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When Clay Aiken triumphantly returned to the American Idol stage for this week’s Season 24 finale, rocking a new fashion-forward look (palazzo pants, pastel polka-pot blouse, peroxided pixie), he performed his first original single in 18 years: the smooth adult-pop bop “Rewind,” which jumped to No. 1 on iTunes’ pop chart the next day. He also dueted with finalist Braden Rumfelt on Elton John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” the ballad he fatefully performed during his own season’s Wild Card round on March 4, 2003… the very day that Braden was born.

Aiken’s appearance was full-circle in so many ways, and yet another iconic finale moment in his long and never linear Idol journey. For instance, when he placed second to Ruben Studdard back in Season 2 (which still holds the Nielsen record for the highest-rated Idol finale of all time, with a whopping 38.6 million viewers), he became the stuff of urban legend when he accidentally peeped Ruben’s name on the results card, five minutes before Ryan Seacrest actually announced the winner.

But that wasn’t nearly as wild as Aiken’s surprise cameo on the second-most-watched Idol finale, the one that capped off the series’ most-watched season overall, Season 5. That was the night that a glowed-up and almost unrecognizable Aiken — sporting an even more drastic makeover than this year’s, with his flat-ironed, Lego-hair emo bob and designer suit — ambushed No. 1 Claymate Michael Sandecki for sing an unrehearsed “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” duet. And chaos ensued.

Clay Aiken with Lyndsey Parker at the ‘American Idol’ Season 24 finale

The hype surrounding those watercooler-chatter moments — in an era of “appointment television” when people actually gathered around TV sets every week to watch Idol, and in office breakrooms the morning after to gossip about the joke auditions, performances, eliminations, and Simon Cowell’s most vicious one-liners — solidified Aiken’s status as Idol’s first non-winner to break out as a superstar. (Over the course of his career, he’s sold roughly 5 million albums in America.) And to this day, Aiken is still considered one of Idol’s all-time greatest success stories, the ultimate representation of what the show was always supposed to be: a platform for atypical, unconventional, but extremely gifted singers who would never otherwise get a real shot at pop stardom.

While Aiken hasn’t released new original music in a long time, he has stayed busy and stayed in the headlines. He’s done Broadway; toured with Studdard (and even competed with Studdard as the Beets on The Masked Singer); co-founded the disabled children’s charity the National Inclusion Project; and worked with other charitable organizations like UNICEF, the Ronald McDonald House, Make a Wish Foundation, the Human Rights Campaign, and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network. And in his personal life, he came out as gay in since 2008 — the same year that his last pop single came out, and the year that his son Parker was born.

Aiken, now 47, also had a credible if brief political career, running for the U.S. House of Representatives in North Carolina’s 2nd congressional district in 2014 and actually winning the Democratic primary, and then running in the Democratic primary for North Carolina’s 4th congressional district in 2022 and finishing third. But as he spoke with Lyndsanity on the Idol set, he made it clear that he hadn’t put music on hold to focus on being a politician.

“No, that was not why I left. It’s not why I stopped doing music,” he stressed. “It’s maybe why I came back to music, because I think politics is disgusting, broken… what are other negative words I can use? It’s just not healthy for this country. And I’d hoped it would be. I don’t feel like people are doing things that improve people’s lives and make them happier. And I think music can. And does.”

In the thoroughly entertaining Q&A below, Aiken rewinds to the start of his Idol career, as he reminisces about those historic Season 2 and Season 5 finales, the scandalous “Breast Friend” photo that sparked a tabloid frenzy, and why now is the perfect time for him to relaunch his music career, now that he’s an “empty-nester.”

Suffice to say, this wild card held nothing back.

LYNDSANITY: Your whole theme tonight is “Rewind,” and along with your single by that title, you sang “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” with Braden Rumfelt. But this year marks the anniversary of when you appeared on probably the most bonkers American Idol finale ever, Season 5’s. There was a duet by Katharine McPhee with Meat Loaf, a surprise performance by Prince… but the moment I remember most of all is when you did “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” with Michael Sandecki. What do you remember about that duet?

CLAY AIKEN: I remember that [Sandecki] scared me! Oh my God. I remember that he scared me so much in that moment that I missed my entrance. And I missed it tonight, too. Braden didn’t scare me, but I missed it tonight. And he rescued me. That’s a true professional right there, Braden.

I did not even notice.

Of course. But he noticed! I’ve done that song many, many times myself over the years. I did it with Ruben Studdard on tour a few years ago, and the way they arranged it then, they shortened a little break between his line and mine. And I never could get it in my head to wait to come in before two measures. And tonight, I was so intensely concerned about coming in too late that I came in too early.

Well, no one will remember that. But people still remember you and Michael Sandecki. I don’t even think if it was advertised at that time that you were going to appear on the Season 5 finale, so you shocked everyone.

Yes, it was surprise, which you could tell by Michael’s face.

How did you keep it all under wraps?

Well, believe it or not, I did not have access to tell Michael Sandecki that I was coming on the show. So, it wasn’t very difficult to keep a secret from him. [laughs]

Fair enough. The real surprise that night was your “makeover,” though.

Oh yeah, the brunette. That [Season 5 finale] makeover was not planned. The makeover was sort of accidental. Do you think I decide what my hair’s going to look like? [laughs] I sat in the chair this evening with Dean Banowetz, who did my hair back in the day, and I said, “I don’t care. You do what you want to do.” So, I sat in the chair back that day [in 2006], and Steve Davio was his name, and he just invented all of that. That was a new look. You notice it didn’t last long, because I didn’t know how to do it!

That was exactly 20 years ago, and here you are, doing that song on the show again.

So, I’ll see you again in 20 more! [laughs] Maybe. I’ll be 70.

Since we’re “rewinding” now, I do have to ask about maybe the biggest Idol urban legend ever: That you saw the Season 2 finale results card in Ryan’s hand, saying Ruben had won, before Ryan made the announcement. Is that really true?

Yes. I have absolutely no doubt Ryan has never, ever done that again. When we were on Season 2, we didn’t know it was going to be big when we auditioned. We didn’t know it was big while we were on it! I think Ryan probably did, because he had access to the real world and he was doing his own shows too, but we on the show didn’t know it was a big deal. There were 50 people who worked on our season, on the production, and there’s probably 300 here now. So, it was a lot more laid-back, for sure. I have no doubt in my mind that Ryan has never made that mistake again. But it wasn’t even a mistake on his part. He was turned around, and all I did was look over his shoulder. I just kind of peeked at it real quick, looked over his shoulder right before we all walked on. So, I knew — which was better for me, right? Nerves are gone that way.

I don’t recall your expression giving anything away. You had a good poker face.

Are you kidding me? Hold on! The whole time, I’m looking at Ruben. There was no disappointment, because we weren’t competitive from the beginning. Would I have liked to have won? Sure. But the only reason that I wished I had won was in Seasons 3 and 4 and 5 and whatnot, the winner’s pictures were in the artwork, and mine wasn’t.

But you set the template for successful non-winners. Before there was Chris Daughtry, Jennifer Hudson, or Adam Lambert, people would cite you as an example of how winning the show isn’t everything. Rolling Stone even put you on their cover first, before Ruben!

I wonder if they regret that! [laughs] I didn’t even know who they were. I didn’t know what Rolling Stone was. Oh God, I was such an idiot. I was so sheltered in North Carolina. I mean, I’d heard of it, but I thought it was more about the song.

“Like a Rolling Stone”?

No, “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone.”

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For your whole “Rewind” campaign, you’re doing these cute flashback posts, and you recreated your Rolling Stone “Growing Up Clay” cover pose. Why did you do that?

Because I have professionals who are social media experts, who are telling me, “Stand here and then pull your shirt and we’re going to pretend it’s Rolling Stone.”

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[pauses to chat with a woman passing by on the set, then resumes interview] I’m so sorry. That was Mezhgan [Hussainy]. She did makeup on the season I was on. She did my face. And I’ll tell you — which I probably shouldn’t, but I’m going to tell you, and you can use it as you want — we both got in trouble because we took a picture one time [back when Hussainy was actually dating Simon Cowell] with me standing behind her, and my hands were on her boobs.

as seen on TMZ 

Like that famous Janet Jackson Rolling Stone cover?

Well, I was in the picture with her. It was obvious they were my hands. Oh my God, I got in trouble for that! It was like, a tabloid story. At the time, I was not publicly out, but I mean, people figured, so ironically, I was like: “So, which is it, motherfuckers? Am I gay or am I ‘molester’? Make up your damn mind!” Oh, I got in trouble for that, and she just said she got in trouble for it too. But that was brilliant. … Someone [a fan] just posted it the other day and said she had put [the photo] on her wall. She’d taken it and put her face over [Hussainy’s] face and put it on her wall, as like an aspiration. This is what she had hoped for.

I can’t believe how long ago that was! It was a very different time. And I can’t believe it has been 18 years since you released a single.

Yeah, 2008 — right before my son was born. He’s 18 now, and he wants me out of the house! I’m about to be an empty-nester, and a big part of why I stopped [doing music] was I didn’t want to be on the road or working when he was growing up. Now I’m done with that job. So, I’m going back to the old one! [laughs] It just felt right. I went on tour with Ruben, and I kind of realized that I missed it more than I thought I did. I realized this was an opportunity to do something that I wanted to get back to.

Carrie Underwood is always flying the flag for hard rock and heavy metal on American Idol (who can forget her impromptu audition-room covers of Korn and Drowning Pool last year?), so when she got to perform “Home Sweet Home” (a song she recorded as Idol’s farewell anthem in Season 9) and “Kickstart My Heart” with her heroes Motley Crue on this week’s Season 24 finale, she was in rock ‘n’ roll heaven.

“It was great. They were very lovely, and I’m like, ‘Welcome to my fever dream!’” the champion-turned-judge excitedly told reporters backstage Monday. “I don’t know how to describe this. It’s so random and amazing. I feel like American Idol has given me so much. Obviously being on the show, winning the show, coming back as judge… and now I’m singing with Billy Idol and Motley Crue? I’m just loving life right now.”

Unfortunately, while Underwood was thrilled with country singer Hannah Harper’s victory this year — describing herself as “a stan for Hannah” and saying, “I see a bit of myself in her” — her hopes of crowing a rock champion, or even just having rock representation in the top 10, were quickly dashed this year.

All of Season 24′s hard-rockin’ early standouts — like Noah Orion (that double-demin’d dude who cruised up to the auditions in his “wall of sound” deconstructed school bus, screeching Motorhead’s “Ace of Spades”), emo belter Vincent Fondale, butt-rockers Kutter Bradley and Isaiah Moro, alt girl Genevieve Heyward, or even seasoned Great White frontman Brett Carlisle — went home early. Only Kutter and Genevieve even made it to fan-voted rounds.

But Underwood revealed that it was the elimination of another rocker in the top 20 (one that covered Heart’s “Alone,” a power ballad that was a breakthrough for Carrie in Season 4) that upset her the most. “Madison Moon was my girl,” she lamented. “She had such an incredible voice. I was devastated when she left.”

Underwood is all for having a metal-themed night in Season 25, although she “might pick more, like, nü-metal” if it was up to her. But which rock star would she want to be Nü-Metal Night’s guest mentor or judge?

“I’m friends with Jacoby Shaddix and he’s so uplifting and positive and amazing. I think he would be an incredible mentor,” she suggested, referring to the lead singer of recent collabortors Papa Roach. “I mean, there’s a lot of subgenres within the metal genre, so I think there’s something for everybody.”

So, Underwood still hasn’t given up on her fever dream that a hard-rocker from any subgenre could win American Idol one day, following in the footsteps of Season 13’s Caleb Johnson. “I’m always trying to encourage the rock singers when they come on the show, and I will give them a chance,” she declared. “Maybe we just need to keep at it. If we keep at it, then eventually America will be on board.”

When 25-year-old mom Hannah Harper won American Idol on Monday, it was a slightly bittersweet occasion, because the Season 24 finale took place just one day after Mother’s Day. It was actually Harper’s first Mother’s Day separated from her three young sons, who were 1,700 miles away in Willow Springs, Mo.

“I cried a lot,” Harper admitted backstage after her Idol victory. “I can’t wait to be home with them. All day, I was just pretending like it wasn’t the day. It was hard.”

Harper became a frontrunner early on this season, when her startlingly vulnerable original audition song about her postpartum struggles, “String Cheese,” resonated deeply with viewers — becoming one of the most-watched clips in American Idol history, with more than 100 million plays so far. The song especially resonated with judge and fellow boy-mom Carrie Underwood, and in a torch-passing moment of sorts, Harper is now only the second female country singer to win Idol, and the first to do so since Underwood triumphed in 2005.

“That’s some big shoes to fill, huge shoes to fill. I feel honored to carry that badge, but also stick to my stomach knowing that I have to carry that badge,” Harper admitted. She revealed that Underwood gave her advice about juggling motherhood with country stardom —  “She’s got it down now; she’s got cribs on her bus” —  but also acknowledged that male singers don’t usually seem as concerned about that, or at least aren’t asked about that sort of work/life balance in interviews. (For instance, last year’s winner, proud girl-dad Jamal Roberts, rarely fielded such questions.)

“It is totally different. It is very different,” Harper pointed out. “My husband [Devon Mendenhall] has had to sacrifice everything so that I could be here, and we basically just had to reverse roles — which has been confusing for everyone, because a man is not ‘built’ to do that. He’s had to give up his entire life, his work, to be Mr. Mom. And he’s stepped up admirably and done a great job. I could never repay him for all the things that he has sacrificed. I think that more importantly, my boys needed that in life, because men having a father-son relationship is so crucial for the kind of man that they grow up to be. I love getting to watch it, and I don’t regret any of it. I hope that he feels the same way and he’s still excited to do it, but there’s no way I could do it without him.”

photo: Eric McCandless

Some alpha-males, sadly, would not be OK with this sort of gender-flip, or would come to secretly (or not-so-secretly) resent their partner’s success. So, Harper was quick to express her gratitude for Mendenhall’s endless, ego-less encouragement.

“That man has never made me feel like my flame should be any dimmer than it needs to be. I actually wrote a song [about Mendenhall]. It’s called ‘My Hero, A Simple Man,’” Harper said. She also noted that while many female Idol  contestants have deferred their music dreams to focus on family, like last season’s Breanna Nix or this season’s third-place finalist Keyla Richardson, she was fortunate to have such an incredible support system — which, unfortunately, isn’t always the case for ambitious mothers.

“As much as I would like to say that [this American Idol win] was my own doing, if I didn’t have a village of people behind me, there’s no way that I would have been able to,” she stressed. “Most moms in the work field have to fight to try to find a babysitter. I was blessed with people who were backing me the entire way that allowed this to happen, but finding your village is important. And it should be a priority for all moms, because you need help. You need help. It’s so hard to do this by yourself, especially single moms like Keyla — she has worked so hard to get here and she has paved the way on her own, but still has done it with grace.”

Just as Harper began her Season 24 journey with a personal song about her domestic life, “String Cheese,” she ended it with Monday’s finale-night original, “Married Into This Town,” making her the only top three contestant to perform her own material live on the show this season.

“One of my very first writers’ rooms was with a couple guys and I was getting to know them, and [Nashville veteran Scott Stepakoff said], ‘Tell us about where you’re from.’ And I told them a little town of 200 people called Bunker, Mo.,” she said of the song’s inspiration. “He was like, ‘But your paper says Willow Springs,’ and I was like, ‘Well, I married into Willow.’ And he was like, ‘Well, that’s our song. I don’t need to know anything else about you. We have to write that song.’ … So, I wrote a love story about that.”

“My Hero, A Simple Man” and “Married Into This Town” are on Harper’s Facebook page, along with many other originals that haven’t yet been officially released. (She explained that she was “kind of scared” to perform more of her own compositions on Idol, because she wasn’t sure about “the publishing side of things.”) But suffice to say, she has “a good catalog to choose from,” and as long as her husband and village are behind her, she’s planning to make her kids proud, as she prepares to record her debut album.

This mother’s day has come. As Harper told reporters: “I’m ready.”

photo: Sam Desantis

Eighteen (yes, 18!) years ago, a fresh-faced, heart-sleeved Appalachian teen named Josiah Leming — now better known as for his acclaimed Americana namesake band Josiah and the Bonnevilles, whose brilliant fourth studio album As Is comes out this week — memorably appeared on American Idol. Leming’s time on the show was brief; he was cut during Hollywood Week, a controversial decision that generated national headlines and outrage at the time. But his willingness to be so open and emotional, both onstage and onscreen, made a lasting impression — so much so that Leming became the first Idol contestant (and, according to Wikipedia, still the only contestant) to not make the top 24 yet still land a major-label deal, when Perry Watts-Russell (the A&R man who signed Coldplay and Radiohead in the U.S.) brought him over to Warner Bros.

But despite the fairytale that Idol itself tries to sell aspiring musicians, inking a record contract is not an automatic happy ending. And after his deals with Warner and later Vagrant Records and British indie Yucatan Records didn’t pan out, Leming started to seriously question his career path. It was a sense of doubt that had actually always haunted him. “I used to tell Perry, ‘I’m just afraid I’ll write a song one day and then I’ll never write another one again,’” he admits, speaking with Lyndsanity from his Nashville home. “And I think a lot of that came from that boom-or-bust mentality of having so much visible ‘success’ when I was 18, thrusting me into the pop world. I mean, I remember being 23 years old and thinking it was already too late, thinking I was toast.”

But at this point, in 2021, the label-less Leming was now 33. “By that age, music just involved a lot of pain for me,” he recalls. “It was even to the point sometimes where was I like, ‘Do I even want to pursue this as a career? Or do I want to do other things [to pay the bills], and still do music [as a hobby] but maybe not be so at odds with it?’”

And so, a resigned Leming got regular day jobs, as a bartender and Amazon warehouse worker, and for a year and a half, he set his music dreams aside. But then, coming out of the pandemic in 2022, he began posting on TikTok. And ironically, the two things that had captured Idol viewers’ attention in 2008 — Leming’s vulnerability, and his unique cover songs — suddenly made him a bigger star than he’d ever been before.

At first, Leming shared humble home-studio clips of covers by his favorite relatively obscure singer-songwriters, like Townes Van Zandt. But then his former Vagrant A&R rep and good friend, Jeremy Maciak (“the smartest guy I know”), suggested he cover “artists with living fanbases, which was hilarious,” Leming chuckles. Hilarious or not, Leming heeded that advice, and he quickly went viral with his gorgeous acoustic interpretations of Justin Bieber’s “Ghost,” Glass Animals’ “Heat Waves,” and Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero.”

Leming has since been afforded opportunities that weren’t even within his reach at age 23 (or age 18), playing dream venues like Red Rocks, the Grand Ole Opry, and two sold-out nights at L.A.’s Troubadour, and he has a new deal with Rounder Records. But he has never forgotten where he came from (the 30,000-population town of Morristown, Tenn., where he grew up as one of nine children, including adopted six younger siblings), or especially where he was in life just recently. So, As Is a working-class-hero masterpiece, a sort of Nebraska for the modern age, that he could have never created in his teens or twenties.

Leming’s lyrics, even on the upbeat tracks that make As Is a perfect summer soundtrack, paint stark yet vivid snapshots of gritty blue-collar survival: graveyard shifts, bar brawls and battles with the bottle, waiting for paychecks, saving up to buy a pickup truck, the fear of AI decimating the workforce, finding “God on a burned CD,” yearning to escape small-town life… and yearning for the small-town sweetheart that got left behind.

“I feel a bit of a responsibility. I don’t feel like there’s a lot of music — and I’ve felt this way for a long time — that’s being made for regular people,” Leming explains. “You just don’t see a lot of real, honest music for people in their thirties, people who are on the flipside of youth and have learned some hard lessons. It’s important to me to try to speak about those things. As more and more jobs become computer-based, I do feel sometimes like I’m singing to a shrinking population of people, like my dad [who worked in a furniture factory], which makes me a little bit sad. But it makes me feel like it’s even more important to capture this life that may not be around one day.”

Leming chooses not to be overtly political in his lyrics (probably the closest he gets is a line in As Is’s opening track, “Good Boy,” about “wrestlers [who] try out politics”), because he never wants to sound preachy or condescending. But he stresses, “I do think as you get older, it’s important that this stuff has a social correctness to it, that it reflects the times that we’re living in. Because I’m living in these times just like everybody else. I’m as shocked as anyone when I go to the gas pump right now, or to the grocery store. So, I think there might be something really wrong if my music didn’t reflect where we’re at.”

What also makes As Is so relatable is Leming’s frank, dark-night-of-the-soul revelations about his mental health (in “One Day at a Time,” he confesses, “I’m learnin’ not to hate myself”), which perhaps isn’t surprising coming from the singer who was once characterized as the “crying kid who lives in his car” by American Idol’s producers. Leming says MusiCares recently funded his first-ever therapy sessions so he could “work through those feelings that I’d failed,” and that was hugely helpful as he rebooted his career and found hope and success on his own terms.

“I come from a place where [going to therapy] is just not accepted, or it wasn’t when I was a kid. People don’t seek mental healthcare, or mental healthcare is actually not even available,” says Leming. “And I always had such a huge amount of sadness, especially as an artist. I’m very proud to talk about this now, because music is a really, really difficult job. It’s very easy to ride the good times, but then you sort of end up out on this island and don’t understand why you feel so bad. It’s the contradictory nature of even being an artist whose career is soaring: To the outside eye, it looks like it’s soaring, but internally, it’s really a disaster. And I think it’s really worth shining a light on that, letting people know it’s totally OK to feel sad, especially in this really difficult career.”

Although Leming, who’s now 36, owes a lot of his relatively late-in-life career success to TikTok, he has ironically pulled back from social media lately, realizing that it’s detrimental to his mental health (the very first line on his new album is even “I’ve been stayin’ out and off the internet”). Leming admits, That’s something I’m still learning to balance after 2022 to 2024, when the Bonnevilles were everywhere and the online. Everything I shared in those years, I would just flip on the camera and tell people how I was feeling, and I did get to the point then where I was feeling the necessity to keep feeding the beast of the internet, which is insatiable. It got to the point before where I was just posting because I knew I had to post, and I wasn’t very proud of what I was posting. I didn’t like that feeling. It was really taking a toll on me to keep the pace. … It reminded me a lot of cigarettes. There’s something very dark intermingled with social media, where it’s made to be so addictive and endless.

“In its inception, social media was a great thing to connect people, but with what it’s becoming, I think there’s a darkness to it So, I had to find my own peace with it,” Leming continues. “I felt like I was becoming a bad person to be around in real life. My relationship with my family was suffering a lot. I definitely sensed that something was off, that I was giving too much of my energy to this online world and not enough of my energy to my immediate surroundings. That was a real wake-up call. And so that essentially led to the last year where I toured and played a lot of shows, but I wasn’t really online at all. When I needed a break from social media, a lot of [fan adoration and validation] goes away, so there was a period of, ‘Oh, I’m a piece of crap again, and I’m not worthy.’ And that’s still something that’s a daily thing for me. But it was a really beautiful time in my life: I wrote 96 songs for this record!”

Looking back on his Idol experience, which was crazy enough, Leming is thankful that social media wasn’t around in 2008, when 28 million tuned in for his audition episode and 25 million on the night when he was eliminated. “All there was Myspace, basically,” he chuckles. He can only imagine the sort of online reaction — the good, the bad, and the downright vicious — he would have received on other platforms. “Some people have amazingly thick skins. I am not one of those,” he states. “When you get older, you get a little better at it, but I’ve always erred on the sensitive side.”

As for what happened on Leming’s infamous Hollywood Week episode, when the judges thought his seemingly diva-like decision to dismiss the live band and perform alone was a bad look, there was of course a lot more going on behind the scenes that the Idol editors showed. “The big ‘drama’ that happened with me was I ‘kicked the band off the stage.’ And the reason for that was they gave us a packet of approved songs, and I picked Franz Ferdinand’s ‘Take Me Out,’” reveals Leming, who’s “always been an Anglophile.” (His buzzy breakout Hollywood Week performance was of Mika’s “Grace Kelly.”) “But at the last minute, they told me I couldn’t do that one; they said, ‘No, we’ve redacted the list,’ or whatever. So, I chose ‘Stand by Me.’ I went in with the band and they wouldn’t change the arrangement at all. They were going to play it their way. And that led to — which was encouraged by the producers of the show — me deciding to go ahead and dismiss the band. I think [producer] Nigel [Lythgoe] stopped the whole recording and came up and was like, ‘Josiah! No!’ — because I was trying to tell [the judges] what had led to me doing that. He stopped me and was like, ‘No, no, no, we don’t do that.’ And then they resumed filming, and I’m a mess, and Simon [Cowell] says he feels bad for me.”

It made for good television at the time, but Leming also made the most of his Idol run. He auditioned with an original composition, “To Run,” which was almost unheard-of back then, and as he notes, “That was the first season when you could play an instrument, which was awesome for me. … And I mean, that did set my career off. I still have a ton of people that come out to my shows who found me through that.”

And Leming learned lessons from that whirlwind experience that have served him well as he’s navigated the business ever since. “I will say one crazy benefit of all of this — and it’s a blessing and a curse, honestly — is I know so much about this damn industry. You could put a contract in front of me right now and I could pretty much negotiate it without a lawyer. I know the ins and outs of this business. I can tell you how crappy those American Idol contracts were. The wealth of knowledge I have now is pretty crazy. Sometimes I wish I knew less, because I might be a little more deer-in-the-headlights and maybe enjoy myself a little bit more,” he laughs.

But perhaps even more importantly, Leming learned how to “stick to my guns and have that conviction. I would say sometimes to a detriment, but usually something I’m very grateful for, is I’ve always been stubborn to the Nth degree. And even when it makes opportunities go away, it’s only going to be a good thing in the long run. Like, I think it’s just one of the coolest things when people find success and you’re like, ‘Hey, where was this person?’ And then you look back at the tape and you see stuff from years ago where they were still that same person. Bernie Sanders is a great example of this — he was that guy back as mayor in Vermont. And I just love that. It’s one of the best feathers in your cap you can have.”

And now that new fans are discovering Josiah and the Bonnevilles all these years later, he realizes that if he’d experienced this kind of success right after Idol, or back when he was on Warner Bros., he wouldn’t have relished it as much — nor would he have been able to mentally handle it.

“Somebody’s looking out for me, let’s put it that way. It’s just come at the sweetest time of my life where I can appreciate it properly and not blow it. I’ve kind of always had an addictive personality, and I just don’t think I would’ve managed it well at all if it had come sooner. I think I would have gone off the rails,” admits Leming, who’s “had quite a bit of problems” in the past and says now he’s “not completely sober, not AA-sober,” but “through therapy and a lot of work” has “gotten to a very good place and a very healthy relationship with everything. So, I’m very thankful that [this success] is happening now.”

And he’s enjoying just the right amount of success, too. “I think from the get-go I’ve been at battle with this industry, because I grew up loving music, but I never thought of it as a product. I never thought about the commercial viability of it,” he stresses. “I always knew this is what I wanted to do with my life, and I wanted it so bad and I was so hungry for it. When I went on American Idol, I think that was clear how much it meant to me. But it never meant so much to me because I felt like I had something to sell. I just wanted to make music and share it. And so, I think the recent realization is I probably don’t want to be a mainstream artist. I probably never wanted to be a mainstream artist, just in the early stages, I was kind of put in a mainstream situation.”

Now that Leming is finally figuring it all out and finding that perfect sweet-spot balance in life, he’s truly grateful for everything happened before, as he releases his greatest album yet. As Is’s title track tells the clearly autobiographical tale of a 33-year-old drifter dusting off an old pawn shop guitar, and another track, “Redline,” is about “taking an old, classic rare engine and putting it in this other car and it gives that new life. And I feel that way,” he says with a soft smile.

“I get emotional even talking about it, because I’ve wanted this thing since I can remember, probably since I was 8 years old when I first started playing a Casio keyboard. I just love that someone like me can have value even though you’re not the shiny new toy anymore. I feel like I’ve been brought back from the dead.”

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.”