There was one place I really wanted to go, more than any other: New York City. Maybe it was from watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV fo… - Austin Mahone

And then I got into the car to head back to our hotel, and when the driver turned on the engine, there it was: my single "Say Somethin" coming out of the car speakers, being played on the radio, just at that exact moment. It was my first time ever hearing myself on radio, and it was almost overwhelming. This is weird, I thought. This is so cool. But this is just strange. It's like, I was living this new life every day, but it was still hard to believe it was my life.

One day when I was twelve or thirteen, I was hanging out with some friends, and I heard T-Pain for the first time. Immediately, I was like, Oh, man, what's this? This is different from what I'm used to listening to, and I love it. By this time, I wanted something new, so I started listening to more R&B and hip-hop. From there, I started listening to Lil Wayne, Chris Brown, Drake, and all those guys. At the time, I thought country and R&B were totally different worlds, but now that I actually spend most of my life singing and writing and thinking about music, I can see they're kind of similar. Before you say I'm crazy, think about this: In country music, the singers are really soulful, and you can just hear all the emotion on their voices. They mean everything they say. And R&B is the same way. It's like every note, every word, is telling you exactly how the singers feel about what they're singing about. It's just that in country music, all that feeling is usually about a truck, and in R&B, it's more often about a girl. And for me, girls are a lot more fun to sing about than a truck. All joking aside, I feel like all music is the same, when you get down to it. It's about communicating emotion. And that's what I love about it so much. I wouldn't want to spend my life any other way.

I decided I wanted to finish high school from my room at my grandparents' house. I didn't care about going to football games. I didn't care about going to prom. I liked singing and wanted to concentrate on it more. I know that getting an education is important, and I felt that being homeschooled would give me more flexibility to concentrate on music. I knew what I wanted to do with my life. Of course, this was a big decision. My mom literally cried about it for weeks because she was so worried about whether or not I had the discipline to do all the work basically on my own, and whether she had the dedication to be my teacher. Finally, she sat me down for another one of our serious conversations. "I've been agonizing over this decision," she said. "I know it's the right thing to do." "It'll be fine, Mom," I said. "It'll be great."