Carly Rae Jepsen Shares Surprising Way 'Canadian Idol' Set Her Up For Success

Everyone gets their start somewhere, even Carly Rae Jepsen.

While joining Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang on the September 9 episode of the Las Cutluristas podcast, the Emotion singer recalled how the "public humiliation" of putting herself out there creatively while auditioning for Canadian Idol had a positive impact on the rest of her career. She competed as a contestant in 2007 during its fifth season, ultimately placing third in the competition.

"You line up in a mall to audition so it's like a fairly humiliating start, which I think is a good introduction 'cause it's like are you ready to sit in this feeling a little bit, but publicly," she said. "The truth is, I'm so glad I did it. I don't think anything else would have happened in my life had I not said yes to that."

Jepsen, who is preparing to release her new double album Day and Night later this month, said the "public humiliation" is a good test to see if you "have the skin" for being in the spotlight and taught her valuable lessons about herself. Even coming in third place on the show was a good setup for she could do next.

"I feel like I kind of got the cake and ate it too because you get that exposure and then you also don't have the contract and then you can kind of go and do what you want with it afterwards," she said. "It was very, very perfect for what I needed but the actual ability to stand on stage and then be publicly judged, you either are down or you're not. And I think I learned pretty quickly that I was like, 'oh, this is rough,' but I came out of it being like, 'okay, I know something about myself.' I can handle it but I have to be careful how I move forward."

On Las Culturistas, Rogers and Yang "get into the hottest pop-culture moments of the day" and even hang out with special guests like Hilary Duff, Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Lawrence and Lady Gaga, to name a few. Listen to more episodes of the Las Culturistas podcast and even watch the conversations on the iHeartRadio app and at iHeart.com.