David Archuleta Leaves Music to Become Mormon Missionary

David Archuleta performs during the Hollywood Christmas Celebration at The Grove.

Jonathan Leibson/FilmMagic

David Archuleta is leaving show business to serve his church.

Last night, while performing in Salt Lake City, Utah, the 20-year-old pop singer told his audience that he will stop recording or performing music for two years to become a full-time Mormon missionary.

"It's not because someone told me that I was supposed to do it, not because I no longer want to do music anymore, but it's because it's the feeling that I felt that I need to do next in my life," Archuleta explained.

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As his audience applauded, Archuleta broke into tears, then concluded, "It's the same feeling that I've always tried to follow in my life. It's the feeling that's allowed me to have the opportunities I've had, the challenges I've had to overcome, and the blessings, too. I've learned that to trust that feeling. I'm aware that I need to answer when He calls, and that's the reason that I know I need to do this in my life."

Archuleta placed second in the 2008 season of American Idol. His third studio album, The Other Side of Down, was released in 2010 on Jive Records.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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