During the tail end of Pride Month, David Archuleta stopped by to chat with Audacy and CHANNEL Q’s Corey Crockett at The Hard Rock Hotel in New York, to discuss everything from dealing with and accepting backlash, being prideful, the inspiration behind his song “Hell Together," and more.
LISTEN NOW: David Archuleta at The Hard Rock Hotel New York
Since coming out in 2021, David has been “getting more and more into the Pride Month spirit with each year that comes through.”
Noting “the first time I was like… is this bad? Coming from a religious background, I was like, you're not supposed to be prideful. But now I'm like, oh… after being ashamed, all of this time of who you are and now finally loving yourself and celebrating it and being proud of who you are, it’s a great feeling."
Since David started living his truth, and publicly describing himself as queer, as Corey noted Archuleta has “accomplished so many musical goals and milestones in this amount of time.” Going on to list off, “performing on Good Morning America, you've just announced a tour where you're gonna be supporting Pentatonix, you’ve got the new song, like it's been kind of amazing.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of like a second wind to things which has been really exciting,” David expressed. “And I did some dance remixes of my song just recently too because I've been going to more EDM shows and DJ sets and raves, it’s been fun.”
Also getting into the backlash he’s received about attending said EDM shows and raves, David explained, “I think… you hit these places of life where you have contradicting content that you're putting up from who you were before and the people that related to you on certain things.”
He continued, “I used to be very conservative and very modest and very religious. So now the things I'm doing are like bashing with what my previous fans and what I connected with them before… And so you get a lot of disappointment or… people don't know what to think, and a lot of people unfollowing and sometimes I take that personally. I'm like, I don't want people to unlike me, but I also have to be realistic and that makes sense. I have to just help people understand I'm not who you thought I was. I mean, I am who I am. It's just, I've grown up, I've changed, I've evolved.”
Moving on to talk about music, David opened up about his track “Hell Together,” sharing the inspiration behind the song.
“So it was inspired by a conversation I had with my mom after I came out,” David revealed. “When I first came out to my mom, I told her, ‘hey mom, I'm gonna start dating guys’ and she said, ‘I love you, David, but I love God more and I can't support you in this decision’ because she said that she testified that marriage is between a man and a woman and that's what God's plan is for me.”
“And I said, ‘Mom I get it, I believed the same thing up until a week before this conversation. I don't need you to accept what I'm doing if you really feel like it's going against what you truly believed in your core. I just want you to respect that I'm doing what is the best thing for me right now. And she said, ‘OK, I can do that.’”
“Then a year later, even though I came out, I was still going to church, I was still a practicing Mormon Latter Day Saint. And it just got to a point where I'm like, this is way too much, this is too conflicting. I’m trying to show people, trying to help my community understand what it's like to be an out person, a queer part of the LGBTQ+ community, and a lot of people still were very close-minded and it was just affecting me too much. And I know there's some other queer people who still go to church, but for me, I just couldn't do it. There's just too many things that weren't connecting and I felt like this doesn't make sense and I need to just take a step away from it."
Then when his departure from the church “got announced in People Magazine,” which Archuleta admitted he “wasn’t expecting,” he didn't hear from his mom "for a few days after that article came out."
"I thought she's so upset with me… and then she texted me… ‘I’ve decided to step away from the church as well’ and I was like, ‘Mom, oh, you don't have to. I know how much the church means to you. You don't have to do that if you feel like you're just trying to align with me.’ But she said, ‘I don't want to be somewhere where my children don't feel loved and welcomed. And if you're going to hell, then we're all going to hell with you.’”
David continued discussing his coming out journey in regards to himself, his family and the church, as well as making friends in the queer community, and a whole lot more. To catch it all, check out the entire interview above.