College Times

Issue date: 6/19/08 Section: Music

"I'm so new to this, I don't really know what I had planned," she says. "I mean, we didn't really have a specific sound we were going for, anything like that. What I kind of did is, we would go through the songs, and I just picked songs that I liked, that I just thought I related to in some sort of way, that I knew that I wouldn't mind singing in a couple of years, and that kind of helped me. ... And as far as the producers go, yes, I was intimidated a little bit. I was like, 'Oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh, I don't know what's going on.' But they were all really, really cool, really nice. They helped me out a lot and showed me some really cool things in the studio."

For Sparks, the learning curve is natural. She's eager to try her hand at producing, as well. She looks at it as just another challenge, one of many she's learned to deal with since winning "American Idol," including the health scare earlier this year, when she lost her voice for a few days.

"I've had a lot of things happen," Sparks says. "I've had a couple of deaths in the family, just thrown on top of all the stress ... and it was crazy how things kind of _ how things kind of worked out. But it was cool, because I had my family to help me out, and it was cool because they helped me become stronger as a person, and they were able to help, you know _ 'It's OK, Jordin. Just let things go and you'll be fine, and you can do this,' and so it was just really cool to see that happen."

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