David Archuleta on coming out, quitting Mormon Church and having crushes: ‘I’ve become young again’Archuleta’s a boy cosplaying as a man. Cute as a button but with a matured, honeyed voice, he was the secure favorite to win the singing contest that year, but it wasn’t to be. In what remains arguably the show’s most contentious result, he lost the seventh season to rocker David Cook, to the sounds of teenage girls from Minnesota down to Mississippi bawling their eyes out.
Initially, Archuleta thought little of Elton John and George Michael’s, “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me,” but soon it became his survival song. In 2021, on the day he came out publicly as queer (he came out to his family in 2014), he played it on loop.
“I listened to the song on repeat because suddenly it was like, this song means something different to me,” he says. The lyrics became a mercy plea. “Suddenly it became this thing of when you come out and you don’t know if your community is going to accept you, you don’t know if your friends and if your family are going to accept you.”
Archuleta had an intensely real reason to suspect he wouldn’t be accepted. Raised as a Mormon in Salt Lake City, Utah – the state with the largest Mormon population – the musician, now 34, grew up believing that to even think pro-LGBTQ+ thoughts was sinful. During his Idol stint, he knew he felt something he couldn’t contend with, but “you suppress a lot of thoughts and feelings, so it’s like something’s there, but you’re so afraid of it… you’re constantly in denial of your reality.”
Up until age 30, being in proximity to queerness – even just listening to George Michael – felt like playing with fire. “It almost is like voodoo. It’s like this dark magic that you’re supposed to stay away from, otherwise you’ll get hexed or something.”
Conversely, we’re chatting today about his recently-released cover of Michael’s anthemic 1990 single, “Freedom”. Both Archuleta and “Freedom” mark 35 years of existence this year, but only now does the song feel like a pertinent soundtrack to Archuleta’s life.
“Heaven knows I was just a young boy, didn’t know what I wanted to be,” goes verse one. “I was every little hungry schoolgirl’s pride and joy, and I guess it was enough for me.” Though Michael didn’t write the single from the perspective of a closeted 16-year-old Mormon boy appearing on a Simon Cowell-led singing contest, the comparison feels pretty stark.
Archuleta, now 34, has spent the past 17 years working out who he is, and he’s just about getting to a point of understanding. Those 17 years contained enough soaring highs and deep lows to fill a memoir – so he wrote one. It’s in its finishing stages and due for release this year.
In it, he’ll chronicle his chasmic leap from childhood into adulthood through American Idol and his resulting, eight-album music career; his complex relationship with his jazz musician father and former manager, Jeff; the two year mission he took for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints [LDS] in the early 2010s; his three engagements to women while swallowing his queerness; his year-long attempt to continue on as Mormon after coming out publicly, and the suicidal ideation that consumed him during that period.
It’ll take us to where he is now, “and why I decided to just finally say, ‘You know what? I’m stepping away from the church. I’m just going to accept who I am and let myself be, fall in love with men, and have intimate experiences with men”.
Crush was his debut single after Idol, and remains his highest-charting song, peaking at number two in the US in 2008. He lilts the song’s lyrics. “It’s like… ‘I hung up the phone tonight, something happened for the first time, deep inside.’” It’s odd, he says, to be known for a song about having a crush when he denied himself that sensation as a teen.
“I had that feeling I feel, fully, without any fear behind it or shame, in my thirties,” he explains. Often he wonders how different his life would be if he’d been able to explore sexuality and sensuality alongside his peers. “Sometimes I’m like, oh man, I’m in my thirties, and most of my friends have already gone through all of those feelings, so it’s hard to relate to them.”
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