When Steve Burns left the extremely popular preschool series Blue's Clues, rumors began to spread that the actor had died. Steve had spent seven years as host of Nickelodeon's extremely popular show, but he gave no clues when he quickly and quietly departed the educational sitcom. He was still alive at the time, and continues to live and breath today. So, what caused his sudden departure? Well, it wasn't everyone's second favorite guess either, that he left to pursue a career in music.

Burns exited Blue's Clues in 2002, more than ten years ago. While life went on for everyone else around the world, many believed that wasn't true for Steve. The Internet insisted that he'd passed away, with plenty of rumors as to how his demise came to be. A popular fan theory was that he was a raunchy pervert who died of a drug overdose, but that couldn't be any further from the truth. Some said he met his demise in a car crash. That was false, too. About his untimely death, which still hasn't actually happened, Burns says this to Huffington Post.

"I Googled the conditions of life, and I meet every single one of them, I can assure you. I am certainly alive. I know that for sure."

Okay with the jokes, Steve even has the Twitter handle @SteveBurnsAlive, just so fans know the truth for certain. As it turns out, he has never been in trouble with the law, and he's never dabbled in drugs either. But he is a musician. And he did record new music since his departure. But there is one big, bad reason he jumped up and ditched Blue's Clues without making much of it in public. It all had to do with him going bald.

Yup, he left his show because he was getting older, and his hairline was thinning into some kind of cruel joke. Steve simply didn't want to go bald on a kids' show. That hasn't stopped him from creating music, and he actually has a new kids album on the way called 'Foreverywhere'. He collaborated with Steven Drozd on these new tunes. They have even released a single called The Unicorn and Princess Rainbow. As Steve tells it, music had little to do with his Blue's Clues departure, though.

"That's actually not true. No, no, no, no. People think I left the show to pursue a music career. That didn't happen at all. I left the show because it was just simply time to go. I was pretty much playing a boyish, older-brotherish kind of character on the show. I was getting older; I was losing my hair; a lot of the original gangsters on the show, like the people who created it, were all moving on to other careers. It just felt like time. I just had a gut feeling like it was time to go. I certainly wasn't leaving 'Blue's Clues' to pursue a large music career because that never even happened. That was just a wonderful dream come true, [a] hobby thing that happened after 'Blue's Clues.'"

It's been more than 20 years since Blue's Clues first hit the airwaves, and Steve remembers the time he spent on the show fondly, calling the whole experience surreal. He remains grateful for the opportunities he was given. Though, he admits that from his POV, the show felt very small and that acting every day against a green screen was a lonely experience that made him feel like he was swimming at the bottom of a pool.

"It felt like a dream to wake up and be like, 'Wait, people watched that all over the world?' For me, it's a very different experience than it is for everyone else, but to know that people who watched 'Blue's Clues' now have children that watch 'Blue's Clues' is a real brain-burner, that's for sure. But it's all just really cool. Maybe I'm Grover to somebody. That's awesome. That's just completely awesome."

As you can see, he has no hard feelings about any of it. Except when he has to get in fights with kids who don't believe he is actually Steve. Something he says happens quite often. Steve conducted this interview straight from the old Blue's Clues Thinking Chair. You can head over to HuffPo for more from Steve about his current career path and where he's heading in the near future.