David Archuleta on new Christmas EP, Jordin Sparks duet and ‘Only Murders in the Building’ bop

David Archuleta was busy this year, releasing a bunch of music, going on tour and prepping his memoir, Devout, for a February release. He’s also just released a new Christmas EP, My Only Wish, and scheduled LA and New York residencies to promote it. Why put himself through all of that?

“Cause I’m crazy,” David jokes. “My manager was like, ‘What if we wait ’til next year so that we can properly set it up?’ At the time I was like, ‘No, I want to do it this year because I’m in the mood now.'”

He laughs, “But now it’s like, sometimes you give yourself too much work to do.”

One track on the EP, “Wish at the Top of My List,” teams David with another American Idol alum, Jordin Sparks, for a collaboration that’s been a long time coming.

“We’ve been talking for over a decade to do a duet,” David says. “To hear her singing on a song that I wrote, like, singing with me … it just made me feel so good.”

And there’s another song of David’s out there you may have heard: He co-wrote “Wish That You Were Me,” sung by Beanie Feldstein‘s pop star character THĒ in season 5 of Only Murders in the Building. David’s friend John Hoffman, the OMITB showrunner, is a fan of David’s song “Crème Brûlée” and asked him to write a similar song for the show.

David says John told him the synopsis of the season, the character they were developing and the kind of song they needed. 

“And I’d never written, really, to fit another character,” David says. “And I was like, ‘That sounds fun.'”

“I was kind of like creating this little bit of a sassier character in my own music with ‘Crème Brûlée,'” he explains. “So it was just fun to channel a little more extreme version of that.”