As he returns to music after a 12-year hiatus, Clay Aiken is wanting again on his path to residing as his true self.
A North Carolina native, Aiken rose to prominence on the second season of “American Idol” in 2003. Although he completed in second place behind Ruben Studdard, he nonetheless gained widespread popularity of his debut album, “Measure of a Man,” which hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts.
Chatting with Individuals in an interview printed final week, nevertheless, Aiken recalled how that preliminary flush of success got here to an abrupt halt when he got here out as homosexual. He publicly addressed his sexuality in a Individuals cowl story printed a couple of month after welcoming his son, Parker, in 2008.
“Back then it was a big deal,” he informed Individuals. “We are in a very different time. I lost maybe 50 percent of the fan base.”
Aiken mentioned he instantly observed the influence by observing the ticket gross sales for “Spamalot,” the Broadway musical through which he was showing on the time of his coming-out.
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“The first four months that I was in, the show was selling out, standing room only. You can actually look at the ticket sales the week after that cover came out,” he defined. “It went from selling very well to the week after the cover came out, the ticket sales dropped. ‘Spamalot’ ended up closing a few months after that.”
Although Aiken continued to file music and tour, his album gross sales waned significantly. For a lot of the previous decade, he’s been targeted on politics, having run for Congress as a Democrat in his dwelling state of North Carolina in 2014 and 2022.
Final month, Aiken unveiled “Christmas Bells Are Ringing,” a set of vacation songs that’s additionally first studio album in 12 years. And although he has no regrets about popping out as homosexual when he did, he mentioned he’s “thrilled” to see extra LGBTQ+ artists and musicians being embraced by the mainstream in 2024.
“A lot of people who come out now end up having boosts in popularity because of it … That’s mind-blowing to me because it’s the opposite of what happened when I came out,” he mentioned. “But it means that there’s progress and it means that as a country, we’re headed in the right direction.”
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Elsewhere in his Individuals chat, Aiken confirmed that he’s at present single and is in no rush to discover a long-term romantic accomplice.
“I just turned 46, and I have discovered I’m too old to change my ways for anybody,” he mentioned. “Unless I can find somebody who’s happy to sit on the other end of the couch and not talk for hours at a time, then I’m perfectly fine not having to deal with that.”
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He went on to notice: “You shouldn’t have to change your ways, but we do. When we’re younger, we end up thinking we should… and then as we get older, we realize, ‘I just don’t have the energy for that.’”
As for Aiken’s “perfect soulmate,” he mentioned he’s in search of somebody who “is perfectly happy to go for a full 24 hours in the same house, but not having to speak.”
“That’s the dream,” he quipped.
