Phillip Phillips stopped by The Bobby Bones Show for the first time to talk about what he’s been doing since winning American Idol, his first album in five years and perform his new single!
In 2012, Phillip Phillips won season 11 of American Idol, and followed it with success from songs like “Home” and “Gone, Gone, Gone.” After taking a little break, he’s back with his first album in five years called Drift Back. The inspiration for the album name came from him feeling like he’s drifting back to who he is with his music. He shared that it was hard for him to get some points of his career right with management, but he feels like he’s figured it out and is in a good place now. He wrote a bunch of songs for the new record that he feels represents his last five years; the happiness, the sadness, the ups and downs of life. The best way for him to deal with it was to write about it and one of the songs he feels best represents it is his new single “So Will I.”
Phillips lives in South Georgia, where his wife is from, out in the country and loves it because there is a lot of room for his son to run around. During the pandemic, he found himself at a standstill and not sure what to do. When a friend invited him to play pickleball, he fell in love with it, and it became a release for him. He’s now obsessed and plays it 3-5x a week. One of the most common questions he gets asked is if his real name is Phillip Phillips, which it is, and he was named after his father. But his father goes by a nickname because he hated people asking him if that was his real name. He wanted Phillips to carry on the family tradition and name his son it, but he didn’t want to do that to his kid.
Phillips never got into music for fame, he just wanted to make music for a living. After winning American Idol, fame hit him quickly, which he admitted was pretty cool because he got a lot of free stuff. His favorite part about it was when he’d go to dinner and the chef would ask him to try free food. Fame has its perks, he admitted, but it was never the main goal for him. He was the kid who would practice playing guitar in his room all day. He played guitar before he learned to sing and the guitar player from AC/DC, Angus Young, was his biggest inspiration. Growing up, his parents played music at the church, but it didn’t have much influence on him. His uncle introduced him to 70s and 80s rock and country music, and that’s when he knew he wanted to make a living doing music.
The mottos Phillips lives by are “always treat people how you wanted to be treated,” and “good things happen to good people.” He tries to go through life with that in mind. Tickets for his The Drift Back Tour are on sale now.
While in studio he played “Home” and his new single “So Will I.” You can watch the performances below!