Justin Guarini, the runner-up on the first season of “American Idol” in 2002, says the collapse of his early music career turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to him, despite a dark period that followed.
Guarini, who recently released a book called “Center Stage Confidence: How to Own Your Story and Command Any Room,” told Fox News Digital that failure forced him to choose between giving up and continuing forward.
“I think it was one of the greatest things that could ever have happened to me,” Guarini said. “Failure is the greatest teacher, one of the greatest teachers that we can have in any given situation because in that failure, you have one of two paths. You either give up or you keep going.”
That perspective took time to develop. In his book, Guarini described learning in 2003 that his record label, RCA, had dropped him — news he says he received during a “Weekend Update” segment on “Saturday Night Live.”
“I stared at the TV in shock as my entire world came crumbling down around my ears,” he wrote. “Every illusion of fame, fortune, and glory fell away in an instant — only to be replaced by the silence of loss.”
He wrote that the months afterward brought weight loss, excessive sleep and a growing distance from the people close to him. “I spent months playing my sad story on repeat,” he wrote. “I lost weight, slept more and more, and became less and less like myself, and the people who loved me started to notice and worry. I was living the ghost of the life I had always dreamed of and burning money and time in equal and absurd measure.”
As the first runner-up in “Idol” history, Guarini had expected his entertainment career to be secure. In 2003 he released a self-titled debut album, which reached the top 20 on the Billboard 200, and starred opposite Kelly Clarkson in the musical romantic comedy “From Justin to Kelly.” The film was poorly received, and criticism of his performance and appearance continued.
Guarini told Fox News Digital that the fallout left him isolated. “There have been plenty of people who’ve given up and failed and found other things,” he said. “That’s really wonderful. But for me, that dark place of not wanting to get out of bed, not wanting to look at myself in the mirror, not wanting to go out and see anything, it just was a period of isolation. And it’s very easy to do when you live behind a gate in an exclusive community.”
A shift eventually came. “I realized that there were still people celebrating me,” he said. “I realized there was still something worth celebrating in my life. And it wasn’t the vanity metrics of how many people voted for me or how many followers I would end up having or the amount of money I could make or blah, blah. It was just doing something and going back to something that I really truly loved.”
For Guarini, that meant returning to live performance. “For me, that came in the form of just going back out and getting on the stage and singing for people. And I would do it at everything from gala events to state fairs to wherever.”
Those smaller shows opened the door to a different chapter in his career. He independently released a second album in 2005, found work in television, and made his Broadway debut in “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” in 2010. He went on to appear in Broadway productions including “American Idiot,” “Romeo and Juliet” and “Wicked,” and in 2015 began portraying Lil’ Sweet, the character in Diet Dr Pepper’s advertising campaigns.
Guarini says embracing failure instead of avoiding it led him to opportunities he might never have found had his early fame lasted. “So there was a cascading effect,” he said. “The bottom line was being willing to sit in that place of failure, of discontent, darkness, but continue to go and continue to just say, ‘Okay, how can I continue to move through this space of discomfort, learn about myself and keep going?’ And ultimately, that led to a massive amount of growth that I don’t think would have happened had I just, you know, stayed famous.”
Nearly 25 years after his “Idol” debut, Guarini said the lesson from both his successes and setbacks is simple: don’t give up.
“And so, for me, it has been almost 25 years now of some awesome ups and downs, and every single time I go up and down and up and down, it’s just a consistency again of staying in the game,” he said. “This life in this world is cyclical and if you stay in the game, and you do good work, and you’re kind to people, the opportunity always comes back around to you, and you’ll be more prepared to take advantage of it when it does.”
You must be logged in to post a comment Login