The 30-year-old, who recently became the first openly gay male artist to top the US album charts with his second studio effort, 'Trespassing,' told Billboard.com that he sometimes struggles to cope with such a responsibility:

"There's not just one type of gay person and that's the hardest part about being one of the few in the public eye. I'm not the guy next door, necessarily. I dress kinda crazy, I'm a little bit more in-your-face with some of my instincts, and i've got a certain amount of flak for that because I get the sentiment of 'you're not representing us in a way that's going to help us integrate and help outside society accept us.'

"Artists are supposed to be individual … to challenge people and make (them) think. Artists aren't always supposed to have everybody like everything they do. That's part of it."

The American Idol runner-up, who last week performed his current single, 'Never Close Our Eyes,' on The Graham Norton Show, went on to confess that he still has difficulty deciding what type of role model he wants to be:

“In so many cases, I find myself saying, I wanna be the really nice down-to-earth guy who happens to be gay in order to set an example that it's not threatening.

"Then there's another part of me that's like, no I wanna be fierce and ... do whatever I want because I'm a rebel. I have that battle inside of me. I know a lot of people do. "