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"  It&amp;#039;s hard to believe that it&amp;#039;s been three years since Jordin Sparks was crowned American Idol. Two albums later and she&amp;#039;s still America&amp;#039;s sweetheart! She&amp;#039;s got a huge summer ahead with her first headlining tour, a mission to end the dangers of texting and driving by partnering with Allstate&amp;#039;s Thumbs Up to X the TXT campaign, and she&amp;#039;ll end the summer by starring in the Tony-award winning Broadway show In The Heights! Read on for part one of Teen&amp;#039;s exclusive interview where Jordin dishes on why she loves her tour bus, what touring with the Jonas Brothers was really like, and more juicy info you won&amp;#039;t read anywhere else! Teen: Congrats on headlining your very own tour this summer! How&amp;#039;s it going? Jordin Sparks: I don&amp;#039;t think I will ever get used to it. It&amp;#039;s really cool knowing that the fans are supporting my music. I&amp;#039;ve always wanted to do this and now I have fans singing my lyrics back to me! Teen: What&amp;#039;s your tour bus like? JS: If I had to live on a tour bus \u2014 I could. I have all the major things I need on the bus with me right now. I&amp;#039;ve got my two dogs and they&amp;#039;re just absolutely adorable. Maggie has been on tour before so she can deal with the bus a lot easier than Miles can. Miles is seven months old and he is still a little puppy and he goes a little bit crazy. I also have my computer and my phone so I can do video chat with my parents, grandparents, and everybody else who are spread over the country. Teen: Now that you&amp;#039;ve been doing this for so long, do you have any groupies? JS: I actually saw a fan yesterday that&amp;#039;s been following me since American Idol. She came to a million American Idol broadcasts, the American Idol tour shows, and she&amp;#039;s come to almost every one of my own shows that she can make it to since then. I mean, it&amp;#039;s been crazy, but I wouldn&amp;#039;t say I have groupies \u2014 just diehard fans! Teen: Before your own headlining tour, you opened for Alicia Keys, the Jonas Brothers and Britney Spears. What were all those tours like? JS: Alicia was my first major tour besides the American Idol tour and I grew up listening to her music. So, every single night, I watched her show from the side. I mean, just watching her, I just saw the total package and the complete performer and entertainer that she is. I realized that she writes a lot of her songs and that made me definitely want to hone in on my skills and I got to do that that with my Battlefield record. With the boys, they were such big pranksters! We had a silly string war and backstage they had table tennis and they would have tournaments. It would get so intense and we would be standing and watching and just laughing because they would be so serious with these table tennis wars. It was a blast. And then with Britney, I mean she has been in the industry almost 11 years. Not once in a million years did I ever think I would get to tour with Britney Spears! Teen: How have you changed since you won American Idol? JS: American Idol was definitely crazy. I don&amp;#039;t think anything can really prepare you for the phenomenon or what&amp;#039;s going to happen afterwards. I was 17 and I went from being a normal high school student to the most recognizable face in America for a little while. I still feel that I&amp;#039;m the quirky girl that walked into the audition room. I still laugh, I still go crazy, I bring my dogs on tour! I mean, I&amp;#039;m still the same person \u2014 I&amp;#039;ve just grown up a little bit. Teen: Tell us about your partnership this summer with Allstate&amp;#039;s Thumbs Up to X the TXT campaign. JS: I have a booth at all my shows where my fans can come and take the pledge to not text and drive. It&amp;#039;s just all about making the streets safer because people don&amp;#039;t realize the danger. There is a statistic that says texting behind the wheel is the same as drinking four beers and getting behind the wheel. You wouldn&amp;#039;t drive drunk so why would you take the risk of getting into the car and texting? You can put your phone down, you can wait till a stop light, and you can wait till you get to your destination. We are such a culture that if a text message comes in right away, you want to read it and you want to respond. But I don&amp;#039;t think it&amp;#039;s worth risking your life! Teen: Agreed! It&amp;#039;s so exciting that you&amp;#039;re heading to Broadway this August to play Nina in In The Heights. What do you think that will be like? JS: I&amp;#039;ve always loved being on stage whether it&amp;#039;s just singing or doing a musical or a play. I did Community Theater and I was in drama club before I was on American Idol and I loved doing it. But, Broadway is definitely going to be a whole other animal because that&amp;#039;s like the top of the top for like the drama club geeks like me. I am just so excited to be playing Nina and hopefully I can bring to the table something different than the other people who have played her before me. They were all phenomenal, of course, but hopefully I can put a little Jordin in there as well. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.seventeen.com/celebrity/a7742/jordin-sparks-teen-interview/>