MJ Discusses The Cravat and Ryan's Cruelty

EW has an awesome Michael Johns exit interview. Here are the highlights...

On whether he was surprised by the results:

Backstage he thought, ''Okay, I get what's going on. This is going to be a shocker week.'' I hadn't been in the bottom three before, and everyone is due for that. I didn't think I was going home, though. It just goes to show you that you never know.

Did he think Ryan was unecessarily cruel:

You know what? I'd be lying if I didn't say that was pretty cruel. That one was a tough one. When Ryan said I had the lowest number of votes, he gave me this look as if to say, ''Mate, you know I don't want to say this right now.'' But it's a TV show, and at the end of the day, it's entertainment.

Was it hard to sing after the results were announced:

I wasn't, like, destroyed or anything. I probably would have been more sad if I felt I didn't sing the song as good as I could, and if I didn't hit those high notes. There was a moment when I took a really deep breath in and I saw my wife, and she said, ''I love you.'' I just exhaled then. If you re-watch, you'll see I just switched then. I thought, ''Just suck it up. This is the last time you're going to perform on this stage.''

And what's the deal with the cravat:

[Show stylist] Miles had been wanting me to step up the fashion for a while. I thought you can't come out wearing leather jackets after two weeks, because people will say, ''Who is this idiot?'' I wanted to do a Tom Petty-meets-Scott Weiland look. The week I did ''We Are the Champions,'' Miles wanted me to do that kind of look, but I wanted to wait until the right time, which was Dolly week. I absolutely dug it. Miles is so talented. I have a saying: In Miles We Trust.

What was he going to sing during Mariah Carey week:

I was going to do a really cool, bluesy version of ''Vision of Love.''

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