''Life is tough, but life is good''

David Archuleta will perform at Stadium of Fire in Provo on July 2.

David Archuleta, the Season 7 runnerup on "American Idol," will be facing some pretty big changes in the months ahead. The 20-year-old singer recently separated from his record label and his management group.

He shares some of the background behind those decisions in a recent video blog.

On Thursday, Archuleta was on hand for the announcement that he will be performing with headliner Brad Paisley at this year's annual Stadium of Fire patriotic event on July 2 at LaVell Edwards Stadium in Provo. Archuleta made some brief general remarks to those in attendance at the press conference before breaking off for smaller and more formal interviews with members of the media.

I was able to sit in with two other media members for a few questions, before getting a brief one-on-one with the one-time "American Idol" sensation. During this time, when asked if there was a message he was hoping to put out with his music, Archuleta seemed to touch on the recent big changes in his musical career while talking about his optimistic nature.

"With my music, I just hope that performing this year will make people feel good -- to get people thinking positively and looking at the future optimistically," he said. "That's just what I've been trying to focus on lately this last year. Even though we don't always know where we're going or what's going to happen next in our lives, there's always something to look forward to, and always a reason to stay optimistic. There's tough times, ups and downs, but life is good. Life is tough, but life is good. That's just the kind of thing I hope to get going, and I hope to represent Utah well to that home crowd [at Stadium of Fire]."

Archuleta said he has interacted with Paisley a couple times, most notably when presenting him an award at the American Music Awards.

"I think Brad Paisley is just one of those real people out there in the music industry," Archuleta said. "He's one of those genuine people. So it will be really great to share the stage with him that night. It will be a really fun time.

"He'd be a pretty cool person to get to perform with just because he's really talented, and also, like I said, really real. I always respect and admire when people are real and themselves, and true to who they are."

I asked Archuleta, who first performed at Stadium of Fire as a 12-year-old in 2003 when he sang the National Anthem, to discuss the additional challenges he might face taking his act to a stadium, as opposed to the more intimate venues with which he may be more familiar.

"With the bigger audiences, there's a lot more just kind of adrenaline pumping," he said. "A lot more of that ... you get a lot more anxious before you get up there on stage. You just don't know what all those people are going to think of you, if you're going to get the crowd pumping the way you should and things like that. But it's just really exciting, too. Just getting to perform for an audience that big for something like a July 4th celebration is really great. And then [singing] to a crowd from Utah, being from Utah, is really just a wonderful thing. I hope I won't let the nerves get to me too much, but I'm really excited to get to do this. I'm very honored that they would invite me back to do this, a full-out performance this time."

Carl Bacon, senior executive producer of Stadium of Fire, said he was sold on inviting Archuleta after seeing him perform one of a series of Christmas concerts in December with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in Salt Lake City.

"Over a million people tried to get tickets," said Bacon. "Over a million. I went and saw one of the performances, and he got standing ovations. He did a fabulous job. I mean, of course I'm interested because we were negotiating at that time for him. I saw tremendous response on the part of the public. He did terrific. I thought he was better than I'd ever heard him. That's the interest we feel the public will have in David."

You can read the full newspaper story on Thursday's Stadium of Fire announcement here.

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