up in Utah. And the publishers were like, “Hey, we would really love for you to talk more about your time on American Idol.” And it was just very uncomfortable.

I’m not saying it was a horrible experience. It was just extremely uncomfortable to go through. So, I went back and rewatched all of my American Idol episodes, and I experienced the cringe — but mixed with the cringe, this time I was feeling something new, which was compassion for the teenager that was there on that stage feeling so exposed, so uncomfortable, and really terrified. I mean, I was terrified to be on there, because I was so afraid of people seeing me for the “problem” that I was, that I thought I was. I mean, at the time, it was the problem that I was.

Do you mean people thinking you were a sissy? I’ll use the term “sissy” instead of a meaner one, but do you mean outing you, or figuring out what you maybe hadn’t even figured out about yourself yet?

Yeah, exactly. I think people labeling and deciding what I was, before I even understood what it was. It felt, again, like a loss of control — that I didn’t have control over the pacing of my life. I think that’s what was hard about American Idol. I was being forced to move at a much quicker pace than I was ready for. But I still did it because I didn’t want to disappoint anyone and I didn’t want to let people down, especially my dad. It was everything for him that I was there. He felt like I was finally experiencing what he always knew about me. He’s like, “David, you are one of the best singers in the world!” I was like, “Oh my God, Dad. There are plenty of singers out there. There’s Celine Dion, there’s Whitney Houston, there’s Mariah Carey, there’s Stevie Wonder. I’m not one of the greatest singers in the world!” But doing so well on that show for my dad was just like, “See what I told you? Didn’t I tell you?”

The irony is, even though Jeff was such a taskmaker that he made you almost hate music at times, like he sucked the joy out of it for you, you still do music for a living now. And you seem to enjoy it more than ever. And your whole music career might not have happened if Jeff hadn’t been such an aggressive stage dad. So, yeah, in some ways he was “right” to do what he did. How do you come to terms with all that? You must feel quite torn.

You are so right. And that’s a great observation that you’ve made. There’s a lot of resentment that I had had for my dad, but I couldn’t help but acknowledge that if it weren’t for his hardheadedness and his stubbornness and intensity… I’m a much more gentle personality. I’m a lot more passive. I’m still intense and passionate, but as far as my convictions, they just were not anywhere near the same level as where my dad’s were. He believed that I deserved to have success, and he believed that he deserved to see success from his son.

I didn’t have that same fire. I didn’t have that same drive. I wasn’t as motivated. I was just kind of fine to go with the flow. That’s just how I had always been. I did love music, but I was very shy. I was shy to sing in front of people, and my dad always pushed me to sing for people. I hated him for it, I resented it, and yet it taught me to go out of my comfort zone and take risks and do things that I didn’t always feel like doing because I didn’t feel like I was capable of doing it. It’s not necessarily that I didn’t want to sing. I just didn’t think I was good enough. I didn’t think I had the personality. I didn’t think I had the talent, abilities. I just questioned myself and second-guessed myself way too much to really do anything about it, whereas my dad was like, “No, we are doing this!” …That’s exactly what my dad was for me. To make it, especially in the entertainment industry, you need that.

Well, he got the ball rolling and put you on a path you might not have been on otherwise, but even after Idol, him being your manager created problems. Are there ways that he might’ve sabotaged you professionally — maybe that you didn’t even realize until later — where you feel like your career might’ve turned out differently if he hadn’t been in the picture?

Absolutely. I feel like while he helped start the first momentum for my career, he had very much an us-against-the-world mentality. It’s “us-against-them,” which I think stems from how we were raised with our beliefs … always being taught that the entertainment industry was “evil.” I think he was just kind of waiting to see all the “evil” people, so he treated everyone as if they were evil. “These are bad people who want something. They probably want to take advantage of my son.” And there are probably a lot of people who did. But I think at the same time, my dad didn’t realize that he, of all people, was the one who was taking the most advantage of me.

And I think because he was my dad, he thought, “Well, this is my son. I know what’s best for him, and I only want the best for him.” It’s like his vision was blurred by that sentiment, to not realize that a lot of my grief was coming from my dynamic with him and the way he was treating me, and how he didn’t recognize his own greed in some of those moments. And I don’t think he’s even in a place to recognize all of that, because in his eyes, he was just a dad trying to protect his son.

I assume he’s read your book by now.

No, he hasn’t. I’ll send one to him today. I’m actually sending all my copies out today.

Wow. I mean, Devout isn’t completely bashing Jeff, but you really go there. I actually surprised how much you went there. I thought you’d focus more on either your American Idol era or your post-coming out era, but I’d say the core of Devout is about your unhealthy family dynamic, namely with your father. I’m shocked that he hasn’t read it yet. How do you think he’s going to react?

I wanted to finish my story and publish it without any exterior influence on what my story is. I’ve been told many times what my story is and isn’t by others, and I did not want anyone distracting me from that. I knew my dad would have heavy opinions about it, because his perspective is different from mine. I’ve heard his perspective many times; it’s time for me to share mine. I’ve tried to share my perspective with him before, and he would get too defensive. He would feel like I was attacking him, so he wouldn’t hear me. He would speak over me. He felt a need to protect himself from the accusations he felt I was making against him. And my dad, he has trauma with accusations. He was wrongly accused of things in my family that I didn’t really get a clear picture on until I was older, putting everything together and realizing, “This is a messy situation. This is complex.’”

Just to make it very clear, your dad was falsely accused of child molestation, but it broke my heart to read that you always wondered back in the back of your mind, “Is my dad a bad guy? Is there any truth to this?” Has Jeff been given any heads up about how deep you go into all this in your book?

Well, part of the legal aspect of writing this book is like, “Hey, you say a lot of heavy things about your dad, and this could be really serious.” So, my collaborator Val [Valerie Frankel] joined me on a call and recorded a conversation I had with my dad and one of my sisters. I was really worried because I thought, “My dad does not want to talk about this. He’s moved on from this.” This is like 20 years ago that this happened. It’s not always the healthiest thing to go back and dig up the past. But I felt like this was necessary in order to find relief for my sisters, especially my older sister. She wasn’t the one on the call, but she was the one who was wrongly labeled as a victim of my dad, when it was actually someone else [in the family] who she was a victim of. And when she spoke up for herself, which I was so proud of her for doing, when she was young, she was silenced, because people were like, “Oh, you didn’t say what we wanted you to say.” And then for my other sister to have been bribed with a doll, trying to get her to talk poorly about my dad… she didn’t understand why.

When I was writing the book, I had to retract a lot of things because it was too much, and just for legal purposes. But I encountered some of the people in that circle of my family, like family and friends that were close to my mom and her side that kind of instigated all this, and I was just like, “I just am trying to understand. You were all so set on what my dad did. Can you give me some clarity? When did this happen? What did you see that made you convince 9-year-old me that I had to be on your side to get my dad into prison? Because that’s really affected me psychologically.” And it did affect me psychologically. I think the biggest thing that people saw on my time on American Idol was me being afraid of my dad — that narrative. And I was still processing it as a 9-year-old, because I didn’t get to really fully process it.

I didn’t understand what was bad about my dad. I just knew that touch was bad. So, if my dad touched me, if he would just put his hand on my shoulder, I thought that was bad. And that’s really the most he ever did to me physically. If he was standing by me, I just thought, “Don’t touch me.” It really messed with me psychologically. Now I’m finally in my thirties confronting these people, and I was just like, “What did you see that caused you to be so concerned?” And they said, “Oh, we actually didn’t see anything.” I was so pissed off. Fucking pissed. I was like, “You realize you destroyed our family, because you convinced us that we needed to look at our dad as if he were a monster!” And it was like, “Well, your dad was this way and he’s rude and he was insulting.” And I was like, “That does not justify accusing him of child molestation. He can be an asshole. He’s a jerk. He says crass things. He doesn’t respect people’s feelings. He says a lot of very rude things. We can acknowledge that that is a problem and that he can be manipulative and he can be controlling. But that does not justify accusing him of being a child molester.” It doesn’t.

Of course.

And when I saw the way that accountability was deflected, I was so mad. I was like, “You guys let us believe that for decades!”

I’m mad for you and for your family, just hearing about this!

And their answer was, “Well, God knows our hearts, and God’s the judge.” And I’m like, “I don’t think this is God knowing your heart was in the right place, because what you did was wrong, and you’re not willing to own up to that what you did was horrible.”

Have the people who started this chain of false accusations read the book? Do they know that you’re …

Everyone I talk about knows I talk about them. And a lot of them aren’t happy about it. But when I told my dad, I was like, “Dad, I need to get some information about this. I don’t know if this is too touchy of a subject, but I talk about the accusations that were made about you by some of the circle of our family and family friends.” My dad said, “I would actually love to talk about this. I felt like no one ever asked about my experience with that.” And we didn’t [talk about it back then], because the attitude was just, “Let’s just move on, let’s forgive and forget.” And so, my dad was relieved to talk about it now.

I interviewed my mom as well. My mom was just like, “David, why do you feel like you have to talk about this?” It was a very traumatizing experience for her. She didn’t know who to believe. There were two sides of people she loved and trusted, and they were contradicting each other. And she’s like, “Do I side with my circle of my people that I grew up with, or do I side with my husband?” It was very difficult for her to know what to do, and it broke her. She just shut down, and she didn’t recover from that for years. The marriage wasn’t the same after that. My mom basically was just checked-out. She stopped. She was in bed so much of the time. Her depression was really heavy.

And after that, my dad had a lot of frustration. It wasn’t until then that my relationship with my dad became complicated. Before that, he was just my dad. I loved him. We got along really well. There wasn’t this weird dynamic between me and my singing. It just felt like normal. I think my dad became more obsessed with my career and my singing when he needed an escape and an outlet from watching that his family was falling apart and knowing it was probably never going to recover. That’s when he started taking me to California and chasing this dream.

But at that point, my mom was like me: She was confused and she didn’t know what to believe. And no one ever listened to my sisters. So, it wasn’t until my thirties that my mom finally got clarity too about what happened. When I was first writing the book and talking to my mom about it, she’s like, “Well, I guess we’ll never know.” I was like, “Mom, you’ve heard [David’s older sister] Claudia. You’ve heard [David’s younger sister] Jazzy. You should talk to them again, hear their story.” And she did. It was really hard for my mom to revisit because she was just like, “If I learned the truth, it means that my family and my family friends were lying to me.” I think my mom never wanted to have to come to terms to that. But she finally was just like, “I realize I need to be there for my children. And if it means making it a messier dynamic with the people I always grew up with and loved, so be it.”

It was hard. But this all happened while I was writing the book. … When I first started writing, I didn’t know. I was like, “I still don’t know if my dad molested my sisters or not.” And I talked to my sisters and I was like, “Well, Claudia’s always said that Dad never did anything to her, but maybe she was hypnotized or something.” But if [my family] really cared about my sister being a victim, they would care about who she did remember touching her and the multiple accounts that she does remember of [her actual molester]. … Oh my God, I was just so pissed off. So pissed off.

I can hear and see your anger, and I don’t blame you. But you did finally get some answers. You got closure. And I know you were or no- or low-contact with your father for some time, and maybe you still aren’t the best of friends, but I was very pleasantly surprised to read about your dad’s reaction when you came out five years ago. I would’ve expected him to be livid, or say you’re ruining your career, but he was actually super-supportive. That was the absolute opposite of what I would’ve expected from him, and maybe of what you would’ve expected. That’s pretty huge.

Right. At that point, I had not been talking to my dad for a few years. And I think those boundaries were what we needed. We needed to have space to grow away from the toxic codependency that we had in our relationship. Having that space allowed him to become his own person. It allowed me to become my own person. … And just for my dad to only have positive things to say — to say, “I’m proud of you, son, and I support you” — it made me realize that my dad isn’t who I thought he was when I was younger. I thought he just was there to put me down and degrade me and think the worst of me all the time. And that wasn’t the case.

He just was a hurt person at the time. He had a lot to figure out during American Idol. My dad didn’t have a lot of close friends that he could talk to. His family was falling apart. My mom had left right before American Idol; she only came back because the kids needed someone to be there at the home [while I was in Los Angeles doing the show]. But my mom had wanted out of the marriage for a while. My dad’s best friend died while I was on American Idol, too, and that tore him up. And I think it just made him dive even more into getting lost in the world of David.

photo: Joseph Adivari

Your father didn’t always do things right, but as I said, he did put you on Idol, which changed your life in so many ways. In fact, the first LGBTQ+ person you ever discussed homosexuality with was one of your fellow Idol contestants. She’s now known as Adore Delano, who found much greater fame on RuPaul’s Drag Race, and has since transitioned. But as you clarify in your book, you spoke with her and she gave you permission to refer to her in context as Danny Noriega, which was her name when she competed on American Idol Season 7. And Danny was very out, very opposite of the childhood you’d had. I think for a lot of kids watching at home, seeing someone like Danny Noriega make the top 16 on a mainstream TV show was a big deal. And meeting her made a big impression on you as well.

Yeah. I was very devout, focused on my beliefs, Mormon at the time. And Danny was a year older than me. And so, with Adore, I saw her life and I thought, “That’s wrong.” And yet at the time I was like, “I feel so seen and safe with this person. I don’t even understand why.” I didn’t understand that I could relate to an extent of what her experience was, to an extent of being misunderstood for your sexuality or your identity. We both could relate to each other, but I felt like I could somewhat pass and blend in. Danny couldn’t. Adore couldn’t. Adore was a lot more flamboyant naturally than I was. She couldn’t hide. She just had to be herself. She had to get bullied. She had to get the brunt of it. She had to get called all kinds of names to her face all the time. And she learned how to be tough and to fight. In school, she would get in a lot of fights because of it, but it’s because she was just like, “I’m not going to let other people tell me what I am. I’m not going to let them decide whether I am worthy of being here or not.”

I admired that so much, because I was letting everyone decide for me. I was hiding. I was doing everything I could to be what I wasn’t. And I didn’t understand the scope of that; I didn’t understand it at the time and who I was. I was in very much denial, which is why I didn’t understand why I related to Adore. I just knew I could let my guard down with her. And yeah, I’m so grateful. She didn’t pressure me. She didn’t try to push me. I think sometimes people feel like, “A-ha! I knew [that David Archuleta was queer]!” And it’s like, OK, cool. I didn’t. I needed my time to figure that out.

I’m so glad you did.

Thank you!

On that American Idol season, George Michael performed on the finale. By then he was out, and now he’s considered an LGBTQ+ pioneer. But he had been outed in a way that at the time was considered disgraceful and scandalous. Do you have any memories of George that day? Did he make an impression on you?

Unfortunately, George didn’t allow any of us to be on the stage, and he didn’t even want us on the stage with him when we were singing his songs. He wanted everyone off the stage by the time he was there. He did not want to interact with any of us; I don’t know why. So, I didn’t really think anything of him [back then]. I didn’t really know his music and I didn’t really appreciate him. I didn’t think too much else of it because I was just like, “OK, this guy doesn’t want to even interact with us on our show.” It wasn’t until I came out that I really became a fan of George Michael and appreciated his music, his message, his journey, what he had to go through with the public scrutiny. At a time when it wasn’t yet accepted, he was bold to be himself. I went back and listened to his music and I was just like, “Oh, this makes so much sense now.” It spoke to me, and it was the motivation I needed. I played “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” on repeat, as well as “The Voice Within” by Christina Aguilera, the day I came out. They just became my anthems.

Well, what George Michael’s music did for you when you were beginning your coming-out journey, maybe your music can do that for someone now. I think your story is going to help a lot of people.

Thank you. I hope so. I hope it’s encouraging for somebody out there. That’s the whole goal.

This Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Robert Smith watches the ‘Later… with Jools Holland’ performance that launched KT Tunstall’s career.

Twenty years ago, on Feb. 7, 2006, Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall released her debut album, Eye to the Telescope, in America. Three months later, runner-up Katharine McPhee covered the LP’s first single, “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree,” on American Idol Season 5, which was the top-rated show of 2005-2006, averaging more than 30 million viewers a night.

McPhee actually performed Tunstall’s relatively obscure folk song on two of those nights: on the top five episode, and as a reprise for the top two finale. It was an unexpected song choice, back when female pop contestants still mostly stuck to Mariah, Whitney, and Celine ballads, and McPhee’s breakout performance subsequently catapulted “Black Horse” from the bottom half of the Billboard Hot 100 all the way to the top 20.

“It suddenly changed America for me,” says Tunstall, speaking onstage at the Grammy Museum. She notes that she did eventually get to meet McPhee. “And I did say thank you!”

One American artist that Tunstall still hasn’t had the chance to thank, however, is Nas. The hip-hop star was accidentally instrumental in securing Tunstall some “Black Horse” television exposure on the other side of the pond, which was even more important to her then-fledgling career.

Tunstall says it “completely changed [her] life overnight” when she appeared on Britain’s in-the-round variety series Later… with Jools Holland, as a last-minute booking after Nas canceled. “The rapper pulled out, and I got his spot. Obvious choice!” she chuckles.

“I had 24 hours’ notice to get down to London and do it,” Tunstall recalls. The fact that she was a “portable” one-woman show, utilizing loop pedals to create a layered, full-band sound in real time, made it easy for her to pack up quickly and accept the BBC’s invitation. But she had no idea that her looping would make her such a TV sensation.

“I’d been doing it for a bit, like for maybe six months, playing in coffee shops and setting it up myself. Everyone would kind of look up from their lattes and be like, ‘All right, that’s cool,’ but no one was going crazy,” she shrugs.

The next day, “after trying to get somewhere for 10 years, all through my twenties — I was just really lucky that I looked 15 when I was 29,” Tunstall found herself at BBC Studioworks’ Television Centre, sharing that hallowed circular stage with music’s greats. “It was Anita Baker, Jackson Browne, and the Cure… and me! It was crazy.”

The Jools crew then made the brilliant decision to include an over-the-shoulder camera angle of  Robert Smith standing in iconic “Boys Don’t Cry”-style silhouette, as the Cure frontman observed Tunstall’s career-making performance with intense interest. “You could see me through Robert Smith’s hair,” Tunstall laughs. “It was like I was a little egg in a nest.”

Afterwards, Tunstall was still in shock, as she processed what had just happened and tried to make small-talk with Smith. “He was the first famous person I ever met. After the show he was so nice, and he gave me a quote for my press release about how much he loved the performance. And I was just completely overwhelmed and didn’t know what to say to him,” she recalls. “I was trying to think of what to say to him, so I said, ‘What are you doing this weekend?’ He said, ‘Oh, I’m going to my parents for lunch.’ I didn’t know what to say next, so I said, ‘What do your mom and dad think of your hair and your lipstick and everything?’ And he said, ‘Oh, I don’t usually put that on when I go home.’ Incognito — much like Stevie Nicks, he can disappear. So, if you saw Robert Smith without, you would not know that was him. It’s genius!”

KT Tunstall chats with Lyndsey Parker at the Grammy Museum about her career. (Photo by Rebecca Sapp, courtesy of the Recording Academy/Getty Images)

After Jools and Robert Smith’s endorsement, Tunstall’s website, which she was still running on her own, “totally exploded,” receiving hundreds of messages a day from new fans. “My favorite email I got was from this guy who said, ‘I’m fiftysomething. I can’t tell my friends that I’m sending you a message because I’m a punk. I just need to tell you that I love your music. I can’t tell anyone else.’”

Adding another twist to this story of happy TV accidents was the fact that Tunstall’s just-completed but not-yet-released Eye to the Telescope didn’t even originally include “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree,” because it had been written after the LP was recorded. “The Jools Holland scouts had come to see me at rehearsal… and my label boss was like, ‘Play that new one.’ I was like, ‘OK,’ and that was that. I didn’t hear anything from them. Then when it came to the show, my label boss said, ‘Play that ‘woo-hoo’ thing,’ and I said, ‘But it’s not on the record!’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about it.’”

Tunstall reluctantly complied, but she admits that she “thought it was a terrible mistake” at the time. “I was like, ‘Why on Earth wouldn’t I play the single from the record?’ Obviously, it went mental, so he made a great call with that song. And so, the first 10,000 copies of [Eye to the Telescope] have the audio from the TV show, because they rush-released the album and we didn’t have a recording.” The official studio version that appeared on later pressings of Eye to the Telescope was named Best Single of 2005 by Q magazine, and received a Best Female Pop Vocal Performance nomination at the 2007 Grammy Awards.

Tunstall’s Jools performance aired just a few months before YouTube launched, and McPhee’s Idol performance aired about a year after that, so Tunstall was actually one of the early pop stars to go viral, at a time when “going viral” wasn’t even a thing. The irony is not lost on her, even after all these years.

“Really, if YouTube hadn’t existed, I probably wouldn’t be here, because I was always about the music and didn’t particularly want to be about the image. I just wanted to be a musician and a player,” she says. “And actually, in the end, it was people seeing what I did that was the thing that blew it up.”

The War and Treaty’s Tanya Trotter and Michael Trotter Jr.’s real-life romance is about to become a major motion picture. (photo: Sophia Matinazad)

Twenty years ago, Michael Trotter Jr., a U.S. Army veteran and one-half of married Americana duo the War and Treaty, nearly competed on American Idol. “I tell this story all the time,” he says, speaking backstage after the War and Treaty’s Idol Season 23 finale performance with top five contestant Thunderstorm Artis.

“In 2005, when I came home from Iraq, they were doing a thing called ‘Military Idol,’ and I competed in my station, which was Baumholder, Germany, and won. But because of my weight, I was disqualified in the United States, and the incentive for that was you would win that and go and compete on American Idol. I never was able to go and compete, but look at how God works.”

And now, Michael and his bandmate and soulmate, Tanya Trotter, are moving from Idol’s TV screen to the big screen, with an eponymous biopic based on their unique love story. Tanya says the movie, produced by Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. and John Legend’s Get Lifted Film Co., will feature newly penned original music (so, hopefully, the Trotters can add a Best Song Oscar nomination to their long list of accolades) and is “currently casting.”

Michael then jokes, “I think the obvious choice to play me, when you look at me, especially from the side profile, I believe Tom Cruise would be a perfect candidate. Or Brad Pitt —  but he needs to work on it a little bit more. He doesn’t have enough six-pack on the side. Neither does Tom, but I can help him with that.”

More seriously, The War and Treaty biopic will have a lot of heavy material to draw from. Michael, who served in the Army from 2003 to 2007, embarked on his musical career in a completely stranger-than-fiction way. While he was on one of his two tours of duty in Iraq and his unit was encamped in one of Saddam Hussein’s private palaces, he discovered a damaged piano in palace’s basement. His company commander, Captain Robert Scheetz, knowing that Michael was a huge music fan, encouraged Michael to take up music to help cope with the stress of living in a combat zone, and Michael taught himself how to play. After Scheetz was killed on a mission, Michael wrote his first song and performed it at Scheetz’s memorial service, which led to other original memorial performances for other fallen soldiers, and eventually the “Military Idol” opportunity.

Michael met his future wife — an actress and R&B artist formerly known as Tanya Blount, who he’d crushed on since seeing her sing “His Eye Is on the Sparrow” with Lauryn Hill in Sister Act 2 — in 2010 at Maryland’s Love Festival, for which Tanya was a producer and Michael was one of the performers. Michael had only returned from Iraq recently, and Tanya was dealing with her own struggles. In the early ‘90s, she’d signed to Polydor Records and had enjoyed some success on the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop charts with her debut album, Natural Thing, and had even received a nomination for Best New Artist at the Soul Train Awards. But after signing to Bad Boy Entertainment in 1996, her sophomore album was shelved indefinitely, her career stalled, and it took her years to get released from her Bad Boy contract.

Michael and Tanya married a year after they met, welcomed a son (named Legend, coincidentally) in 2012, and in 2014 started a band that would go on to earn multiple Grammy, CMA, CMT, and ACM nominations and win four Americana Music Awards. But the War and Treaty’s life still wasn’t fairytale — so their biopic won’t be, either.

“The [film’s] tagline is: ‘The war brought him music. Music brought him love.’ So, it predominantly talks about my struggles with PTSD, some of the things I picked up from the military and serving our country in the war,” says Michael, who wrote the War and Treaty’s song “Five More Minutes” about a harrowing moment in 2017 when Tanya convinced him not to commit suicide, and has always been open about his mental health issues. “But then [the film] tells about how I dropped those things through love and through Tanya being my caretaker — which is what she actually was for about 15 years.”

“I think it’s important too for people, especially people who are caretakers, to be able to see themselves on film, because you always see the one that’s going through it, but you never see the one that has to do the caretaking,” explains Tanya. “I think that’s important, to tell both sides of the story. And hopefully the film does that.”

“I think in our country, we need to be inspired again,” Michael attests. “[It is] a beautiful love story, especially for people of color, that stems from the military. Oftentimes it said that we [Black people] aren’t as patriotic as we should be, especially with our history in this country. But for me, serving my country is the biggest thing I did — second to marrying Tanya. So, I believe that this is the right time to be able to tell this kind of story.”

If you or someone you know is struggling, text or call 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

(photo: 19 Recordings/BMG)

When 18-year-old country crooner John Foster took a risk and performed an original song on American Idol Season 23’s “Songs of Faith” Easter episode, it was a turning point for him in the competition, establishing him as a real artist. But “Tell That Angel I Love Her,” which is now the newly christened runner-up’s debut single, was a turning point for him long before he appeared on Idol.

Foster penned the heartbreak ballad for his best friend, Maggie Dunn, and another friend, Caroline Gill, who died when a police officer crashed into their car on New Year’s Eve 2022. And the traumatic experience forever changed him as a songwriter and musician.

“We were juniors in high school, and it was the first time I ever really lost somebody. I wasn’t really locked into music at that point — I was playing around with writing songs, and I was doing gigs — and so, when I lost Maggie, I was like, ‘OK, I need to write a song about this,’” Foster explained backstage at Sunday’s American Idol finale. “That day, that was the defining moment. It wasn’t the very first song [I ever wrote], but it was just my first song with a big punch to it, where I actually knew, ‘OK, this is something I need to pursue.’ That song was like, ‘OK, I need to be a musician.’

“I didn’t know for sure yet, and I still don’t really kind of know if I’ll be a full-time musician,” Foster continued. “But that was it for me. That’s my song. I wrote that all by myself and I’m so proud of it, and it’s the most beautiful and yet the most horrific thing I’ve ever created. I was so glad to do it on the show, too, because it shows who I am as an artist down at the core. I wrote it, I’m singing it, and to sing it for [Maggie] as well was just such an honor.”

Foster did what he needed to do on Idol, so he was completely satisfied with his historic second-place finish to powerhouse showman Jamal Roberts. “Jamal got first place on the show, which he absolutely deserved. Oh, my goodness, I can’t say enough great things about his performances. His performances were so incredibly touching,” Foster said emphatically. “To be behind him is an absolute honor. I mean, with the incredible, incredible talent this season has had — the best season in history, in my opinion — to be runner-up of the best vocal talent in American Idol history, I’ll take that any day of the week.”

Foster was never a big belter like Roberts or some of the other Season 23 contestants, like Caanan James Hill, Gabby Samone, and third-place finalist Breanna Nix, and he was OK with that… except for that time when he apparently caught flak online for one of his Disney performances. I actually thought Foster’s decision to cover “Rainbow Connection” was brilliant, and I even declared it my favorite song choice of Season 23’s second Disney Night and said Foster’s affable speak-singing shtick worked like a charm. But apparently some haters gave him grief for not belting the Muppet Movie theme, which saddened him.

“Kermit didn’t belt it, for sure,” Foster pointed out, but he confessed that he was actually “very disappointed to see that a lot of people were discontent with my ‘Rainbow Connection’ performance, because I absolutely adore that song. It is such a sweet song, and it’s meant to be sung very softly, very lightly, so that [reaction] was really disheartening. I know we’re not supposed to read comments — Carrie [Underwood] told us not to! — but sometimes they literally just pop up. Sometimes I’ll be scrolling and I get the notifications. And it was disheartening to see that a lot of people were very, very unhappy that I didn’t just belt that song out. But I think that people’s discontent with that is a perfect example that somebody’s cup of tea is not somebody else’s cup of tea.”

It’s interesting that Foster said he’s still not sure if a full-time music career will be his ultimate path, since he seems to be many American Idol viewers’ cup of tea. But he clarified, “Right now, I’m the runner-up on one of the greatest seasons on Idol. I’m not stopping any time soon.” He revealed that he “has a good number of songs under my belt,” and while he has understandably been “super-busy” while competing on Idol, he has still been working on original material when he can.

“I absolutely adore writing. So, I’m super-excited to actually have a full-length album, which is coming up very soon,” Foster teased. “I so wish I could give you a solid plan, but I have a very good feeling that I’ll have an album out pretty soon.”

John Foster and Jamal Roberts, seconds before Ryan Seacrest’s Season 23 winner announcement.

It seems wrong to call Jamal Roberts’s victory on the American Idol Season 23 finale a “surprise,” since he is without question one of the greatest male vocalists to ever compete on the show. But many Idol pundits, myself included, thought that teen country crooner John Foster, who ultimately placed second, might prevail instead.

“We had no idea what was going to happen coming into it, even until the last moment,” judge Carrie Underwood admitted backstage after Sunday’s grand finale. Judge Lionel Richie gave runner-up Foster his props, declaring, “As far as I’m concerned, we ended up tonight with two No. 1 people,” and longtime executive producer/showrunner Megan Michaels Wolflick said Season 23’s result “felt like an old-school Idol finale; it felt like Ruben-versus-Clay in that way.” But it was not lost on Richie that Roberts became the first Black man to win Idol since Ruben Studdard did so 22 years ago, and he had much to say about this landmark victory.

“Everybody thinks that we are never going to get back to something, or we’re never going to be able to do that again. And the answer is, we are,” declared Richie. “I think what I loved the most was America needed to see the two of them standing together. Together. That’s what I pray for America, because we’re a melting pot. We’re not just one particular tribe. And so, to see them together was just the picture I was hoping for.

“And now that Jamal won, I don’t have to call anybody in Atlanta, Ga., and [explain] why he didn’t win! You know what I’m sayin’?” Richie continued, chuckling, before adding more seriously: “And by the way, that’s 26 million votes. So, I’m going to tell you right now, if you think it’s all Black folks, if you think it’s all Latinos, I’m telling you that America voted.”

The stunned judges react to Jamal’s win.

Wolflick enthused, “I feel great about it!” when asked about Roberts’s win, calling it “an amazing icing on top of the American Idol cake.” Reflecting on the 27-year-old Mississippi soul stylist’s wide-ranging appeal, she mused, “Jamal had something that fired up something in people. I follow X [Twitter], the whole show, and I’m on there looking at everything… and multiple people were saying, ‘I have not voted on this show since Fantasia.’ And I was like, whoa. And the wild part was, I wanted Fantasia to come back last year as a mentor — it was her 20-year anniversary — and this year she finally agreed, and it was written in the stars to have her mentor Jamal. I was literally that morning driving, and I was like, ‘I am living for this moment of Jamal and Fantasia meeting!’ Because people were calling him ‘Mantasia.’ … So, he was firing up something in people.”

“Jamal was undeniable,” added Richie. “I remember what my grandmother used to say: ‘When you’re Black and you win, it’s not because you’re good — you’re the best that ever was.”

“When you look at a kid like him from Meridian, Miss., that’s never had an ounce of training and all that, and you look at how complex and wonderful his voice is, he kind of really tugged on my heartstrings, on every facet of his journey, to win,” said judge Luke Bryan. Bryan was always impressed by Roberts, but said he started to see Roberts as the potential winner once Season 23’s performance episodes began.

“You started hearing him with a mic, and then he started dressing the part, looking the part, and then he starts really working on these songs. I think the original ‘Heal’ moment, when he did ‘Heal’ a couple of episodes ago, I was like, ‘This kid is on a whole ‘nother level of creative brain,’” Bryan marveled. “I mean, when you talk about his creativeness and all of the stuff that he did on the ‘Heal’ recording that just went out [as Roberts’s debut single], he ad-libbed that in the studio. So, he’s a special person. … It’s instinct, straight from the heavens or whatever religion you believe. It is right out of the heavens that he is that gifted of a natural singer. … They’re techniques that cannot be taught. He just has them.”

As for the sort of music that Roberts, who tackled all genres during his Idol run, will or should release after “Heal,” Richie asserted, “If tomorrow he wanted the sing country, he’s going to sing the hell out of country. Because now, if you understand how the music business works… it’s just music now. There’s no more ‘country.’ There’s no more ‘R&B.’ It’s called ‘Jamal is a popular artist.’” Richie also joked (or perhaps he wasn’t joking), “I’m going to try to write as many songs as I can for him. Are you kidding me? I won’t let that brother get too far.”

As for this season’s other judge, Underwood, she had a unique perspective when it comes to Roberts’s future. When she won Idol Season 4, two decades ago, the entire industry was different — millions of fans bought physical CDs and watched terrestrial network television, and the series was so new and buzzy that winning pretty much guaranteed some success, at least in the short-term. But Underwood said if Roberts continues to grind as hard as he did throughout this season, he can enjoy long-term success.

“I feel like at the end of the day, we all have our paths. I mean, this happens in so many different instances, just in the entertainment industry. Somebody will have a great movie, and then you never hear from them again. Somebody will have a great first album, and then you never hear from them again. It’s all an opportunity,” said Underwood. “It’s all a launching pad, and then you’ve got to go out and you’ve got to hustle. And you’ve got to kind of hope that the good Lord’s guiding your steps. But this is an incredible opportunity, that I know he can make the most of.”

Jamal Roberts backstage at ‘American Idol,’ mere minutes after winning Season 23.

New American Idol champion Jamal Roberts barely had time to brush the confetti off his sequined waistcoat before he met with Lyndsanity and other Idol reporters backstage at Sunday’s Season 23 finale, admitting that he was “overwhelmed” by his victory and it hadn’t “settled in yet.”

He even still seemed to be processing the fact that he’d just made history as the first Black man to win Idol since Ruben Studdard in 2003, nodding in amazement at that statistic and marveling, “That’s good to know. That’s really good to know.”

While it was obviously too soon for Roberts to state what his post-Idol album might sound like, suffice to say, when it comes to this shapeshifting song stylist, expect the unexpected.

After all, Roberts auditioned with a cover of Rick James’s “Mary Jane,” which he admittedly knew “would ruffle some feathers,” but as he explained, “I’d sung it a while back and it went viral, and I knew the background Lionel [Richie] had with ‘Mary Jane’ and Rick James. So, I was like, ‘OK, let’s try this.’ So, I did it my own way, and it worked. What I wanted to do was, I wanted to show diversity. I wanted to see that I can be diverse with it. And it worked out fine.”

Months later, Roberts ended his triumphant Season 23 run by releasing a leftfield cover of British indie singer-songwriter Tom Odell’s “Heal” as his debut single, and looking ahead, he said, “I know I’m a soul singer with gospel roots. … But I feel like I could sing any genre. I didn’t want to be put in a box [on Idol], so I hit every genre. I went with Rick James… to Anthony Hamilton, to ‘Tennessee Whiskey,’ to Jelly Roll, to Disney, to Carrie Underwood. I’ve just been doing everything different, and they haven’t been able to put me in a box. I’ve been all over the place.”

Judge Lionel Richie always called Roberts a “storyteller,” and Roberts — who does write songs, although he hasn’t “in a while” — said it was his connection to any tune’s lyrics that allowed him to “connect and tap in” week after week, throughout Season 23, no matter what the night’s theme was. “I really studied the lyrics,” he said of his strategy. “I read them. I’d write them [down on paper]. And I put myself inside of it. I was like, ‘What’s on this paper that I can relate to? What situation have I been through that I can relate to?’ And I just go from there.”

Richie and judge Luke Bryan always seemed to be rooting for Jamal. “I felt Luke and Lionel pulling for me. I felt it,” said Roberts. “So, that’s why I stayed focused and I just continued the journey.” Roberts revealed that his favorite judge comment of the season was “when Lionel would say, ‘I don’t know how you flip all these songs and make them R&B.’ He said I just ‘Jamalerize’ it, so that’s a new term. I’m going to be using ‘Jamalerize,’ so thank you, Lionel, for that!”

New judge Carrie Underwood seemed slightly less enthusiastic — pulling for eventual runner-up John Foster, who was her big discovery on the show — but Roberts wasn’t bothered. “I knew it was a competition as well, and I wanted to be critiqued,” he insisted. “Like, tell me what I’m doing wrong, all the things. That’s why I admire Carrie so much. Tell me I didn’t move around as much! I mean, I appreciate that honestly, to my heart.”

This indicates that Roberts has the sort of thick-skinned, pragmatic attitude to make it in Hollywood, long after Hollywood Week, but it doesn’t seem like he’ll actually be moving to Hollywood any time soon. The 27-year-old P.E. teacher and girl-dad, whose third daughter was born during Season 23’s top eight week earlier this month, has made it clear that he doesn’t want to leave Meridian, Miss. And it was obvious from his finale’s heart-warming hometown-visit footage that he has deep roots there.

“I love my city. I love it. There’s no traffic! No waiting in line to eat! I love that in my life,” Roberts declared. “So, I’m just going to keep singing and keep moving souls, keep making people happy, and keep being Jamal.”

“It’s just been a crazy and honestly kind of unexpected journey. I never thought I would be an artist. I was always just trying to be the songwriter, and I guess I just kind of found myself in the right positions at the right times. And suddenly, I’m an artist now, playing here in L.A.”

So says rising singer-songwriter Knox Morris, mononymously known to his fans as Knox (“I’m like Seal. Just one name,” he jokes), as he chats with LPTV at Studio City’s Licorice Pizza Records. He’s just done a short acoustic set and vinyl signing for his first full-length album, Going, Going, Gone, before his big show headlining the El Rey that evening. And despite it being 1 p.m. on a Monday afternoon, he had an impressive turnout, with fans lining up and singing along to every lyric. And he feels “like the luckiest person in the world.”

Knox, now 27, didn’t pick up a guitar until college, when he started teaching himself through YouTube videos. But once he did an open-mic on a dare, music “went from a hobby to an obsession,” and by his sophomore year, “it was a lifestyle.” After an (unaired) American Idol audition didn’t work out —  Lionel Richie said yes, but Luke Bryan and Katy Perry said no — an unfazed and unflappable Knox was more determined than ever, listening to Perry’s constructive criticism and three months later dropping out of college to move from Ohio to Nashville. There, he eventually established himself as a professional songwriter. But when Knox’s publisher insisted that he put a few of his demos, intended for other artists, on TikTok, his music went viral, and the rest was history.

Since then, Knox has signed to Atlantic Records and released two EPs and one LP, and he’s gotten props from the 1975’s Matty Healy and even Ed Sheeran himself. And along with his own front-and-center pop career, he’s still writing  for others. His dream would be to get a cut on an Adele, Rihanna, or Bruno Mars album, but he also says with a sly grin, “My big goal, and it still kind of is my big goal, is I’m going to write a song that Katy Perry is going to record one day.”

Check out LPTV’s interview with Knox in the charming Licorice Pizza video above, or the Q&A below.

LPTV: One of the songs that you played today at Licorice Pizza was “Voicemail.” You actually said it’s a fan favorite, but not necessarily one of your favorites on the album. So, first of all, I want to know that why that is, but I also want to know if this is song is based on a true story. It sounded very specific.

KNOX: It’s growing on me as a song. It’s just one of those songs that, to be honest, when I put out, I was like, “Nobody’s going to like this.” I was like, “This is so dumb,” how the chorus is “this boyfriend’s going to beat me up.” But it was always a fun song to sing, so I’m glad it made it onto the album. But it actually is a true story — about a friend of mine. It’s actually not about me, thank goodness. I was never in any danger. But it is a very real story about one of my best friends that it did happen to. He went home to Ohio and yeah, it was bad. It was bad. But it made for a great song.

How did he or the girl, the voicemail-leaver in question, feel about the story being aired out in a song?

Well, I don’t know who the girl is at all. He thought it was very funny. When I showed it to him, it honestly made his day. It’s his favorite song pretty much ever.

I actually didn’t think people left voicemails anymore. Most people, if you don’t pick up, they just hang up and text you, “Hey, I just trying to call you.”

I’m a big voicemail-leaver, to be honest. My favorite thing is always, this is so stupid, but when I call my friends and they don’t answer, I leave a voicemail and I always say, “Hey, this is Knox Morris calling. Just seeing what you’re up to. You can get me back at…” And then I say my phone number, and then I leave an email address. I love doing that. None of my friends think it’s as funny as I do, but I love it.

Well, you’re a busy guy, so people need multiple ways to reach you when you’re on tour and doing all this stuff! You’ve been doing a lot with your career. It seems like you were kind of a latecomer to the music game, which is surprising.

Yeah, basically I got to college, and I took a guitar with me to college because I was never very cool. I’m still not very cool. I just wanted something new to do, I guess. And around that time, my senior year of high school, I was getting super into James Bay, and honestly, I loved One Direction and Ed Sheeran, and I just loved the singer-songwriter songs. And once I started to learn how to play guitar, I was watching videos of people like Ed Sheeran and I just pretty much told myself, “Man, I feel like if I tried to write songs, I could write songs like that.” Because Ed Sheeran was always just playing G-C-E-D, and I was like, “I know how to play those chords, so what’s to stop me from doing that?” And so, my freshman year I started writing songs. To be honest, my first-ever open-mic night, I actually only did it because my friends told me that I wouldn’t go do it. And I’m one of those that if somebody tells me that I can’t or won’t do something, I’m just like, “Watch this. I can go play in an open mic night. I’m not scared!”

This was in Athens, Ohio. I went to Ohio University. So yeah, I did my first open-mic night, and I just remember seeing all these people, I met all these people on night one, and they had been playing guitar and writing songs for 10 years. And I was like, “Man, I feel like I can hang.” You know what I’m saying? And so, it just went from a hobby to an obsession, to then by sophomore year, it was a lifestyle. I was playing in front of people every single night. I was going into Jimmy John’s and asking them if I could play, because I was in a college town. I did it every night.

And then after my sophomore year, I was like, “Man, I feel like if I tried to actually do this, I could figure it out somehow.” So, I dropped out of school and moved to Nashville and just kind of did the same thing: went to Nashville and played in front of as many people as I could. And eventually the songs just started to work. And then TikTok happened, and thankfully, my start was from that. And yeah, it’s just been a crazy and honestly kind of unexpected journey. I never thought I would be an artist. I was always just trying to be the songwriter, and I guess I just kind of found myself in the right positions at the right times. And suddenly, I’m an artist now playing here in L.A.

So, it was TikTok that got the ball rolling for you?

It got the ball rolling for me as an artist. Actually, I was writing a lot of songs for people in Nashville, and I got signed to a company called RiverHouse. I got hired as a staff writer. It’s a company that’s like a joint venture with Sony, so I’m technically a Sony writer, and I still am technically employed by them as a staff writer.

It’s amazing that you went from Athens, Ohio to Nashville, where everybody’s hustling and trying to be a writer or an artist, and you were young and relatively inexperienced, and you made all that happen in a short period of time.

Thank you. … I don’t think anybody is born with the talent of writing songs. I think it’s no different from anything else. It’s like, you have to put in your 10,000 hours. I always describe [writing] songs as going to the gym. You can’t lift 300 pounds until you can lift 200. You can’t lift 200 until you can do 150. So, you have to write a ton of songs — good, bad, ugly. You have to write a million songs and honestly, just put the time in. And so, I feel like when I moved, I just really dedicated myself to: “I’m going to learn how to do this.” And yeah, it paid off. And I feel like the luckiest person in the world, I really do.

I know you were on American Idol, but I do not remember your audition. I think it didn’t air?

No, it never aired, but I got to go in front of the judges.

Did they scout you on TikTok? The Idol casting agents are always looking at TikTok.

No, actually, this was way before maybe even TikTok was out. This would’ve been October of 2018. What’s so funny is I actually only did it because that was the summer that I had dropped out of school, and I was considering moving to Nashville. And at the time I worked at a concert venue. I was a runner at a concert venue in Huber Heights, Ohio, and the American Idol tour actually came through. So, it was like all the winners came, and these were kids that were my age, if not even a little bit younger, and I was getting their drinks and stuff. And I remember the whole night I was thinking… I was watching them up onstage, and I was like, “I can do that. I can do that if I wanted to.” And as I was at the show, I looked up when the next American Idol auditions were, and coincidentally they were the next morning in Columbus, Ohio. So, I didn’t tell anybody. I woke up at 6 in the morning the next day, and I drove up.

So, you eventually got all the way to the stage where you sing on camera for Katy, Luke, and Lionel. I know there was a little bit of the shenanigans behind the scenes. I know you were going to do “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman, and you were ahead of the game, because then Luke Combs did it a few years later and had a big moment with it. But what happened, exactly?

Basically, long story short, they were like, “Hey, you have red hair.” One of the songs that I was going to play — you have to give them three songs —  was “The A Team” by Ed Sheeran, and they were like, “Hey, you have red hair, so go in there and make a joke about Ed and go play that.” And I was like, “OK, great.” So, I go in there, I play it… and now, granted, all these years later, I can finally admit this: I had no business even really getting there at the time, because I had never really sung. I wasn’t that great. I always tell people, I think I actually talked myself all the way to that audition. I don’t think the talent got me there. I think I kind of convinced them to let me do it.

But I played “The A Team” and Lionel Richie — shout out my guy Lionel — he loved me. He was great. But Katy Perry, her exact words were: “We have Ed Sheeran. Why would we ever need you?” That was exactly what she said. And I swear to God, I think if that wouldn’t have happened, I don’t think I would be where I am now, because those words have been in the back of my head since 2018. And now me and Ed are on the same label, and I’ve met him multiple times, and he actually got one of my vinyls, so that’s amazing. He’s a fan. He commented on my TikTok the other day. So, joke’s on her!

Have you ever met Katy since then?

No, I haven’t met her yet. I would love to, though. I would honestly like to thank her and be like, “Hey, you were kind of mean to me, but thanks for that.”

So, did you get two no’s and one yes?

Lionel said yes.

OK. Well, I get the impression that you’re glad that you didn’t go through — like it was a blessing in disguise.

Yeah. I’m one of those people that I just believe everything happens the way that it’s supposed to happen. And that was just part of it. Speaking of Ed Sheeran, I saw him say in an interview the other day, “You don’t learn anything in success. You learn everything from failures.” And I think that’s so true. I feel like because of that experience, I was like, “OK, I need to step away from doing that.”

Lots of really successful, famous people have auditioned for Idol and not made it through, so it’s actually good company to be in. But some people have said that they were devastated when they didn’t make it.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, it definitely hurt. But I’m one of those people, I’m so competitive. It’s the same reason why I did my very first open-mic night, because my friends told me I couldn’t. So, having someone like her or them say, “You don’t have what it takes,” that just meant I didn’t have what it took right then. I just wasn’t going to let that deter me from stopping.

Did Katy’s Ed comment light a fire under you to work more on your own identity or sound?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my big goal, and it still kind of is my big goal, is I’m going to write a song that Katy Perry is going to record one day. That was my big thing.

I don’t mean to sound shady, but she maybe needed one of your songs on 143.

Yeah, I feel bad. That’s why I’m trying to be nice to her. I’m a fan. She’s getting enough shit on the internet from people right now, so I don’t need to be doing it.

I’m a big Katy fan too, and I actually thought she was a good judge on the show. And it seems like even though they didn’t put you through, she helped you, and that’s pretty cool. Anyway, enough Idol talk. You leave the show, and you get over it probably pretty quickly. Were you in Nashville already, at this point?

No, I moved to Nashville three months after that happened. That was in October, and I moved at the end of January.

I mean, talk about competitive. Everybody in Nashville is trying to make it in music, and it seems like you were getting opportunities that people who’ve been in that city a lot longer were still trying to get. How did you make stuff happen?

Actually, when I first moved to Nashville, I spent about a year and a half of proper in-the-trenches, just showing up, playing in public, doing all that. I was just some guy trying to make it. And then near halfway through COVID was when I got my first [break]. I wrote a song for a band called Arrows in Action that kind of did well on TikTok. And then there was another band called Games We Play that I had written a song for that did super-well on TikTok. There was another guy that I wrote two songs with and all these songs kind of did really well. And it was me and my buddy Spencer Jordan. We have been writing songs together since I moved there. He wrote every song on my album with me. He’s like my partner in crime, best friend, the best.

We had written these songs together, so all these songs in Nashville were going viral. And then all these publishers were like, “Who is writing these songs?” And they would go to the credits and it was these two guys that nobody had ever heard of. So, then once those songs happened, there was this surge of interest from people in Nashville. … I signed pretty shortly after that; I think I signed in May of 2022. And then right when I signed, I had seven demos that were of songs that I just sang the demos for, but they were going to be for other people. And when I showed them to my publisher — her name is Lynn Oliver, the most lovely woman in the world, the first person to ever take a legit chance on me in music — she laughed at me and she said, “If you think you’re giving these to anybody, you’re stupid.” She was like, “You’re putting these out.” And I was pretty against it, to be honest. I didn’t really want to do the artist thing.

Really?

Yeah. I had signed my publishing deal. I had become a professional songwriter, and to me, that was the dream. That was what I was chasing. And I had gotten that, so I was like, “I didn’t really need anything else.” But then they were like, “Listen, let’s just make a TikTok account. We’ll put out one song, and if the song does anything, we’ll put out another one. If it doesn’t, you don’t ever have to put out a song again.” And I was like, “OK, that’s fine.” And I made a TikTok [account], and my third TikTok I ever posted did 4 million views. And then it all just kind of snowballed out of control since then. And then those seven demos became my first EP, which is called How to Lose a Girl in 7 Songs.

That is an amazing story. Do you still write for other people, or want to, or have you put aside that part of your career for the time being?

Honestly, when I finished this album, up until a week before this tour started, I had only written songs for other people. I went back to writing. I did some country songs. I did some songs for female pop artists…

Anyone you can mention?

No, not yet. But there’s some cool ones that I’m pretty excited about.

I’m excited for you. I’m curious, you were sort of semi-joking about getting a song on a Katy Perry record, but if you could have any artist record one of your songs, who would it be?

This is going to sound so silly, but I feel as a songwriter, you just have to aim for the biggest and the best. And I think having somebody like a Rihanna cut or who knows, a Bruno Mars song, I think those are the ones. Because those are legacy artists that are going to be around. Or Adele.

She’s due to put another record out.

Adele, I got choruses! Give me a call! I got hooks, I got verses. Whatever you need, I’ll make it happen.

We were talking about how you got compared to Ed Sheeran early on, and you got past that. I know this isn’t a super-new song by you, but I do have to ask about “Not the 1975,” which is on Going, Going, Gone, even though it’s from 2023. I believe that’s also based on a true story — this time from your life.

So, basically I was in L.A. actually, and I have a girlfriend of two years now, but this was before her. And I was at some bar and I had just gotten signed. I was trying to be cool, whatever. If you tell anybody you’re a musician, no matter what, they’re like, “Oh yeah, I bet you are, dude.” And so that’s kind of what happened, and I was like, “No, no, no! I’m signed to Atlantic Records! I play shows!” And this [woman I was chatting up] said, “Well, that doesn’t matter. You will never be Matty Healy.” That’s what she said, as a joke.

I mean, nowadays, being told you’re not Matty Healy is probably a good thing…

But it was in the height of all of that [1975 mania]. So, somebody said that, and then the next morning I woke up and I came up with the line, “She said, ‘I like your confidence, but you’re not the 1975.’” Then we wrote the rest of the song and it was just like, “How many 1975 puns can we fit into this song without it being corny?”

Well, I’m all about puns. There can never be too many puns for me. Didn’t Matty Healy hear the song and like it?

Yeah, he DM’d me and he said, “Congrats on the song.” But then he also said, “You owe me a million dollars.” And I was like, “Actually, sir, we legally checked.” Because we had to send this song to their team to make sure that we were good to do this. We were going to make money off it, obviously.

And you’re a pro songwriter. You know the way things work.

Yeah, I know all the rules and stuff. We had to send it to their legal team, but the legal team responded and was like, “This is awesome! Do whatever you want.” So, obviously he was joking around. But man, I would love to meet him one day. That would be such a cool thing. I feel like that would break the internet.

I think it’d be funny if he actually got onstage with you and was like, “I am the 1975.”

When you’re signed to a label and you have a big song doing all these things, there’s always ways to try and capitalize on it. And one of my A&Rs was like, “You should DM him and see if he’ll feature on the song.” And I was like, “Are you fucking crazy? Matty Healy is not going to feature on this song.” And they pestered me about it for a while. They’re like, “Just send him a DM!  What’s the worst that could happen?” And finally, I was like, “Fine, I’ll send him a DM.” So, I was like, “Hey, Mr. Matty, if you ever want to get on this song with me, it could be a big thing, so just let me know.” And then the red “Seen” on Instagram popped up. Nothing, nothing. And then I deleted it so fast, dude. I was like, “That wasn’t me!” If I ever meet him in person, I’ll be like, “Listen, that really cringey message I sent was not my idea. I would never do that.” It was cringey.

But it all worked out. You are not the 1975. You are not Ed Sheeran. You are Knox Morris, or Knox. You are your own person, your own artist.

That was so nice. That was so good, right there. Thank you!

I appreciate that you appreciated that! Before I let you go, is there anything else you you’re working on that you want to talk about?

I just want to say to anybody that’s listening, thank you so much for listening to my music. My debut album going on is out now. … I just know that whatever comes after this is going to be equally as beautiful, if not more. And I’m very, very excited for the future.

“I’ll never escape the memes that have been created. There’s this meme of me at 15, of me crying when I got voted off Idol, that still haunts me,” jokes Daniel Seavey. “Yeah, you may think it’s cute and endearing, but then you see it and you’d bust out laughing. And there’s also this famous dance move my bandmates and I used to hit. I’ll never escape that either.

“But I think with this album… I do think I tried to get more serious about proving my chops as a writer and producer. I think with Second Wind, I really backed up and just was like, ‘I need to stop caring so much and make music that jumps out to me and is something I enjoy.’ That was my only goal with this. I really tried to stop overthinking. I tend to do that a lot.”

@SeaveyDaniel when you cry, I cry. Ily pic.twitter.com/VeAoUZLM2z

— Mrs. Daniel Seavey (@mrs_seavey) February 22, 2015

Seavey is hanging out at Licorice Pizza Records in Studio City, Calif., where he just did a Saturday morning autograph signing for his two-years-in-the-making debut solo album, Second Wind. And he’s still astonished by the morning’s mass turnout. Some fans — who lined up around the block as early at 7 a.m., bearing gifts and friendship bracelets — have been following him since he was ninth-place contestant on American Idol Season 14, and Seavey is “just so shocked and grateful that they’re still here after 10 years. It’s just mind-blowing.”

Seavey, now age 25, is in fact on his third wind. When he competed on Idol, he was at that time the series’ youngest top 24 contestant ever, and he had a hard go of it, with TV critics and bloggers often arguing that he wasn’t quite ready for prime time. (Hence the tears.) He rebounded quickly as a member of the successful teen-pop group Why Don’t We, but when he decided to go solo in 2022, he knew that as a former reality contestant and a former boy band star, the odds were stacked against him. He just had to hope that a lifetime of preparing for this moment, starting from his days when he was busking on the streets of Portland at age 8 and “using all the money I got from that to buy more instruments,” would serve him well.

“I was just always obsessively being the nerd-ass that I am. I was in the back of the [Why Don’t We] bus just making songs on my laptop,” Seavey, who eventually learned how to play instruments and co-wrote or wrote all 10 tracks of Why Don’t We’s sophomore album. — “But at the time, honestly, there were songs we were making for the band that were really intended for a band, and I think that was kind of my side hobby where I could so. It was more of my musical journal entries, and I genuinely never thought any of those would see the light of day. And then the first [solo] song that I dropped was one of those — it was ‘Can We Pretend That We’re Good?,’ and it was just one of the ones that had been sitting in there for a year. And when the day came that I had to drop my own music, I was like, ‘Thank God I’ve been doing this for the last five years on my own too!’ It just worked out.”

After the release of “Can We Pretend That We’re Good?” in 2022, Seavey’s seven-song Dancing in the Dark EP, TikTok hit “The Older You Get,” and finally Second Wind followed — along with positive critical reviews comparing Seavey’s evolved bedroom-pop sound to Lana De Rey, the Weeknd, and Cigarettes After Sex. Seavey still can’t quite believe it.

“I honestly have had zero strategy. I wake up every day being like, ‘Today may be my last day I do this.’ Really, I think the thing I was able to do with this last album was just lean on the gifts that I was given by, I believe, God,” says Seavey, whose father is a church pastor and mother is a religious writer/speaker. “I had zero expectations for it. So, even something like this morning is just such a gift for me.”

Seavey embarks on a world tour this month, and he says he’ll be “bringing that same laptop I used to bring with the band on the bus and I’m going to be writing all the time, so I’ll probably drop more music in that time. I’m just going to try to keep doing this as long as I can. I really do live for it. I love it so much.”

As for any advice he might have for any former child stars trying to reinvent themselves, he says, “Just keep going and keep fighting to remain yourself the whole time. I think that the less you look outside of what everyone else is doing and the more you just focus every day on what it is you want to do, you’d be shocked at the results. I didn’t think any of this was going to work out for me — and it is, to some extent. So, it’s been pretty inspiring, even for myself, to really see showing up resulting in things. So, just show up every day and trust yourself.”

“Coming off of a show like American Idol, the first thing that I thought of, the minute they said my name, after I got over the shock of it, it was, ‘I am a songwriter. How am I going to get these millions of people that watch and vote to get on board with that version of me?’” Lee DeWyze recalls.

Fast-forward 14 years, and the Season 9 winner has managed to do just that — becoming the Idol alumnus with the most TV and film syncs, most notably with a prominent placement of “Blackbird Song” in The Walking Dead. It was a long and sometimes arduous journey that DeWyze navigated with the unwavering encouragement of his longtime manager, Brett Radin, with whom he teamed during a transitional period one year after Idol. “Brett, if there’s one thing he always understood, it was like, ‘Dude, you’re more than this show. There’s a lot more to your career and things you should be doing.’ He was always very supportive of that. So, losing him was a big kick in the fucking gut, man.”

Radin, who DeWyze describes as “a best friend, like a brother to me,” shockingly died in February 2023, leaving DeWyze reeling and in a “space where I really had to do some soul-searching.” And his latest album, Gone for Days, is in fact his most vulnerable and soul-searching to date. Before his death, Radin only got to hear one track, the stunning “Into the Wild” (“I have text messages from him and he’s like, ‘Man, there’s something special about that song. It’s my favorite song of yours,’” DeWyze recalls), which fittingly opens Gone for Days. But Radin would no doubt be immensely proud of what DeWyze, now 38, has achieved with this entire album.

Recorded over a three-month period of unprecedented inspiration and creativity at Classic Recording Studios in Bristol, Tenn., with roots music luminaries like Grammy-nominated cellist/composer Dave Eggar and Union Station’s Barry Bales and Tim Stafford, Gone for Days is DeWyze’s career-defining record, and it has already garnered some early Grammy buzz. But DeWyze, the songwriter, made this album for himself — not for awards, not for Idol-style mainstream success, not even for even syncs.

“There’s this moment, which I think many songwriters face, where you ask yourself in the middle of the process, ‘Why am I doing this? Why am I writing this record? Why am I making these songs? Why am I doing this at all? Is it because I need to pay the bills? Is it because I can’t help myself? Is it because I feel like I guess I should put out music?’ It’s kind of a culmination of all of those things at times,” DeWyze confesses. “But on this one, I don’t think any of those things played a part. It felt for the first time, I don’t want to say ever, but in a long time, that I was like, ‘I really do have something to say and this is how I happen to do that. This is what I do.’ … This album has rejuvenated this thing in me. It feels like it’s my first record, almost. I’ve fallen back in love with why I do this, which is something I’ve been longing for. It definitely was this kind of rekindling of the fire.”

In the compelling video above and Q&A below, DeWyze opens up about the creative process and personal epiphanies behind Gone for Days —  and even surprises me with an impromptu acoustic performance of “by far, the most personal song” he’s ever released, the album-closing tearjerker “Butterfly Effect.”

LYNDSANITY: Congratulations on the release of Gone for Days. I get the impression that this album means a lot to you, possibly more than any other album you’ve ever put out. So, I’ll start with a very open-ended question, by asking why that’s the case.

LEE DEWYZE: That’s a very valid question, and I think it’s one that I was asking myself too before I made it — because it felt really important before I even started recording this album. I don’t know if it was just a combination of where I’m at in my career … over the years I’ve consistently put out albums, I’ve consistently put out music, so it’s kind of like, what makes this one different? And to start, I knew I didn’t want to make the record in Los Angeles. … Something told me to get out of here and make the record somewhere else. And a big firestarter for that was I got the opportunity to go play Bristol Rhythm & Roots [festival]. … I went and visited the studio where I would eventually end up recording the record, and I’m sitting there and I’m kind of like, “Everything just feels peaceful, everything feels right. It doesn’t have that Los Angeles cloud” — that competitive thing that can come with being out here. And I left and I just kind of told my wife, “Hey, I have something I want to talk to you about.” And she knew. She was like, “You want to make your album here?” And I’m like, “I do.” And she’s like, “You should.” … I kind of paused and said, “I’m going to go out there for three months. I’m just going to let whatever happens, happen. I’m going to get into this house that I rented and just be with myself and write.” And I did.

And what started to happen was the more I was being honest with myself out there, kind of all the things that you shove under the rug or tuck away or hide behind when you’re making a record — and I think every songwriter goes through that in some way or another — I just became comfortable with those things. The things that would scare me usually to write about, or the things that I didn’t want to do in the past, I was OK with doing. Obviously over the years we’ve talked at length about my journey from Idol and all that. And I think that’s something that happened to me over the years that I really came to realize before I recorded was being on a show like that… obviously we don’t have to dive too deep into it, but it is relevant to this, because I think for years it was really important to me to prove myself as a songwriter.

Now American Idol is much more open about letting contestants perform their own songs on the show, but that was not the case in your season.

No, not at all. It was actually frowned upon. But I think that after all that and making record after record, it was really a decision I made to not ever necessarily make my vocal be the centerpiece to the music. It was always: Let the story and the songwriting be the centerpiece. I think even the way I approached vocally or produced it, my vocals were in there and were beautiful and did their thing, but I never wanted that to be the showcasing piece. And that was because there was a part of me that may have felt like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I have a great voice or whatever, I know I was on Idol — but I’m a songwriter.” I got to a point in my life, in my career. It was a huge turning point for me for many reasons, from losing my manager…

Oh yes, I’m so sorry about that.

I was in such shock over the whole thing. He was my manager for 13 years and a best friend, like a brother to me. And so, losing him and then coming out of it was just kind of like this space where I really had to do some soul-searching. And I looked back at the albums that I always talked about in interviews… for me it really was Tea for the Tillerman by Cat Stevens. His voice is just telling the story, and that’s why I love it so much — his emotion. And so, it was a conscious decision by me, my call, to say on this album, “I don’t want to hide my vocals behind production. I don’t want to hide it under vibe.” I look at Ghost Stories or Paranoia or some of my other albums and I like to look at them as these long, beautiful poems that you can get lost in… but on this one, I was like, “I’d rather it be a book with chapters.” You could listen to each song and when you get into the next one, you’re in a different chapter of that book.

And so, while the other albums have had great successes as far as licensing and syncs, and I’ve loved every second of them, this one, to answer your question — this is the long answer! – I think it represents me as an artist, as a songwriter, as a vocalist, maybe the best of anything I’ve done. And at the end of the day, one of my mantras going into this was, “Make an album that you would want to listen to. Don’t go into it saying, ‘Oh, I hope this gets placed in a movie or I hope my fans like it or I hope this happens or that happens.’” Those things will come, or they won’t. I have a great relationship with license and sync and those things will happen. But to put that at the forefront felt counterproductive, almost. It was like, “Go and write an album that you love. Go and write that record. Go and make music that you would love to listen to, that’s honest and that can connect with people.” And the more and more I was [in Bristol] and the more and more I was writing and recording, it just kind of took on this life of its own. Halfway through it, I was like, “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m loving this process!” It didn’t feel like one of the darker times I ever had, which  was making Paranoia.

Why was the process of making Paranoia so dark?

Well, I’ve never really talked about this, but I think it comes through in that album itself. But there’s this moment, which I think many songwriters face, where you ask yourself in the middle of the process, “Why am I doing this? Why am I writing this record? Why am I making these songs? Why am I doing this at all? Is it because I need to pay the bills? Is it because I can’t help myself? Is it because I feel like I guess I should put out music?” It’s kind of a culmination of all of those things at times. But on this one, I don’t think any of those things played a part. It felt for the first time, I don’t want to say ever, but in a long time, that I was like, “I really do have something to say and this is how I happen to do that. This is what I do.”

You mentioned the death of your manager, Brett Radin, who was with you for this whole journey. He came on board shortly after you won American Idol, and was there when you had the whole Walking Dead breakout and sort of helped you rebuild your career.

That was one of the first things we did together. The Walking Dead song… I’ve talked about this onstage, but I don’t know if I’ve ever talked about in an interview format as much. But coming off of a show like American Idol, the first thing that I thought of, the minute they said my name, after I got over the shock of it, it was, “I am a songwriter. How am I going to get these millions of people that watch and vote to get on board with that version of me?” And I was younger and it was very confusing. It was a lot of things. But that was the first thing that hit me. And there came a point where I was like, “Well, what can I do? What can I do to let the masses know that I’m a songwriter?” And the thing I came up with was, “I’m going to write a song for the most popular television show, and I really don’t fucking care if anyone likes it or not. I’m just going to do it.” And Brett was one of the guys, where I was playing it in a rehearsal for something, and like, “What is that?” I’m like, “It’s this song I wrote and I want it to go into Walking Dead.” And he’s like, “OK, well, let’s record it.” So, the next day we go to Paramount Studios, we record it three days later, we send it through our channels. I was at Vanguard at the time. And that’s not how it works, for anybody! … The way it usually works is you write songs and you have someone that pitches your music.

When I talk license and sync, it’s not necessarily the prettiest part of the music industry, but it is a huge part of it — for someone like me, at least. I mean, back in the day after Idol, when people would say, “Get on that red carpet,” I would be like, “No, take me to the Durango [Songwriters Expo],” where you sit in a room with people. Again, it’s not the flashy thing, but you play your music, you get to know these people, and you get to let them know who you are. I did that stuff for years. But we literally just sent [The Walking Dead] the song. We’re like, “We’d love this to be in the show.” A week later, they send us a script and they’re like, “It’s going to be in the front; it’s going to be in the back.” And I was like, “Fuck yeah, dude!” It’s easy to go back and say Idol changed my life, and it did, but this changed my life in a different way. It was a different hurdle I was able to climb, and it opened up the doors for years and years from doing that. So yeah, Brett, if there’s one thing he always understood, it was like, “Dude, you’re more than [American Idol]. There’s a lot more to your career and things you should be doing.” He was always very supportive of that. So, losing him was a big kick in the fucking gut, man.

Again, I’m so sorry. Did he pass away before you started working Gone for Days?

It’s funny you ask that. He never heard any of the songs, but one, and it was “Into the Wild.” … I remember I have text messages from him and he’s like, “Man, ‘Into the Wild,’ there’s something special about that song. It’s my favorite song of yours.” And so, he did get to hear that one, and it happens to be the first song on the record. … It being the first song just to happened to feel right. It’s funny when you make a record, you sit with the songs and there’s people that do the Post-It Note thing where they have all the songs and you rearrange them. But then I kind of looked at it like a story and I’m like, “Well, what’s the story I’m telling, and how does that play out?” And it felt like “Into the Wild” was this kind of adventure into the unknown where I don’t know what’s going to happen. And then I end the album with “Butterfly Effect,” which is much more confident, much more calming, very personal — by far, the most personal song I’ve ever released.

Let’s talk about “Butterfly Effect.” Why is that one so special?

“Butterfly Effect” was a weird one. I got to a point in the album where everything was going, cruising, but then I felt like I didn’t have the last song. … This whole album almost felt like a dream sequence for somebody: They fell asleep and dreamt this whole story and they woke up and it’s like, “Well, what did you learn from your experience?” And so I got to this point where I just didn’t have a last song. I had so many ideas, but they all felt wrong. It just didn’t feel right. And it’s always funny when songwriters talk about how they wrote — so, it was at a Denny’s at 3 in the morning? Whenever I hear that, I’m like, “You’re full of shit. You spent days and hours on that thing!” But to be “that guy,” I was in my bed. I sleep with my guitar, essentially, when I’m on the road; I have it very close to me or in the bed because when I’m trying to fall asleep, I’ll just close my eyes and play. And I woke up at 3 or so in the morning. It wasn’t stress. It was more of, “What is it? What are you trying to write? What is the thing? I’m writing all these songs, so why aren’t they feeling right? Why?”

So, I am in bed, and I literally said to myself, “It doesn’t even have to rhyme. It doesn’t have to make sense. What you’re feeling right now, put that into words.” And I picked up the guitar, and the first thing that came out of my mouth was, “Yeah I miss California/A place that I should warn ya/You’ll probably fall in love with, if you ever go…” And I was like, “What the hell was that?” But it was very clear that that was the beginning of the song. I was like, “This is something.” And I just started rifling through the things that were important to me. Literally I’m thinking, “Sure, there’s still bills to pay and life can sometimes get away, but I know my love is waiting for me back at home.” I just kept going and going. … The way that this song came about was so crazy for me. I’ve never written a song like that. I mean, I’ve written songs quickly before, but this one, I literally woke up and I wrote this whole fucking song essentially in 30 minutes. And then I laid down and I’m like, “I don’t know, maybe that’s the best or worst thing I’ve ever written. I have no idea.” And the next thing you know, I’m laying there and I can’t sleep. I’m like, “You need to record that on your phone. You have to.” Because I know me: I will not remember that song in the morning.

So much of that song was so in the moment. … My birthday had just passed. I turned 38 when I was there. So, my birthday was on my mind. And I just started thinking about my wife, my family, my dog. That line [about my senior dog] still kills me when I play it live, because I was sitting there and this thought popped in my head. I’m like, “Man, I really hate that he’s getting old.”

And so, I just kind of went into the studio and I was like, “Hey guys, I wrote something last night. I don’t know what it is, but we’re going to try it.” So, everyone’s kind of in the studio listening, and I go in there and I play it, and everyone’s just quiet. And they’re like, “What the fuck was that?” I’m like, “I don’t really know.” Bu it was just very obvious after I recorded it and listened back: “This is the last song.” With that book idea in mind, it’s the afterword, and you’ve gotten to know me through this record.

I just wanted to write something so fucking real. And what’s crazy is I thought because of how personal it was, people wouldn’t connect with it. But it’s been the opposite. Everyone knows what it’s like to talk or not talk to their parents, or to have lost someone. And especially that dog line, I know it’s crazy, but how many people experience that? And it’s not a thing that’s really sung about. Just the way people have connected with that song has been really special. It’s been really gratifying to know that the idea behind all of it, I guess, was to connect with people. And it seems to be doing that. And I think as a songwriter, that’s your goal. I recently said out loud during something that I was asked, “What’s your job as a songwriter?” And for years, my answer would’ve been, “To be successful and to have people love the music.” But there’’s really this idea that I’ve grown to love, which is being an emotional locksmith. It’s my job as a songwriter to allow you, the listener, to open up doors in yourself and find a comfortable, safe place for you to experience these emotions. I hope that I can be a vessel to do that through the music and through the connecting. I’m just honestly really proud of the record.

It’s weird, man. In a weird way, I think that when you do this a long time… there does come a point where you say to yourself, “All right, maybe everything’s winding down.” I don’t know. You ask yourself this shit; you just do. I think that a lot of songwriters don’t like to talk about that, because it makes them feel like their career’s over or whatever. But this album has rejuvenated this thing in me. It feels like it’s my first record, almost. I’ve fallen back in love with why I do this, which is something I’ve been longing for. It definitely was this kind of rekindling of the fire.

That’s amazing! I’m so happy for you. I know you’ve made it clear that you didn’t make this album for accolades or fame or commercial successes, as wonderful as all those things are if they come around. But I do believe there is a little bit of Grammy buzz for this record…

Yeah, that’s come up. The people around me, and people that have never been around me, are like, “Hey, there’s something about this album. We think it belongs in this place for multiple reasons.” When you grow up, you think about things like that. Growing up, I think it was like, “What’s success?” When you’re young, it’s to have a lot of money…

Honestly, that’s sort of what American Idol is selling: “You got a record deal! All your dreams are coming true!”

Well, I turned down record deals on this album. Straight out. And it’s funny — those deals came after the album was done, after it was heard. But it just wasn’t right. And that’s OK. I’m actually very, very happy about that. But then it kind of moves to Grammys and awards and shit. And well, I think for me, success, or an element of it, is respect from your peers in the industry, respect from the people that you respect in the industry. And that’s kind of what a Grammy represents. I mean, that community is really all about that, especially the Americana category and community. I’ve always had those folk/Americana pieces of me, and I think many times I kind of fought it, almost. And then on this album, I just leaned into what I love and what I know I am. And so shortly after the album came out, or the single came out, I was playing at the Nashville Grammy chapter and getting to know those people. There’s rules to what I’m allowed to say and what I’m not allowed to say surrounding this stuff, so all I’ll say is if people love it enough to recognize it in any way, it’s an honor. I think when people see what kind of unfolds over the next year, it’ll be pretty exciting. I think it’ll be a really interesting thing for me at this stage in my career. I’m really happy about it. And people will definitely be seeing more about this exact topic sooner than later, I’m sure.

But right now, I’m just trying to not be the guy at the wedding who didn’t try the chicken. You know what I mean? When my wife and I got married, [at the reception] I remember people always said that to me: “Make sure to enjoy yourself and try the food.” And afterwards I was like, “I actually didn’t try the food!” And I think I could say that for a lot of my career. Even going back to Idol, there were so many moments that are just a blur. I don’t know whether that’s burying trauma or just not taking a breath to enjoy what was happening! [laughs] And I think that goes for a lot of my albums and writing. But I’m in a new stage of me, and I think there’s something to say about not living in past versions of yourself. Someone’s been going to therapy! [laughs] No, but it’s true. It’s letting go of all the things that maybe hold you back and embracing the things that keep you going. And this album’s been that for me. So, back to your question about that [Grammy] stuff, I’m very excited for whatever could happen and what might happen. The idea of it, even, is fucking crazy to me.

I’m happy to see you where you are in your life right now. Congratulations on everything, and thanks for being so candid.

Thank you. I’m at a point in my life and career where I just kind of feel like saying what I’m feeling. Songwriting is so important to me, and storytelling is so important to me. The “why” to that, I may never know. I just know that from a young kid sitting there crying in my living room on the floor. I’m like 5 years old, and my parents run in the room and they’re like, “Why are you crying?” And I was literally listening to John Denver’s “Sunshine on My Shoulders.” And my mom’s like, “What is wrong?” And I’m like, “It’s the song. “My mom’s like, “What?”

I’m like, “This song’s just so beautiful!” And my parents were like, “That’s why you’re crying?” And it was from that moment forward, they were like, “OK, music is a thing for him.” I’ve just always had a very, very deep emotional connection with music. I’m the guy that can cry listening to a song. I can get goosebumps listening to a song. I can get lost in that. It’s just very much a part of me. So, I think that the closer and closer I get to the best version of myself, the more comfortable I feel talking about it and just being real about it…. the industry wants you at times to be guarded, but there’s something about being like, “I’ll just tell you this is what’s up.” And if people don’t get a sense of who I am through [interviews] like this, they’ll sure get a sense of it through the music — because this album is, through-and-through, a piece of me.

I recently had the immense delight and honor of interviewing at length one of my all-time favorite singers, pop multi-hyphenate Adam Lambert, for the Film & Television fall 2024 issue of Music Connection magazine.

We discussed his boldly erotic new EP; upcoming Broadway debut in Cabaret; ITV docuseries Adam Lambert: Out, Loud and Proud; acting ambitions; underrated 2012 sophomore album (“Justice for Trespassing!”); and wild, 15-year journey from American Idol to AFTERS, among other hot topics.

“I ain’t letting go anytime soon. That’s my thing. I’m not giving up. I don’t go away,” Lambert told  me. “I do feel I’ve come a long way. It’s about just giving less of a fuck, not being concerned with not everyone liking it. And that comes with experience. Having been in the business this long, being on the road with Queen for 10-plus years, I feel I’ve earned the right to say, ‘Fuck it. I’m going to do what I want. Life’s too short.’”

READ THE COVER STORY HERE

BUY THE PRINT ISSUE