I honestly in a lot of ways don't want to sing about my real life, because that's private.

I feel like I'm a product of this generation where everybody listens to charts with diverse music.

Save me from this road I'm on, Jesus take the wheel.

We don't have milk cows. People have so many stereotypes of people from where I come from - Oklahoma. We don't ride around in covered wagons, either.

[Carnival Ride] is part of a line from my favorite song on the album, "Wheel of the World." It sums up everything that's happened to me. It's nuts to think of where I was a couple of years ago.

I was terrified of graduating college and not knowing what I was going to do. I saw the auditions for Idol and thought, Why not? I always liked to sing. You know when they asked, "Are you the next American Idol?" I said yes, but I didn't mean it.

I'm really lucky in the sense that my hair holds curl awesomely well. It looks the same at 10 P.M. as it does at 10 A.M. One of my favorite products is Oribe Dry Texturizing Spray. I can get a lot of volume with it. I'm from the South - I like big hair.