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"   Photo: Getty Images  In the past few years the American Idol machine has lost its ability to churn out bona fide pop stars. For every Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood, there are more than a handful of winners who&amp;#039;ve gone onto obscurity. So when Phillip Phillips deservingly won season 11, his career projection, too, seemed all too obvious. But then something unexpected occurred: His single &amp;quot;Home&amp;quot;\u2014an infectious folk anthem\u2014became an overnight hit, conquering the Billboard charts and eventually selling 4.7 million records. Then, his debut album, The World From This Side of the Moon, recently went platinum, which included Phillips&amp;#039; second single, &amp;quot;Gone, Gone, Gone,&amp;quot; another number-one hit. How could this be that a 23-year-old from a small town could achieve such a feat and break this Idol curse? If you ask Phillips, he&amp;#039;ll reply, sweetly so in a Southern accent: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve been really blessed.&amp;quot; But to the rest, it&amp;#039;s clear that Phillips&amp;#039; talent is undeniable, his stage presence is seasoned, and his writing ability is on par with any other best-selling contemporary artist. Now, a year after he released The World... Phillips is touring cross-country with John Mayer and re-releasing his album today along with three new live tracks. We caught up with the acoustically-gifted crooner while he was on a stop in Ohio for Mayer&amp;#039;s Born and Raised tour where he&amp;#039;s the opening act\u2014and talked about life post-Idol, how he makes it work with his current girlfriend, and lessons he&amp;#039;s learned from John Mayer himself. Congratulations on the success of your album. It must be unreal going platinum. It went platinum not too long ago. It&amp;#039;s been pretty crazy and unreal that that many people bought the album and listened to it. Not many artists or bands go platinum every year from what people have told me, so it&amp;#039;s an honor to have so many fans. A million people, that&amp;#039;s a lot of people! Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, and Justin Timberlake sell a few million, and so hopefully I&amp;#039;ll make my way up to that. How did you celebrate the news? I kind of just kept working. I never stop working. I was very proud but it&amp;#039;s scary to do that. Then so many other people are expecting something even better or just as good so you don&amp;#039;t want to let them down. There&amp;#039;s a lot of nerves. I think I had a drink and sleep. Lots of sleep. No cake? Do you not like sweets? I&amp;#039;m not big on dark chocolate but I do have a sweet tooth so it gets me in trouble. I love warm chocolate chip cookies with ice cream. Then there&amp;#039;s this chocolate pie my mom makes for me every year for my birthday. She&amp;#039;s been making it since I was younger and there&amp;#039;s nothing like it. It&amp;#039;s really, so, so good! Tell us about being an &amp;#039;American Idol&amp;#039; winner: Is it like a fraternity in which when you meet the other artists you feel a connection? You know, I haven&amp;#039;t met anyone else who has won. I have met Carrie Underwood but that was before I won\u2014she&amp;#039;s very, very sweet. Oh, I did meet Scotty McCreery, he was cool. Do you keep in touch with any &amp;#039;American Idol&amp;#039; contestants from your season? You know, we have a group text but we are all so busy with our own things now. So you don&amp;#039;t keep up with &amp;#039;American Idol?&amp;#039; It&amp;#039;s so difficult to watch TV on the road, but I did catch Candice [Glover&amp;#039;s season 12] win. But other than that I don&amp;#039;t watch live television, I do download episodes on iTunes like Breaking Bad. Were you up all night watching the finale as well? Not live, but yes, I started crying during the last three episodes. Their father and son-like relationship just made me want to cry. I&amp;#039;ve become more &amp;quot;girlish&amp;quot; over the years, I suppose [laughs]. I guess as I&amp;#039;m getting older I&amp;#039;m getting more emotional too! Tell us about how you keep your relationship intact on the road. Well my girlfriend [Hannah Blackwell] is a lot smarter than me so she comes on the road and handles some of the business aspects. She meets me at some points. Like I said, she&amp;#039;s smarter than me and likes to read so she goes over things I look past. How did you guys meet? It was when I was 18 while volunteering together. My sister has a non-profit organization called Mission Change. It helps the homeless and kids. We were re-building an orphanage and she had the task of playing with the kids\u2014a job I wanted\u2014so I gave her a hard time, but made her laugh and chuckle. And then we left, and I saw her again that night at a party. I&amp;#039;d never seen her before and I&amp;#039;d seen everybody. Then I was like, &amp;quot;Who is this?&amp;quot; We talked a little and then left the party. She tripped in a hole, and I helped her out but then I laughed. Then she stalked me on Facebook, and that&amp;#039;s how the magic happened.   Photo: Getty Images  You&amp;#039;re on the second leg of John Mayer&amp;#039;s &amp;#039;Born and Raised&amp;#039; tour. Tell us about that. John&amp;#039;s an amazing man, amazing musician, incredible songwriter, and I never thought I&amp;#039;d be sharing a stage with him. It&amp;#039;s been an honor to do that. Getting to know him has been an honor, as well. His band is great, and we&amp;#039;ve all become a family. I&amp;#039;ve learned a lot business-wise. It&amp;#039;s unbelievable, I still have to pinch myself. He gives you advice? What have you learned? You know, he&amp;#039;s helped out so much. We&amp;#039;ve gotten to know each other\u2014it&amp;#039;s like a real relationship. When he tells me I handle myself well on-camera or off-camera, it goes a long way. He&amp;#039;s said a lot of good things about my music and when he says anything like that\u2014from someone huge like him\u2014it makes me feel really good. He&amp;#039;s taught me how to have a long-lasting career as well. They can tell you a lot, but until you experience it, you don&amp;#039;t know. There must be some crazy stories from being on the road. Are there any you&amp;#039;d like to share? Gosh, let me think about this...uh... You&amp;#039;ve never shared a chocolate pie with John Mayer? [Laughs] No, no...I haven&amp;#039;t\u2014yet. Okay, well I did this zipline over the crowd at Rock in Rio. It was like, over 85,000 people. The security ran me through the crowd, and I was scared to death. They were like, &amp;quot;run, run, run!&amp;quot; I was holding one of the guy&amp;#039;s hands. I wouldn&amp;#039;t have done it if I knew it was going to be that intense. It was like The Fast and the Furious! John took some great pictures from that night, it was cool. Whose career path do you want to emulate in the industry? You know, anyone like John Mayer, Dave Matthews, Neil Young, all those types of guys who are touring. Live shows are really big for me. I want to do as many of those as I can. Tell us about your Thanksgiving plans. Will you be able to go home? I&amp;#039;m not going to be home for Thanksgiving but we&amp;#039;re all going to try to cook out. I&amp;#039;m hating that I&amp;#039;m not going to be able to have home cooking but maybe Christmas. Maybe John Mayer will make that turkey. [Laughs] We&amp;#039;ll see!      "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/music/news/a18814/phillip-phillips-interview/>