'American Idol' Winner Phillip Phillips: "I Hate Listening to Myself"

When Fuse sat down with 22-year-old American Idol champ Phillip Phillips, the Georgian singer-songwriter reveals one key difference between himself and the thousands of people who voted for him to win the competitive singing show: He doesn't like Phillip Phillips' voice.

"I hate listening to myself," Phillips tells Fuse. "Even in the studio, I ask them to turn my voice down. I've always hated my voice. It just makes me cringe. I remember the first time I heard it on the radio in Boston, I said, 'Oh gosh.'"

Well, clearly the Olympics didn't agree. They made his "Home" the signature song of the women's gymnastics team this year. "I never got to see [my song] on the Olympics but I got to meet a few of the Fierce Five—it's such an honor they wanted to use that song. I can't thank them enough."

Phillips also opens up about the health issues that plagued him throughout the 11th season of Idol, culminating in a six-hour surgery in June to remove kidney stones he couldn't pass. "It's like your pipes in your house," Phillips says, employing an analogy befitting a regular ole guy from Georgia. "If it's clogged up, you have to go in there, take it out, unclog it and put it back together. My kidney wasn't passing fluid to my bladder and they had to go in there, cut me up and fix it."

Even while saying this, Phillips keeps smiling. "It was a pretty long surgery. It's getting better slowly but surely. It's gotten a lot better than it was on the show. It doesn't hurt like it did, but I still have to watch what I eat and drink so it doesn't go back to what it was."

To hear Phillips imagine what it would be like if he was forced to compete for the approval of new Idol judges Nicki Minaj and Mariah Carey ("I probably would have tried to sweet talk them, but it wouldn't have worked because I'm not very good at it")—watch the interview above.