Jordin Sparks just lit up fans’ hearts again — revealing she’s still in a group chat with her American Idol Season 6 crew after all these years. 🎤💬

“We keep up,” she said with a smile while promoting her brand-new podcast What’s Your Spark?, which launched October 12. But here’s the twist — one former contestant unexpectedly dropped a message in the chat that left everyone shocked… and it might just be the spark behind her next big project

Jordin Sparks Reveals She’s in a Group Chat with Her American Idol Season 6 Contestants: ‘We Keep Up’ (Exclusive)

Sparks launched her new podcast ‘What’s Your Spark?’ on Oct. 12

Jordin Sparks on ‘American Idol’ in 2007.Credit : 

Lester Cohen/WireImage

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Jordin Sparks reveals she’s in a group chat with the Top 10 contestants on her American Idol season
“You just see each other and you have this understanding like, ‘Yeah, we went through that,'” she explains
Sparks launched her new podcast What’s Your Spark? on Oct. 12

Jordin Sparks’ American Idol journey may have taken place nearly 20 years ago, but it’s still a part of her life.

Speaking with PEOPLE exclusively amid the launch of her new podcast What’s Your Spark?, the “No Air” singer, 35, reflects on winning season 6 of the competition series in 2007, and reveals that she and a number of contestants are still in touch via a group chat.

“It’s so crazy to hear that my journey is an adult now. It’s an adult. My journey is older than I was when I won, which is really insane to say,” Sparks, who at 17 was the youngest winner in the show’s history, says. “It feels like yesterday, [like] it just happened, but the duality of it is that it also feels like it was ages ago, like it was way longer than 18 years. I feel like I’ve lived a ton of life in these last 18 years, and I’m so grateful.”

Jordan Sparks and runner-up Blake Lewis on ‘American Idol’ in 2007.

The “One Step at a Time” singer adds that she had a “great experience” on the show, which ended its run on Fox in 2016, but returned on ABC two years later.

“All these years later, I’m still just so grateful,” she says. “And I also am — not that I can’t believe it, but it’s still really amazing to see that American Idol is still going strong. It’s just incredible.”

Sparks adds that she still talks with a handful of the contestants who were on her season, revealing that the Top 10 are all in a group chat together.

“We all still talk to each other, ‘Happy Birthday,’ or, ‘This is my new project,’ or, ‘Here’s my kids,'” says Sparks, who is mom to son DJ, 7, with husband Dana Isaiah. “Different things like that. So we keep up.”

As an example, Sparks says that the group recently joined together to wish Melinda Doolittle, who placed third on their season, a happy 48th birthday on Oct. 6.

“Melinda, my beautiful, loving Melinda, she just celebrated a birthday and so we were all making sure that we told her about that, but it’s really cool to be able to keep in touch with them because… I feel like I can’t speak for other seasons, but for my season we really all got very close, and I don’t know what I would’ve done without all of them,” she tells PEOPLE.

Sparks says that because she was the youngest contestant, she “gravitated” toward her fellow singers, who were the only ones to understand the surreality of the journey.

“Nobody knows except for other contestants that have been on,” she says. “It’s almost like an alumni group. You just see each other and you have this understanding like, ‘Yeah, we went through that.'”

The Top 10 on season 6 included Sparks, Doolittle, Blake Lewis, LaKisha Jones, Chris Richardson, Phil Stacey, Sanjaya Malakar, Haley Scarnato, Gina Glocksen and Chris Sligh.

Sparks launched her podcast on Oct. 12, and told PEOPLE that she hopes the project encourages curiosity.

“I hope people become a little bit more curious about the world around them, whether it’s nature or people or even themselves,” she said. “I just hope that they get a little bit more curious about other things and other subjects or other people. Nowadays sometimes we try to be like, okay, you find people who are like-minded and that’s it and you kind of just stick with that.”

She continued, “And I feel like it’s a disservice to how beautiful this world is, how different we all are, how much is incredible and beautiful in nature and creation, so I really hope people become a little bit more curious about that.”