David Archeleta- the full show Part Two

David Archuleta is arguably one of the most memorable top contenders from American Idol. After he walked away from the 2008 season as 1st runner up, he met with immediate professional success. His first single, “Crush,” sold more than 2 million digital copies to become double platinum. Three months later, his self-titled album, David Archuleta, sold more than 900,000 copies worldwide. With a faithful social media following (3.5 million Facebook followers, 1.1 million on Twitter, and almost 1 million followers on Tik Tok), David has toured all over the U.S., Canada, Asia and even in the Middle East. Through all that, David was dealing with a huge internal conflict between his spiritual identity and his sexual orientation. In 2021, David came out as queer to the LGBTQ community and continues to navigate his identity. During this time, he also had vocal cord surgery, which left him unable to speak much for 3 months, resulting in a period of self-reflection. In the fall of 2022, David revealed to Good Morning America that he was experiencing a faith crisis and stepping away from the Church of Latter Day Saints, having been a Mormon his whole life. That was then, this is now... 2023, the year of Archuleta. He just completed a run on The Masked Singer, again hitting the covetted !st Runner Up spot. But even though Bishop Briggs won the top spot, David walked away with the most love. The normally quippy and non-serious judge Ken Jeong was brought to tears when David's identity was revealed. After David shared of his journey, the rest of the audience was in tears as well. Today we talk to David and play his new single UP, "a song about finding the strength you didn’t know you had in you. And replacing any fear and hate with love. Especially self love.”