Chords of Strength

by David Archuleta

  As our new Murray neighbors found out our family was musically inclined, we got asked every now and then to perform at a few church activities and weddings and even some funerals. One early memory I have is when my mom had Claudia and me learn a fun dance to a traditional Spanish folk song by Gloria Estefan. She got us some white clothes, and I had a straw hat and bandanna, and we did an authentic dance and learned some choreography that my mom taught us. We performed it at a few places, and at that point, I just danced but didn’t really sing by myself in front of people. For church events, we would sing popular songs and harmonize together, and sometimes we were also invited to perform at hospitals and nursing homes for the elderly and sick.

  When we first arrived in Utah, my mom, who still really wanted to develop her own skill as a singer, started taking vocal lessons with a girl in our neighborhood. One Saturday, she told us she was going to a seminar being hosted by another vocal teacher in town, Brett Manning. One of Brett’s keynote speakers was going to be the legendary Seth Riggs, famous for working with people like Natalie Cole, Michael Bolton, Ray Charles, and Stevie Wonder, just to name a few. In fact, Riggs was the only vocal coach that Michael Jackson ever worked with. My mom ended up taking classes with Brett, and with just a few lessons, she improved dramatically. She would practice by singing mostly pop songs, including Spanish pop songs by Selena and Gloria Estefan and “On My Own” from Les Misérables.

  Within about six months of moving into Murray, we outgrew the house and had to move to another house in Murray because my dad’s new business of buying and selling computer equipment kept needing more room to store everything. We stayed there for another six months and then moved to a really nice house, in Centerville. We found a family who was going to be gone on a church mission for two years and who wanted a family to rent their home while they were gone. It was not your typical house. We called it “the mansion” because it was humongous, and we had several acres as our yard to play in! The youngest member of our family, my little sister Amber, was born while we lived there. I also remember that our neighbors had a pot-bellied pig who always seemed to be out laying down in their front yard, or at least that’s what we would always see whenever we passed by their house. I was really into video games as a little kid—like Zelda and all the Nintendo 64 games; and I was fanatical about the Pokémon games, too. I could easily spend hours on these types of activities. Up until I was about thirteen, I was also obsessive about science and anything that had to do with the natural world, which probably explains my interest in ducklings and baby chickens.

  I loved watching the National Geographic channel. I was fascinated with dinosaurs and wanted to know everything about them. I was definitely a bit of nerd back then—heck, I still am. I loved cryptozoology, like Bigfoot and Chupacabra and the Loch Ness Monster. The less the possibility something could be real, the more I liked it. I’d waste afternoons absorbed in musty books about those legends as well as astronomy, geology and marine biology (aren’t giant squids so freaky?) in the public library. Nature is really amazing. How do some of these things even exist? It gives me goose bumps sometimes, when I really think about it. Haven’t you ever looked out the window on a pretty day and wondered how it’s possible anything could be so beautiful?

  I also had two cats—Midnight and Cloudy—and they were pretty awesome, as far as cats go. They kept me company most of the time. I never wanted to separate from them, and hung out with them any chance I could get. They weren’t just regular cats; they would play tag with me and cuddle, so whenever I felt lonely, they were right there to make me feel better. I really enjoyed them. Until they both got pregnant. Twice each. After the first time, whenever it was their time of the month, I used to stay up late to try to chase away this big tomcat who would howl when he would come over to court my cats. I fell asleep frequently trying to discourage him from staying around, and sometimes I would outlast the tomcat, and sometimes I wouldn’t. My dad would find me crashed on the sofa and carry me up to my room. That tomcat ended up fathering over ten kittens. Needless to say, I didn’t have the cats for very long after that. Plus, we were ready to move to a new house where we really couldn’t have any pets so we had to give them away, which was sad, but I knew we had to do it.

  And in between my hanging out in libraries and on the couch watching nature shows or tending to my cats, I’d go out and rollerblade, which is just an awesome way to get to know your neighbors. If there was someone I didn’t know, I would just stop and say hi. I loved moving fast, gliding around from place to place and taking in all the local scenery while I was at it. I looked forward to waking up the next morning and feeling my sore muscles from the day before. It always felt gratifying to know that I had worked hard enough to get sore. When I’d go alone, it almost felt like I had the world to myself—because I kept moving and no one could catch me.

  I could stop and be social, which I really enjoyed, especially helping some neighbors who would be out working in their gardens. Sometimes I would stop to help them and they would try to give me money but I wouldn’t ever take it because I just wanted to be nice to them without expecting to be paid.

  One time, a neighbor wouldn’t let me say no and I went home and showed the money to my parents and said I didn’t really want it but she insisted. I kind of felt bad about it but I didn’t really know what else I could do. Rollerblading and just walking around the neighborhood was something that allowed me to have a lot of special memories. Riding around on those blades felt like total freedom.

  Something else that was important to me was that although my life was changing because of music, some things didn’t change. In my church, the scouting program is part of what we do from the time we are eight until we reach the age of eighteen. We start off as Cub Scouts, at twelve become Boy Scouts, and the crowning achievement of that program is to get your Eagle Scout award. I never really thought that I was cut out for scouts; I wasn’t really into camping and winter overnight trips and boating and doing the things that you usually did for scouts. I imagined that it was meant more for the kids that were into sports and hunting and fishing. I just didn’t think that I was the Eagle Scout type. Maybe I just wasn’t motivated enough. Not outdoorsy enough. Plus, to get your Eagle, you need to show leadership skills. I just never really saw myself as enough of a leader. I was just David, who could maybe lead his dog across the street. On a leash.

  But my church leaders believed in me and especially one of our neighbors, Cal Madsen. They all kept asking me if I needed help and even taught me how to tie knots, how to pitch a tent, how to prepare for emergencies, how to be a good citizen, and lots of other neat skills that might come in handy some day. Cal made sure I had all the required merit badges and then helped me with the necessary steps to progress through the various ranks of Star, then Life, and ultimately Eagle. Scouting didn’t come naturally for me, but with some encouragement and persistent prodding, I was actually doing it. I was getting a bunch of merit badges and actually enjoying getting them. Too bad it all got cut short when I started American Idol.

  CHAPTER 2

  HIT WITH INSPIRATION

  “If you can dream it, you can do it.”

  —WALT DISNEY

  It’s cool how an artist comes up with an idea that influences another artist and it keeps changing and moving from one person to the next; creativity has a way of recycling and rein-venting itself with the passage of time. It’s almost as if each artist contributes something unique to a massive bank of ideas and expressions that’s accessible to everyone, which future artists later have the privilege of tapping into when it’s time for their own creations to come about. So, if creativity is a force that’s passed down from artist to artist and generation to generation, then I like to believe inspiration is the thread that ties it all together. Inspiration is fluid; it can move from one person to another at any given moment, through any given manner. To me, the feeling of being inspired is what happens when something strikes you so intensely that it triggers some
thing deep inside and sparks your creativity to do something you haven’t done before. And then depending on how you choose to respond, it can allow you to be an inspiration to someone else in turn. In any kind of art, inspiration is contagious. The way I see it, without inspiration, we’re all like a box of matches that will never be lit.

  Looks like I was deep in thought in this one . . . or just really into that 3D film!

  My dad took me to a high school track one evening the summer after we’d moved to Utah. He was scoping it out for exercise, admiring how new and fresh it looked. He brought all of us kids along. I was just six at the time, but I thought it looked pretty cool too, so I started running around it, for fun, my little feet pounding the pavement. I ran a lap and my dad was impressed and yelled out to me, “Great job, David. Ready to go?”

  No, I wasn’t. I didn’t tell him that, though. I didn’t answer him at all. I just kept running. And running. You know, like in the movie Forrest Gump? This is what my family must have felt, wondering when I was going to quit running. I ran three miles that night but I could have kept going. I guess when I decide I like something, I can’t get enough of it. That kind of singular focus sums me up pretty well, actually. And not just when it comes to running.

  When we had just moved to Utah, I remember being downstairs with my brother Daniel playing while my mom was upstairs unpacking and my dad was getting ready to go do some computer work. Before he left, he realized that we were probably going to run out of things to do and wanted to make sure we had something to keep us busy. He had recorded the Les Misérables tenth anniversary concert when we were still in Florida and put the VCR on so we could watch it to at least keep us occupied for a little while. So there we were among the zipping open of taped-up cardboard boxes and the popping and snapping of plastic packing material, when I heard something that would change me forever. The first song, “Look Down,” was a fun song that Daniel and I both acted out with the other “prisoners” on the TV screen. We quickly learned that song and proceeded to learn all the rest within just a few hours. There was one song, “Castle on a Cloud,” sung by the character, Cosette, the young daughter of one of the show’s female protagonists. The melody was sad and beautiful in that haunting sort of way, and for some reason, I decided to think that was the best song for me to learn because I was about the same age as her. I just couldn’t get enough of Les Miz, including all the accents and even the racy song “Lovely Ladies” (which I had no idea what it was about, I promise). Though I couldn’t possibly understand then what all the songs were about, I understood very clearly that it had struck me deep in the heart. My eyes were fixed on these performers, and that music captivated me that afternoon and for many years to come. I had never felt so much passion for anything like that before. Until then, all I had known about music was salsa and jazz from my parents, Christmas songs, and a few children’s videos we really enjoyed like Silly Songs, Wee Sing, and I hate to admit it, some Barney songs, as well as some primary songs that we would sing at church. The quality of these Broadway songs had a totally new and different effect on me; it was a subconscious reaction that made me want more.

  The first day my dad gave us the video, he was gone all day, I think for about twelve hours. When he came home, guess where we were? Still in front of the video, with about half of the songs memorized already. I’d literally beg my parents to play the video over and over again for us, which they did, despite being somewhat surprised by our sudden interest in what usually is considered a more adult musical. Each time we would press play, Daniel would wait for his part, Gavroche, and I would wait for “my parts”—both the male and female. It didn’t matter, we took turns singing each song, and quickly had them memorized word for word. I definitely didn’t even understand the plot of the show. I mean, really, I didn’t even know what a plot was at that time. It didn’t matter, as I wasn’t driven by the story but instead by the emotion that filled the room each time I’d hear that beautiful music. The melodies were magical to me, mysteriously warming me from the inside every time I would hear them. Something about it just consumed me. I would even try to mimic the accents as closely as I could, which I guess was my way of further connecting to the magic that I was feeling for myself. It was an unconscious pull toward something that I couldn’t possibly understand in any intellectual way—but something that I knew I was totally obsessed with. Singing seemed to fill a void I didn’t know I had, and from this point on, I was completely hooked.

  Since we didn’t have a piano when we moved to Utah, my dad got my sister and me one of those Casio electronic keyboards that came with one hundred and one different songs with lighted keys. We would try to learn these simple little songs and would take turns playing them for each other. We never paid attention to what was playing on the radio; we preferred making our own music or listening to our favorite musicals. Besides Les Misérables, we also loved Into the Woods, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and Evita. I even tried out opera for a little while after hearing an opera appreciation computer CD my dad brought home one day. There was one song that played automatically whenever you would put the CD in the drive, and I would sing right along with it. It was a song for high sopranos so I had my work cut out for me, but I remember enjoying it immensely until I moved on to my next phase of musical discovery.

  Meanwhile, while my parents were performing with their salsa band, they also were able to perform at a Mexican restaurant, Garcia’s, up in Layton. It was just the two of them and a guitar player friend, Kenji. My dad played the flügelhorn while my mom sang and Kenji would accompany my mom, then play something with my dad. They would do songs with karaoke tracks and trio arrangements, and one day, they told me if I would come and sing, I could have anything free I wanted off the menu, which was a special treat for me and made it an offer I couldn’t refuse. I willingly accepted the invitation to perform and poured my heart out singing my rendition of “Castle on a Cloud” and songs from Evita. At the time, I honestly didn’t think anyone was paying any attention to me, but there was this waitress who put a tip in the little cup that sat at the foot of the stage, and I remember seeing her face while I sang this particular song and thought she was just feeling sorry for me and trying to make me feel good because I was a little kid.

  Claudia and me, always two peas in a pod

  The next summer, when I was nine years old, my dad surprised my sister and me with season passes to the famous one-hundred-year-old Lagoon Amusement Park in Farmington, which was close to our town of Centerville, about ten miles north of Salt Lake City. The passes meant that we could visit the park three or four times per week if we wanted to, which of course we did, loving each visit more than the last. Man, that place was awesome. Arcades! Roller coasters! Games! Food! And music!

  We were totally ecstatic. After all, the place was overflowing with fun, all kinds of games, and our personal favorite: musical groups that performed all kinds of awesome musical numbers. We really liked the OK Corral Western performers, who would always hang out with us after their performances and make us feel special, and also the group of “zombies” who would sing and perform fun pop songs. One of their signature tunes that summer was Natalie Cole’s “Pink Cadillac,” which would stay in my mind forever and make her one of my musical role models to this day.

  The next school year, we moved from Centerville to Sandy, and I started fourth grade. For Christmas that year, my aunt Char bought me a Natalie Cole greatest hits CD, which I would listen to over and over again, and for a talent show, a girl who I knew from OnStage, Janey, asked if I wanted to sing a duet with her of “Pink Cadillac.” I was a little nervous and thought everyone was going to laugh because it was a song that I didn’t think they would know, or maybe they would think I sounded like a girl. But my mom helped Janey and me and together took that very song and choreographed our own little skit to perform for the class complete with a cardboard version of a pink Cadillac. We loved all of the soulful R & B licks and, with the kind of determinatio
n only ten-year-olds could have, we were going to get everything right, even if it was just for an audience of kids and teachers.

  Even at that age, I didn’t want to just sound soulful, I wanted to be soulful. I would try to listen and learn from other singers, and I seemed to be drawn to the songs with dramatic moments in them and did my best to try to find where the magic in the music lived. What was it that made it real? What was it that made you feel it so deeply?

  My mom had learned a lot about vocal technique when she studied with Brett Manning and she started to help me with my technique, while my dad taught me the basic concepts of how to make a song sound your own. He would say, “David, instead of sounding exactly like the person on the record you hear, why don’t you change things up a bit?” I soon began to understand that this could make my singing special. No matter what famous song I would sing, my goal became to give people the impression that they were hearing and experiencing that song for the very first time.

  Looking back, I think I learned important concepts about musicianship at a very young age without realizing it. I didn’t learn them consciously, but they were definitely coming through. I guess I started internalizing these things when I didn’t even know any better, and I have my parents and grandparents to thank for that.