When Clay Aiken and his executive producer Jaymes Foster began the search for songs to record for Aiken's first album of original material since his 2003 chart-topping debut Measure of A Man, they both fell in love with a song written by OneRepublic frontman Ryan "Alias" Tedder called "On My Way Here." The message of the lyrics - how the lessons we learn while growing up shape us into who we become as adults - struck such a deep chord with Aiken that it wound up inspiring the theme (and title) of his new collection.

"I thought if we could find songs along those lines, that deal with my life over the past five years and what I've learned from my experiences, it would be a great concept for an album," Aiken says. "Since I got into this business, I've learned so much about myself and about life and the world. I'm nowhere near an expert, but this album has taken on the form of addressing how far I've come in those five years and how I feel like I've found myself."

As Aiken's millions of devoted fans around the world already know, it's been a whirlwind journey. We had the honor of sitting down with the multi-talented artist to talk about his upcoming album, the future tour, Spamalot, his ever-changing hair, and so much more! He's the most charming star we've interviewed to date. Here's what he had to say:

I think the #1 question everyone wants to know is when is the tour?

I don't have an answer for that actually. I have no idea. We were going to take some time off, and we haven't started planning one. I'm sure we will do it, we just don't know when as of now.

Do you have a favorite song on the new album?

No, I couldn't pick one. I mean this is the first album where everything is handpicked by myself and my executive producer, so we have reasons we liked every song. There's an eclectic mix, there's some variety in it without question, and that makes many of them favorites for different reasons.

Do you have any plans to do videos for any of the songs on the new album?

We probably won't do any videos to be honest with you. Videos are for MTV and they don't really play those anymore. When is the last time you saw a full music video?

That's true.

So it's $300,000 for something that is never going to get used and if it does get used, it's only going to be about 30 seconds of it... TRL only shows like 30 seconds. So videos don't really serve the same purpose anymore. Who knows? I could eat crow later and make one, but usually videos go along with radio singles which would be "On My Way Here".