This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Give me money for cigarettes.

I'll never leave your filthy bed.

I stay in the night and one night weekend, two or three years, the kids are not all right,

but that's okay because no one here is Teen Beat.

Hello, everyone, it's Daniel Fischel, back with a brand new episode of Teen Beat,

Your weekly reminder that my teenage years, every

single one of them, were played out on a television screen with six to eight million people

watching per week, catching every pimple, every awkward pubescent development, and even my first

kiss. But now, this podcast, well, it's my opportunity to turn the tables. I now get to

sit with interesting people who've done interesting things and find out what they were like as

kids, how their own moments of childhood cringe helped shape who they are today. I see it like this. I gave you my childhood.

It's time we hear yours. And this week, I am so excited to welcome a guest whose vulnerability

is already on full display thanks to a brand new, glorious memoir that I absolutely loved, but more on that later. Before he put pen to paper

at just six years old, thanks to a quick glimpse of Le Miz, he knew he wanted to entertain. And like

everyone who's famous in 26, he was raised in Utah, amongst the Church of Latter-day Saints,

creating both a little performer

and a confused kid trying to understand his surroundings. An early stop on Star Search may have

triggered the lift-off, but it was his trip to Hollywood and American Idol in 2007 at just 16

years old that sent him into orbit.

He finished in second place, yet three songs he performed on the show's finale,

...