Yahoo! Canada Music Exclusive: “American Idol” winner Phillip Phillips confirms his official second single will be “Gone, Gone, Gone”

“American Idol” Season 11 winner Phillip Phillips, known for his guitar-driven tunes and unique vocals, has confirmed that the official second single off his debut album “The World from the Side of the Moon” will be released in the first half of 2013 and is titled “Gone, Gone, Gone.”

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The 22-year-old singer performed the new track on “Today” after his first smash single, “Home.”
(Skip to the 1:00 minute mark for the bonus song performance.)

“You’re the first to know,” he told Yahoo! Canada Music. “The second single will be ‘Gone, Gone, Gone’ [and] it’s a good little love song. Todd Clark and Derek Fuhrmann, they wrote [it] and brought it to me and I thought it was a beautiful song. The more I’ve played it live, the more I’ve made it more my own and people seem to really connect with it and really enjoy it so I’m excited to see how that song’s going to do.”

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“Gone, Gone, Gone” is one of the few tunes on Phillips’ album that the Georgia-born artist didn’t have a hand in writing, which is something that doesn’t always happen for an “Idol” winner or a new artist in general.

“I’m thankful for [being able to write my own songs] because it could have gone in the complete opposite direction and it wouldn’t have been good,” Phillips said. “Luckily, Jimmy Iovine wanted me to make the album that I wanted [to make] and management [did] also, so it all just kind of worked out.”

He also said, “A lot of the songs I had written before ‘Idol’ like ‘A Fool’s Dance,’ ‘Wanted Is Love,’ and ‘Man on the Moon.’ Some were also written during ‘Idol’ and a few new ones after, so it was mostly getting into the studio and just actually recording them professionally and it took three weeks from cutting guitars to mastering. It was definitely a gruelling process, but we got it done.”

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Making “The World from the Side of the Moon” wasn’t the only difficulty in Phillips’ musical journey: Phillips suffered from kidney stones while competing on the show, underwent eight surgeries during the competition and yet somehow always managed to find the strength to go on.

“I just kept fighting through it and I had great people helping out with it,” he said. “Great doctors, my girlfriend, family and friends, they really helped [me] through it because there were a couple of times where I almost did just drop out because I was tired of fighting it. But, everything worked out.”

He added, “When I did [Usher's] ‘U Got It Bad’ during when I was singing that I felt like something popped or something in my kidney and it just really hurt. As [the competition] went on, it kind of got worse and right after the performances, I would have to go in the back and just lie down on the couch.”

But sticking with the competition despite being in pain produced a positive outcome for Phillips. His debut single “Home” is currently sitting at No. 7 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart and his debut album peaked at No. 1 on the Rock Albums chart.

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Through it all, the “Idol” winner seems like he’s intent on keeping his upward climb going, saying, “[I’ll keep] working hard, not giving up and just keep pushing myself to be better than what I did last time. All I can do is be the best of me and just keep fighting through it.”

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