David Archuleta was born on December 28, 1990 in Miami, Florida. His father, Jeff Achuleta, was a jazz musician playing trumpet for a well-known jazz group at Brigham Young University called Synthesis while his mother, Lupe Marie, was a salsa dancer and singer from Honduras. At the age of six, he and his family moved to the Salt Lake Valley, Utah and he spent his childhood there. Archuleta fell in love with music after listening to 1980 musical, "Les Miserables", composed by French composer Claude-Michel Schonberg. Starting practicing his vocals ever since, David got his first chance of performing in front of public when he was still 10. He participated in Utah singing competition and surprisingly, his version of Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" received a standing ovation from audience and led him winning Child Division.

In 2003, at the age of 12, Archuleta won the title of Junior Singer Star on "Star Search" with his performance of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's "You're All I Need to Get By" and walked away with $100,000. His victory on the talent show led him to other appearances on Warner Bros. Television's "The Jenny Jones Show" and CBS' "The Early Show". Unfortunately, the next year he found out he had partial vocal paralysis and therefore decided to limit his singing only for specific occasions such as on the Independence Day celebration at Brigham Young University Stadium.

In mid 2007, Archuleta grabbed ticket to "American Idol" Hollywood final auditions at the San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium. Singing John Mayer's "Waiting on the World to Change", he was spontaneously joined by judge Randy Jackson at the end of the song. He also took advantage of the decision to allow American Idol's contestants to play musical instruments by appearing behind piano desk for his performances of Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy", Phil Collins' "Another Day in Paradise", and Robbie Williams' "Angels".

His humble-yet-perfect performance led Archuleta to the finale. He sang Elton John's "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me", Ryan Gilmor-penned single "In This Moment", and John Lennon's "Imagine". Though he only received 44 percent of the votes, making him as the runner up at the talent show, judge Simon Cowell declared that he won the evening. Even his competitor, David Cook, said the same thing, noting, "I have to concede it, the kid came out all three songs and nailed it."

Post-leaving "American Idol", Archuleta signed a deal with Jive Records and entered the recording room to cook up new songs for his debut album. While the self-titled LP will be dropped on November 11 in the U.S. market, the lead single off the effort "Crush" has been released in the U.S. market in August and debuted at number 2 on Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart with 166,000 copies sold during its first week of sales.