The look on my face here says it all: happy and excited all at once
But I didn’t want get too ahead of myself, and tried to just see that moment for what it was: a baby step of progress. Not toward the goal of being on the show necessarily, but for the sake of my ability to start believing in any positive feedback that I would get. I stayed on course with the decision of not telling anyone and just kept looking forward.
For the next round on Thursday, there was a giant list of songs that we could choose from. We couldn’t just sing whatever we wanted because of licensing issues; we could only sing songs that were cleared by the show. I picked “Heaven” by Bryan Adams. I remember rehearsing with the musical directors, Debra Byrd and Michael Orland, which was also when we finally started singing with the band. Everything was starting to feel more official, more serious. I’m sure all the contestants could feel this professional shift in the way things were being handled, and we all tried our best to step it up. There was a very synergistic vibe in the air. Everyone was so excited, and clearly inspired by the amazing singing we were getting to hear from one another. There was so much raw talent on that stage, so many different voices and styles. It was beyond awesome.
The three days gave us the chance to start mingling, too. I remember meeting Michael Johns, and for the first time seeing David Cook perform. I also got to meet Brooke White, who was in the Top 5, and I clicked with her instantly. It was so nice to be able to make a friend with similar background and values to share this experience with. But at the end of each of those days, I came back to the hotel where we were all staying and practiced my songs or the piano. I was happy to be meeting other people but I didn’t want to get too distracted.
During these days, we also had lots of interviews with more producers and executives. By now we were also being filmed, and having the camera on me was by far one of the most difficult things to get used to. I don’t have to remind you of my shyness, so imagine me trying to not come across like Mr. Awkward every time we had to film an interview. I had to work really hard to keep myself together, which I did by acting like I didn’t care that a camera was up in my face. Fake it until you make it, right? In time it would get easier to do, but those first few interviews were especially intimidating and worse than a total nightmare.
After I sang in the third round, Simon said he didn’t like “Heaven” as much as he had liked “Crazy,” but that it was still good. He seemed pleased (well, as pleased as Simon ever gets); and the rest of the judges gave positive comments, too. Once again, against everything that I thought was going to happen, I passed. I was now one of fifty people in the running to be on the show.
The Green Mile would make up an entire episode of the show, and took place in the same location as Hollywood Week. Only this time, none of us would sing. There would only be more interviews and then finally the selection announcements. We all sat in a waiting room wondering what the heck was going on. People were there with their families, so it was a pretty emotionally charged scene. There were lots of tears—both of sadness and joy. Every time someone came back after being called in, the look on his or her face would tell us what the decision had been.
. . . having the camera on me was by far one of the most difficult things to get used to.
I wish I could tell you that I remember how I felt or what the judges’ exact words were when they told me that I was one of the ones selected. I had prepared myself so much to be told no that I had no idea what to do with the news that I had actually made it. The tingles came back again, and this time they were all over my face. Now I felt my heart beating in every part of me. So many thoughts ran through my brain: Would I have to leave school? Would my family really be cool with this? What would it be like to be one of the youngest people on the show?
When I came back out to the waiting room to tell my dad and aunt the amazing news, all I remember is that there was a camera in my face and people were screaming. It was such a crazy commotion that the details are just fuzzy to me. I’m sure we all hugged and went bonkers together for a moment, but it’s really all kind of a blur.
I just wanted to sing.
Once the full Top 24 were announced, there was a huge celebration with us all dancing and rejoicing in the fact that we had come this far. It was a great opportunity to get to know the people who we’d be spending the next chapter of our lives with, and now it really felt like we were on the brink of a serious journey.
Even though I was in the Top 24, I still didn’t think I had the slightest chance to win and just kept trying to forget the fact that I was part of a contest. You see, I didn’t really want to compete—I just wanted to sing.
CHAPTER 6
CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR
“If you play music with passion and love and honesty, then it will nourish your soul, heal your wounds and make your life worth living. Music is its own reward.”
—STING
My experience on the show would be slightly different from those of the contestants who weren’t minors. For one thing, my dad would be there with me as my legal guardian while the show was putting us up, and I would also while the show was putting us up, and I would also have to go to three hours of school every day.
I imagined that I’d be back in school in no time and felt that I should do everything in my power to stay caught up. I didn’t even say good-bye to anyone at school that January because I was sure I’d be seeing them all again real soon.
But my high school principal said that even though everyone at school was really excited for me, I had to withdraw because my district had very particular rules about attendance. I’m sure many kids would have been thrilled to withdraw from high school, but I felt terrible about it. I’ve always taken school and grades very seriously, and having to make this choice was bigger and scarier than deciding to quit my summer job. This was high school we were talking about. It was scary enough to be part of the competition to begin with; but the prospect of failing in that context and failing school just seemed like too dark a place to end up. Other young contestants who had been on the show were able to get work sent to them. But my school district was more strict, and this just wasn’t an option for me. They wouldn’t make an exception. I was told that I wouldn’t be able to finish my junior year—at least not with the rest of my class. I tried to take online classes, like other minors had in previous seasons, but I just couldn’t concentrate. It wasn’t for me.
All of the kids under eighteen were assigned a studio teacher once we were in the Top 24 and had begun working on the live shows. My teacher and I would work together for a few hours each day, and luckily during the Top 24, there were other minors who were in the same boat as me, so at least in the beginning I wasn’t alone. I became really close to them because we had similar schedules, which was a nice way to start out the season; but at the same time it made it that much more sad for me to see them go when they did. Even when I went to regular school, it had taken a lot of effort for me to get good grades; now, as I juggled the competition with trying to be a student, it sometimes felt impossible. I couldn’t even focus, let alone absorb a lot of what was being taught to me. Often, my mind was just somewhere else.
And even though I had the studio teacher, and as excited as I was about the Idol experience, the reality that I had to officially withdraw from high school definitely felt like a small crisis. You have to understand that one of the reasons grades have always been really important to me is that as much as I loved music and hoped I could have a future in music, I never counted on music to work out for me as a life path. I just always thought I’d need some kind of plan B. Good grades would give me the chance to make solid choices about college and could open the door to having a worthwhile career. The idea of risking this almost felt like a mistake. But I guess that was how I learned that sometimes you have to take a risk when there’s an opportunity right under your nose. No matter how hard things seemed to get, it also began to get clearer and clearer that there would be no turning bac
k. Once you’re in the show, you’re in the show, and I wasn’t about to walk away from that. Quitting would have equaled failure; so giving up was never an option, the same way it hadn’t been an option to give up at the Utah talent show a few years back.
At some point, it just hit me that music should be my focus, no matter how things turned out. Yes, school was important, and yes, I was taking a major risk, but I tried to reach back to that moment I had knelt by my bed and talked to God and remember that I was here for a reason. I started working on songs twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week (except for the three hours a day of school and a little sleep once in a while). On American Idol, that wasn’t too shabby. I would say to myself, “David, remember that this is a good thing—the opportunity may have come a bit sooner than expected, but here it is nonetheless. Take it. Run with it. This is my dream coming true.” My parents were, of course, delighted and excited, but they didn’t want to get ahead of themselves either, and tried to follow my lead on staying calm. They would be a tremendous support system for me, and I know I wouldn’t have been able to get through some of the hardest moments without my dad’s on-site wisdom and support, and the comforting sound of my mom’s voice on the phone.
My poor brother and sisters were really the ones who had to put up with the most, because by now everyone at school knew that “David Archuleta” was their brother. They were constantly approached as “David’s brother or sister” and sort of lost their own identities, which made it a rough time for them. They just wanted to be themselves and have their space. Nothing in their lives had really changed; yet they were being hit with the Idol mania on a daily basis just because they were my family. They wanted privacy, and out of nowhere they were tossed into the madness with me. Only I got to live tucked away in L.A., but they had the burden of showing up at school every day to face everyone’s comments. I mean, how many times in one day can a person hear “You’re David’s brother?” I felt bad for them but knew they would be fine once Idol mania died down.
the reality that I had to officially withdraw from high school definitely felt like a small crisis.
No amount of mental preparation could have possibly primed me for the fact that for the next five months, I would be living in L.A. to learn, rehearse and ultimately sing a total of nineteen songs live on American Idol alongside a bunch of older (and way more experienced) singers, the whole time camped out in an apartment with my father and doing all my schoolwork with a studio teacher, Wendy, instead of actually going to high school. As exciting as it all was, my life felt like it was someone else’s. In my mind’s eye, I would look down at myself like a fly on the wall of my own experience; and each time I had to really shake myself to realize that it was all actually happening to me.
Think about it: From the moment I was announced as one of the Top 24, I went from being just David to David-Archuleta-on-American-Idol . It felt like such a massive responsibility. All of a sudden people expected me not only to perform, but also to continually outdo myself. Not only would I be up against so many other amazing talents, but also I had to surpass the bar that I would set for myself each week. We were now in a competition that included individual progress as one of the key variables to win. Even though I was stoked about being on the show, I also thought that I was the worst person there. Every week, I assumed that I was going to be the next one sent home. I honestly didn’t think there was anything special about me. Those few months would be full of equal parts joy and stress, and there were many moments when I didn’t know if I would be able to handle another minute. Keep in mind that overnight I went from being a regular high school kid (a position I worked hard to get after being a Star Search kid) to being on the biggest show on TV. Remember that I was for the most part shy and quiet, and all of this new exposure was kind of mortifying. From one day to the next, I had thrown myself into the lion’s den, exposing myself to the world, setting myself up for who knows what kind of disasters. The very thought of being on live television every week was incredibly stressful for all of us. No one (except for Jason Castro!) was ever relaxed. I know I constantly had that tense feeling in my shoulders. I’m not saying it wasn’t fun; but it was a lot of work and every day felt like a series of hurdles to get past with next to no time. But at one point I told myself that no matter how nerve-racking the whole thing was, it would be more productive to enjoy it, rather than suffer in anxiety the whole time.
Every week I had to pick the right song, work on its arrangement, practice, and try to keep up with studio school as much as possible. Throughout all of those months, it seemed like we oftentimes didn’t even have enough time to prepare for that week’s music, and the various random tasks that got added to our already crazy schedules made it very difficult to juggle everything. Every night we would receive a text message giving us the next day’s itinerary. Most days started as early as five or six in the morning, and wouldn’t end until ten or eleven at night. I would typically wake up, rehearse, shower and then leave for the studio, where I would spend a few hours in school. Sundays usually meant a full day of shooting music videos, from morning to night. On top of rehearsing and filming the video, which usually went late into the evening, we would find a CD under our door upon arriving home that we had to rehearse for our iTunes recording session the next morning. Again, because I would have school, I usually had to go first which means I had very little time to rehearse and prepare my song. After recording on Monday, I would rehearse my song with the band and do a rough sound check. That was my chance to tell the band what I wanted the song to sound like, which could be really stressful due to there being only one hour to try to make sure everything was just right. It was a challenge for me to know how to explain everything I was hoping to be in the song in the proper music language so the band could understand what I meant, but it was a good opportunity for me to learn a lot about communicating on a musical and verbal level. After that rehearsal, most people got to take a load off and have a rest, but of course I’d still have to go back to school.
On non-show days, mixed in with a few hours with my studio teacher, I would get pulled out to rehearse my song again with the show’s musical directors. Some days we also had photo shoots, or promotional appearances, or had to film more interviews for the show. We were always doing something.
On Tuesdays, the morning of the show, we would work with the production crew to rehearse onstage for the actual performance. There were always tons of cameras around the singers onstage, and the musical directors and stage manager would also give us tips on where to look, and how to angle our bodies. Everyone always had something to say—that’s for sure.
Tuesdays were also when we would rehearse the group numbers that we’d perform on the Wednesday results shows, which was the last thing anyone ever wanted to do. We had enough on our own plates without also having to think about group numbers with the people we were competing against. But once Tuesday afternoons were over and done with, I would feel a huge sense of relief. By then, the song was chosen, arranged, rehearsed, and that was it. There was nothing more you could do at that point but wait for the live show to start, and then when it’s your turn to give it your best shot and go for it! After the show, we would usually go over to a restaurant with our family who was usually there for the live show or whatever friends might be there for a bite to eat and to try to relax a little bit. It was the closest thing to down time we had the entire week.
That quick breath of relief was short-lived, though, because Wednesday was just as packed as every other day, with dress rehearsals for the results show, especially the dreaded group numbers. In addition to those rehearsals, interviews and, in my case, school, some weeks you also had to start thinking about your song for the following week. On Wednesday or Thursday morning, we’d be given the list of songs to choose from, and by a certain time they would give us, we would have to pick three possibilities off the list. And we had to be sure about them, because once we submitted our choices, we were committed to performing one of
the three. I didn’t even know a lot of the songs, sometimes I had to sacrifice school time to meet the deadlines they gave us and research various renditions so I could figure out what my own take would be. Thankfully, Wendy was very understanding and would let me take whatever time I needed to meet my deadlines. She understood that my main reason to be there was to do as well as I could each week and she made sure she gave me as much flexibility as possible to keep up with everything.
On the Wednesday show, someone would get voted off, of course, and that person would have to fly out the next morning to do a week of press. So after the show, we always had a farewell dinner as a group. It was bittersweet, because even though it was nice to spend time together, the good-bye factor made it kind of tough. It was really fun though because we actually did a roast of the person who was leaving and they had a chance to say something about all of us too so it was sad but very fun and memorable. If you’re going to get voted off, at least this helped soften the blow quite a bit.
Sometime between Thursday and Sunday, we’d go shopping for outfits for the upcoming week. There was a stylist who would help us, but we mostly were able to choose what we felt comfortable in. By this point in the week, we would also have narrowed down our list of three songs to one, and spent a lot of time working on the arrangement and rehearsing. If you couldn’t decide which of the three songs you wanted to do, the musical directors would help you figure out the best choice. Even then sometimes you’d pick a song only to find out that you couldn’t sing it after all (whether it wasn’t right for your pitch or simply a bad song choice to begin with), so you’d have to go back to the drawing board and pick another one.