This David's cooking

Rocker tops smooth teen to win 'American Idol' title

By Lynn Elber, Associated Press

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Kevork Djansezian / Associated Press

David Cook performs the song Sharp Dressed Man with ZZ Top's Frank Beard on drums and Billy Gibbons during the finale of American Idol in Los Angeles Wednesday night. Cook won by 12 milllion votes out of 97.5 million cast by viewers, despite judges' apparent preference for competitor David Archuleta.

The grown-up rocker triumphed over the smooth-voiced kid as David Cook claimed the American Idol title Wednesday night, and it wasn't as much of a surprise as it seemed.

While 17-year-old David Archuleta was heaped with praise by the judges the night before, the voters decided otherwise - and did they ever.

Host Ryan Seacrest said before the results that 12 million votes was the difference, and it turns out they broke in the favor of the 25-year-old from Blue Springs, Mo.

Cook was overcome by emotion, bending toward the stage after his name was announced.

"This is amazing," he said. "This is all your fault," he added, addressing the brother who Cook had accompanied to the Idol audition that started it all.

Cook immediately took the microphone and began to sing Time of my Life, which won the annual "Idol songwriting competition, to close out season seven.

Cook refused to bow to the conventional during his three-song set Tuesday, with Collective Soul's The World I Know as his pick for a closing performance. He also sang U2's I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For and the power ballad Dream Big, his choice from the songwriting competition's finalists.

"If I had to choose between playing a song that not a whole lot of people know that I could get behind, or the opposite, I'll choose the lesser- known every time," Cook said backstage Tuesday.

Judge Simon Cowell said at the time that the song choices sunk him, and told Archuleta that he'd scored a "knockout" performance in the boxing-themed performance finale.

Cook was unshaken, and now his choices are vindicated.

While Idol ratings were down all season, the final contest provoked a frenzy with a record 97.5 million audience votes cast by phone and text. Last year's total vote count was 74 million.

Early in the show, Seacrest played it coy, announcing that the split between the two contestants was 56 percent for one David, 44 percent for the other. Of course he left in question who got the lion's share; that detail wouldn't come until the closing moments of the two-hour live broadcast.

While Archuleta was showered with praise by the judges all season, online bookies and observers kept the faith with Cook. One Web site, which tracks busy signals on the separate phone lines dedicated to each contestant, projected him the winner Wednesday morning.

By strict idol standards, being rebellious turned out to be worth the gamble for Cook, whose hip and scruffy style and ability to work the camera with a soulful gaze also proved to have overwhelming appeal. There were moments of tears, too, after Tuesday's performance and again after Wednesday's win.

Cowell, who seemed to dismiss Cook and his chances of winning Tuesday, offered an apology in the moments before the winner was announced, saying he was too harsh and that it "wasn't quite so clear cut as we called it."

Archuleta, of Murray, Utah, was the prodigy who consistently dazzled the show's judges and thrilled screaming young fans.