I'm competitive to a fault, so of course every week I'm just like, "I want to win, I want to do great."

I knew at the time my haircut was pretty damn god-awful, so I was just hoping that I wasn't one of the joke ones. And they put me through to Hollywood and I thought, "Well okay, maybe I'm still one of the joke ones but at least I'm not terrible?"

The further you go on the show, the larger the budget gets. But in the beginning they were just like, "Here's a hundred bucks in L.A. Good luck."

I got to play with ZZ Top and introduce Bryan Adams and George Michael. And to have it all topped off by me winning 'American Idol?!' It's pretty absurd.

Alcoholism is a well documented pathological reaction to unresolved grief.

I absolutely think the Seattle grunge sound was instrumental to my music education.

It's amazing what a haircut and forgetting to shave will do.