Clay Talks About his book on the Today Show

The many chapters of Clay Aiken's life
02:14 PM EST on Wednesday, November 17, 2004

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Clay Aiken has come a long way since his days on 'American Idol.' His debut album "Measure of a Man" went double platinum and a new holiday CD "Merry Christmas With Love" just hit store shelves on Tuesday. Now Aiken can add author to his list of his accomplishments with his new book "Learning to Sing." Aiken turns 26 on Nov. 30.

Fighting a cold, Aiken appeared on NBC's Today show to talk with Katie Couric:

Why do you think this was the right time to tell your story?
I don't know that I would call it an autobiography. It was more of an opportunity for me to tell different stories that happened to different people I met, different experiences I had in my life and just talk about what I learned from it. The "Idol" experience itself is such a big lesson. It taught me a lot about myself, a lot about what I’m doing. But there’s so many other things that have happened that it took sitting back and looking at what I’ve gone through to kind of know how I became who I cam today.

What did the whole "American Idol" experience teach you, other than it’s fun to be famous?
It didn't even teach me that! Sometimes it teaching you that it's not so fun. You know it taught me a lot about believing in myself and having a lot of confidence in who I am and what I believe I'm good at. There are a lot of other things that happened before that that I didn’t realize taught me that I’m good at certain things. So it was an opportunity to look at being picked on in middle school and how that helped me identify myself and what it took to be proud of who I am.

In the book you write, "I was dubbed a loser throughout most of my childhood. As a kid I was an insult magnet, a nerd who loved his grandparents, who wore the wrong clothes, who liked the wrong things, who had goofy hair and glasses, who didn’t smoke or drink. It made for a very lonely childhood."
I think it's about accepting who you are. It's not about whether you wear the right clothes. I mean, there are plenty of people who do wear what's considered cool and buy the most expensive things and they’re not happy with themselves. I think it's about knowing who you are and believing in yourself no matter what you wear, what you look like, how you do your hair, or even if you do it on your own.

How did these things that you experienced in your childhood scar you? Clearly it must have been tough and it must have had some type kind of lasting impact for you.
I think that a lot of the bad stuff – my mom always said it's not worth going through anything if you're not going to learn something from it – and I've always come from family where we were told to laugh things off. We always laughed things off. We're not confrontational; we don't really let things get to us. That's one of the things I've always been taught.

Is that good or bad?
I don't know that it's necessarily great, but it hasn't proven to be bad for me. As I sat down and wrote about things like my biological father, my estranged relationship with him and the death of my sister and my relationship with my stepfather, it was very therapeutic to actually have to think about what I learned from each experience. My relationship with my stepfather was kind of strained throughout my teenage years and it took his illness for me to really see him in a more human light. I think one of the things that made his death so difficult is that sting of regret that I never actually formed a better relationship with him. It was actually very draining to go actually go through some of that stuff. So I think that holding some of my feelings about that in and not expressing it beforehand made me regret the fact I didn’t have a relationship with him more.

I know that you were a special ed teacher before this whole crazy ride began. You've said once this is all over you're going to go back to Raleigh. Do you really think that's possible to go back? Can you go home again?
It's tough to even go back now. I don't know if I'll be able to be a teacher necessarily. I don't think I'd garner much respect as a teacher right now, but part of what I want to do with the foundation that I helped set up is maybe be able to teach on a larger scale. I kind of still see myself as a teacher. I see this as an opportunity to do the same thing. I don't know if this book will change anyone's life, it will probably give them something to rest their coffee on.