I think the responsibility of pop stars is to liberate the masses. In that everyone can be whatever they wanna be. You can march to your own beat. It's so hard sometimes in our country because conformity is the way things are pushed.
I think the difficult thing is the transition between TV competition series and going into the actual music industry. There still seems to be a slight disconnect there.
I never really listen to what people say. My thing is that my favorite artists are artists that are theatrical. Obviously when you are doing a recording, things aren't gonna translate as over-the-top.
The biggest risk I've ever taken is going on American Idol and trying to be myself. I wasn't going to try too hard to conform, and I knew that it could possibly not work out.
It gets better. It seems hard, you know, I think being different is always gonna be a tough climb. There's always gonna be people that are scared of it. But at the end of the day you give those bullies, those people, that are so ignorant, if you give them the power to affect you, you're letting them win. And they don't deserve that. What you're doing by being yourself is you're keeping it real, and you're being really brave.
We don't have a lot of men on stage doing flamboyant or theatrical. We have a lot of female pop stars doing it, but where are the guys? Where's the classic pop-rock showman?