Life has a strange way of working itself out

I live for Tuesdays, and die by Wednesdays.

I will never shy away from embarrassing myself for a good cause

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.

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?"

I have to be involved. Whether it's me writing by myself or with other people, I definitely want to have my hand in the creative process. That's part of why I got into music in the first place.