In his new music video for “Loser,” force-of-nature glam-pop artist Jake Wesley Rogers busts out a Jobriath-style modern dance improv in front of a talent show’s unimpressed judging panel. In real life, however, the Justin Tranter-co-penned synthpop bop is a real winner — a contender for song of the summer, or maybe even for the best single of 2024. So, art is definitely not imitating life in this case.

Or is it? Shortly after the “Loser” video dropped, Rogers, now 27, snarkily posted on Instagram: “When I was on America’s Got Talent at 15 [I] lost to a bunch of poodles, but they’re probably long gone now so who’s the real winner?”

The teenage Rogers — as charismatic back then as he is now, if utterly unrecognizable with his Buddy Holly pompadour and spectacles — became an early favorite on AGT Season 7, thanks to his flamboyant piano covers of Adele and Britney Spears. After his shock elimination in the quarterfinals, he was summoned back to the show by sympathetic judge Sharon Osbourne as her personal wild-card pick, but his risky performance during that comeback round, of his idol Lady Gaga’s “Edge of Glory,” sadly edged him out of the competition for good. Rather than get discouraged, however, Rogers says the double-rejection “made me really commit to being an artist.”

“I was literally 14 when I auditioned, and at that point I kind of felt like that was the only [way to make it] in my 14-year-old brain,” says Rogers, who grew up in Springfield, Mo. “I was like, ‘Well, this is what you do, if you love music — you audition for one of these shows.’ And you have to be 16 [to qualify] for a lot of them, and [AGT] was the only one that was all-ages. So, my parents were like, ‘Yeah, we’ll drive you to St. Louis and see where it goes.’”

Rogers admits, “Ultimately, I would say [AGT] was a negative experience,” because the show was “produced in a certain way where they want you to say certain things… they do these weird reverse therapy sessions where they’re trying to get you to throw up all your traumas.” But, he stresses, “In the negativity, I learned some of the most important lessons about this industry: that the long road is always more gratifying and steady than something you think will get you to the top really fast.”

Hey guys I saw this ad on Craigslist for a talent show and decided to give it a shot. The judges didn’t really like me but I had fun and mom said that’s all that matters. They said they filmed it so I’m gonna ask them for it now and I’ll share it with you at 9pm PT on Thursday. pic.twitter.com/ncu9G6tizw

— Jake Wesley Rogers (@jakewrogers) June 26, 2024

Hence the proclamation in “Loser’s” chorus: “Every beginning begins at the finish line/That’s when the loser wins.” Almost exactly a decade after his “disorienting” AGT experience, Rogers found himself face-to-face with Osbourne again, under very different circumstances: when he was invited to duet with Brandi Carlile at Elton John’s 2022 Oscar night viewing party in West Hollywood.

“Sharon Osbourne was there. She had been so sweet to me when I was on the show. She was the one judge that really embraced me, and she brought me back to the Wild Card Round. I had not seen her since I was 15. I was sitting at a table with a few of my friends and I was like, ‘Should I go up to her?’ I don’t like to really bother people. But obviously, I had something to say,” Rogers recalls. “And so, I went up to her and it was a really sweet moment. I was just like, ‘I don’t know if you remember me, but 10 years ago I was on America’s Got Talent. You were just very kind to me, and I really hold that with me still.’ … And she gave me a hug.”

America may not have been ready for Jake Wesley Rogers in 2012, voting for the Olate Dogs (RIP) instead, but the public now seems to have caught up. “America’s Got Talent was my first experience of [bad press] — I remember I was literally 15 and there was some Rolling Stone article reviewing the episode I was on. I don’t even remember what it said, it was three sentences, but it was not very nice. I was literally 15, so I was like, ‘Oh, this is complicated. My first time in Rolling Stone, and it’s not nice!’ But I’ve been back in it, and it was very nice. So, there you go,” Rogers chuckles.

Rogers hasn’t quite made it to the finish line, so to speak — his career is in fact only just beginning, with his long-awaited debut album dropping later this year. But to understand how he’s made this far — winning over famous fans like Elton, Tranter (who signed Rogers to their Facet Records label), and Mike Garson (who enlisted Rogers to sing both “Life on Mars?” and “Modern Love” for the 2022 all-star “A Bowie Celebration” livestream) — we have to go back to the beginning. Because it’s all connected.

Rogers’s “first kind of a-ha moment” was in 6th grade, when he discovered Lady Gaga — the NYC scene peer and tourmate of Tranter’s former glam/punk band, Semi Precious Weapons. “I didn’t really take a deep dive into Elton or Bowie or anything like that until later, but I sort of realized that I got into them through [Gaga], in a way, because what she was doing was in the same lineage of glam and androgyny and spectacle and pure pop,” says Rogers. “She was really massive for me.”

Growing up in a Missouri Bible Belt town, Rogers’s family “were Methodists, which I feel is, for the most part, pretty chill,” and he came out at a young age, while still in middle school. But he says religious fearmongering and homophobia were “still something that I sort of just soaked into my consciousness. I was pretty lucky that I had this group of friends and my nuclear family who were very supportive, so I felt safe in that regard, but I still think I’m letting go of a lot of the lessons I subliminally learned. Just the idea of shame and not loving who you are or allowing yourself to love what you love, I think, is a big thing. Internalized homophobia is a really confusing thing.”

After moving to Nashville at age 18 to study songwriting at Belmont University, Rogers quickly landed a Sony/ATV publishing deal; a year after graduating, he released his Spiritual EP and explored his semi-secret shame in the breakthrough single “Jacob From the Bible,” which was about his first boyfriend. “That was the first time I had gone really, really deep for me and sort of revealed things that I might have been afraid to say, as far as really opening up about my sexuality and past relationships and healing from traumas of those relationships and connecting it all in a spiritual way. And that’s why I called the EP Spiritual, because all the terror and horror and heartache is so deeply spiritual, and usually leads to such a deeper understanding of life,” he explains.

“Jacob From the Bible” soon went viral. “The message I really remember the most is this person reached out and they said they heard the song in a playlist or something, and liked it and saved it, and they listened again later, but really sort of listened to the song, and they realized like, ‘Oh, this is a gay love story,’” Rogers recalls. “They said it was a true turning point for them. They said they listened to it and thought, ‘How can something so beautiful be so evil?’ They said hearing that song and the story is what turned them around and made them rethink this. And that still blows my mind.”

And then Rogers’s mind was blown once again, when “Jacob From the Bible” grabbed the attention of superstar songwriter Justin Tranter, who has crafted hits for everyone from Imagine Dragons and Fall Out Boy to Halsey, Selena Gomez, Gwen Stefani, and current queer pop sensation Chappell Roan.

“When I was still in Nashville, I was just singing independently and I did a live performance of [“Jacob”] in a church. I was just at a grand piano and wearing this jumpsuit with pearls on it and singing a song about the Bible,” says Rogers. “[Tranter] heard it and sent me a DM and was like, ‘I can’t stop watching this video. You’re just really special.’ And that blew my mind, because I was also a really big Semi Precious Weapons fan and had been following their career up until that point. [Tranter] was someone who was kind of always on my list of people I wanted to work with and write with — and, very convenient timing, they had just started a record label. We started writing together, and the second song we wrote together was ‘Middle of Love.’ It was very clear that we are creative matches, and now [Tranter has] all the power in the world to support up-and-coming queer artists, which is really cool.”

It was “Middle of Love” that then caught Elton John’s attention, when on a whim in May 2021 Rogers decided to up stakes and move from Nashville to a new town. “I put all my stuff in storage. There was just something in my gut that said, ‘Go to New Orleans!’ And I don’t really know why. I’ve always just been obsessed with the city. … But now I know, when you have a weird gut feeling that doesn’t make sense, I implore you to listen to it!” It was in New Orleans that Rogers “quickly became friends” with another pioneering queer artist — and a close friend and collaborator of Elton John’s — former Scissor Sisters frontman Jake Shears.

“I found this group of people there so fast that had my back, and Jake was one of them,” says Rogers. “I was playing my music, sitting in his living room, and he’s like, ‘Elton needs to hear this.’ It was ‘Middle of Love’; I had just released it.” Just as Shears had expected, Elton, a fervent champion of young talent, adored the song. Elton eventually not only invited Rogers to guest on his Rocket Hour radio show and perform at his Oscars afterparty, but declared Rogers to be pop’s next big thing. “It was pretty mind-blowing, and still is pretty mind-blowing, to me,” Rogers marvels. “I think I disassociated the first time Elton said that huge affirmation. And I think afterwards I was like, ‘Well, I guess I don’t suck!’”

Rogers definitely does not suck, despite what closed-minded AGT voters might have thought back in 2012 (or how the fake talent show judges, portrayed by Jessica Yellin, Mike Sabath, and Facet recording artist Shea Diamond, behave in the “Loser” video). And as Rogers releases “Loser” — which, incidentally, includes a cute nod to Elton John with its mention of “tiny dancers” — and readies his debut LP, he understands the power that his anthemic, deeply personal yet universally relatable music holds.

“[My music is] celebrating queerness in particular, but I think just love in general. I feel like it doesn’t always have to be so heavy. I don’t always have to make people cry. Sometimes I just want to make people have a good time too — dance, and maybe cry while they dance, because I like doing that,” Rogers quips. “I think what I am really trying to say and connect as I work on my first full-length album is basically [ask] what is love, what is my experience with it, where is it taking me, and why is it so hard? And those are the questions we all have, no matter what our point of view is.

“And if you have the answers, let me know. Slide in my DMs.”

This interview is taken from Jake Wesley Rogers’s appearance on Lyndsey Parker’s SiriusXM show “Volume West.” Full audio is available on the SiriusXM app.

America’s Got Talent returns to TV this week, but once again, a familiar face won’t be in the mix. Nick Cannon hosted the show for eight seasons, but he quit after Season 12 (and was later replaced by Tyra Banks) after NBC threated to fire him for ridiculing the network in his Showtime comedy special Stand Up, Don’t Shoot. Speaking to Yahoo Entertainment a year after the scandal, Cannon says he still has no regrets, saying it’s “probably one of the best decisions” he ever made in his career.

“It was super-controversial for some time… but it was a freedom-of-speech process and me standing firm for my own beliefs and culturally who I am, and really for all the employees who have been thumb-pressed by their bosses,” Cannon explains, discussing the importance of adhering to his brand. “I kind of stood up and said, ‘Yo, I was threatened for some content that I created.’ And they wanted me to shape up and get in line and watch my choice of words or how speak about the network. …I was threatened to be fired. I told them, ‘You can’t fire a boss. I quit!’”

At the time, Cannon’s decision to walk away from a reported $4.5 million salary shocked his fans, but even people in Cannon’s camp thought he was making a mistake. “People on my own team, people that were with me, man, like they scared for me,” he chuckles. “And I was like, ‘Yo, that job doesn’t define me.’ … As an artist, that was a self-defining moment, because a lot of people was like, ‘How can you walk away from such an amazing job? You’re the No. 1 host on television, highest-paid,’ all of that stuff. And I was like, ‘None of that stuff matters to me. I’m an artist and it’s not about money. It’s about having my own self-worth.”

Since wrapping his final AGT season in 2016, Cannon certainly hasn’t slowed down. He’s been working on the 11th of his comedy game show Wild N Out, studying in his “spare time” at Howard University, and, most importantly, constantly releasing new music.

“I’ve probably made so much more money since walking away from [AGT] and doing it the way that I wanted to do it. I’m almost like, ‘Man, I should’ve stepped away earlier,’” Cannon says. “You ever had those decisions where you’re kind of in your comfort zone and so you kind of you go about the mundane process, and as soon as you step out of your comfort zone it’s all of this freedom and just the universe starts to just throw so many things in your direction? That’s what happened. I’m elated with everything that I’ve been doing since I stepped away from America’s Got Talent.”

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.

Cas Haley on America’s Got Talent. (Photo: Trae Patton/NBCU Photo Bank)

Singer-songwriter Cas Haley was a standout on Season 2 of America’s Got Talent, making it all the way to second place (behind ventriloquist Terry Fator) with his covers of “Walking on the Moon” by the Police and Neil Diamond’s “Red Red Wine.” He’s since released four independent albums, but if you’re wondering why he didn’t go the major label route, it’s because he literally went into hiding from the series’ Simon Cowell-affiliated record company, Syco.

“What I did was, I ignored them for about six months. They wanted an album out by Christmas,” Haley revealed this week during a recent South by Southwest festival panel, “Now What? Life After Reality Singing Competitions,” that also included The Voice Season 1 semifinalist Nakia and American Idol Season 6 runner-up Blake Lewis. “A day after the show was over, I was supposed to be going to meetings; they were introducing me to people that were going to be songwriters on my album. That was a wake-up call, right there. I was like, ‘I am a songwriter. I really care about me being authentic with my art. This is not the place for me.’

“The second day after the show was over, instead of going to the meeting, I flew home and I changed my phone number. True story.”

Haley explained that he’d “grown fearful and untrustworthy” during his time on AGT, which he’d only reluctantly tried out for after a well-meaning friend set up a private audition. (“I really was one of the people that really didn’t like reality TV before I auditioned. My wife loved it, and I was always sort of hating on it.”) He soon had a “rude awakening” when he “realized that it was about good TV and not about maybe doing the right thing,” after he claims producers exploited a young contestant.

“She was probably 8 years old,” Haley recalled. “The producers in the holding room tell all of us, ‘Jasmine made it through.’ Jasmine walks through the doors, everybody claps: ‘Congratulations!’ And Jasmine didn’t make it through. They get the reaction of this 8-year-old girl sort of in that moment of everybody congratulating her, and I was like, ‘Man, I don’t know about this.’ … Maybe they made a mistake, but to me it seemed like it was set up.”

Haley also felt uneasy about the show “pushing people through that obviously were a little unstable,” like “Boy Shakira,” an aspiring female impersonator who was presented as a joke. “I think they’re playing with fire, and that sort of weirded me out. That’s when I sort of stopped — like, ‘I don’t trust these people.’”

And so, when Haley was informed that the show’s powers-that-be wanted to rush out an album with him, he panicked. “What that meant was they were going to exercise all their options,” Haley explained. “Their options is the thing. They have you sign into all these different options, which in total makes a 360 deal where they have your performances capped, they have your merchandising, they have every aspect of revenue from your career they’re involved in.”

Haley subsequently bolted. But he couldn’t hide forever. Months later, in Austin, Texas, America’s Got Talent caught up with him.

“Man, I was sort of freaked out, because they found me!” Haley chuckled. “In this city, at a gig, they just showed up — this guy named Paul who was going to be my manager. … They’re introducing me to my ‘manager,’ they’re introducing me to my songwriters, they find me after I just cut off communication, and I had to basically tell them to leave, because I was freaked out. It’s like someone who didn’t realize that they were so into ma and pa business just sold it, and these other people are coming in and taking control.”

Haley laughingly admitted that he “was in breach of everything” legally, but he didn’t know what he was getting into in the first place. “They gave us the contract [when the season started] and they basically said, ‘We need this back tomorrow,’” he said. “I didn’t even have a lawyer review anything. I just signed it all. The way that it was presented to me, it was pretty much in stone and that they probably wouldn’t be changing anything.”

Runner-up Cas Haley and winner Terry Fator on the America’s Got Talent Season 2 finale. (Photo: Virginia Sherwood/NBCU Photo Bank)

However, Haley later learned from his AGT castmate, Fator, that he’d actually had more negotiating power than he’d realized at the time. “[Fator] really had his s*** together, excuse my language. When he came into the show, he had an attorney and he was just really smart. He negotiated a lot of things throughout the show. Although they might not tell you that things are negotiable, there might actually be some stuff that if you can’t legally sign into all these different options, you might actually be able to get away with not doing it. Terry was one of the ones who really knew what he wanted, knew what he was after, and did it the right way.”

Thankfully, by the time the show hunted Haley down, he had his own lawyer, who extricated him from the contract. “They had me locked into like a five-album option. … I have to say, with all the negative stuff that I did experience, they didn’t shelve me [and prevent me from releasing music] — and they could have. So that was sort of a good deal. And I went on my way.”

Since then, Haley, who lives quietly on a farm in Paris, Texas, with his wife, two kids, and a bunch of pigs when he’s not touring, has enjoyed an indie music career. And over the years, he’s come to appreciate his time on AGT.

“I totally think the show was a blessing for my life. I don’t know if I would actually do it again, but I definitely think that it’s changed my life for the better,” he said. “I’ve learned so much. I think my negative experiences probably could have been averted if I would have actually thought about what I was getting myself into and studied it a little bit and really researched it. Anybody that’s looking to do these kind of shows, I think you really need to put in some serious thought, and you really, really need to know what you want.”

As for whether Haley recommends that young aspiring singers try out for shows like America’s Got Talent, American Idol, or The Voice, he said, “I think it’s different for each kind of different artist. If you’re looking for pop fame, yes. If you’re looking for a bump in some money, yes. If you’re looking for respect as a songwriter, I don’t know. You need to think about it.”

Watch a Facebook Live replay of the SXSW panel “Now What? Life After Reality Singing Competitions” below.

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.

Singing competition shows are nothing new, but their popularity and permanence don’t seem to be fading any time soon. Originally hailed as a new way to break and develop undiscovered talent, the reality is most contestants leave before making a mark and without any support or guidance from the shows or labels involved. Find out how to prepare for what happens before, during and after the cameras are rolling. Moderated by me and featuring Nakia from The Voice, Blake Lewis from American Idol, and Cas Haley from America’s Got Talent.

Go to http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/70036 to vote for this panel to take place at South by Southwest 2018!