By Jill Serjeant
Cook, 25, a Missouri guitarist who was tending bar before
auditioning for the most watched show on U.S. television, also
said his best musical advice came from Frank Sinatra.
Cook won the seventh season of the singing competition and
a recording contract on Wednesday, beating 17-year-old crooner
David Archuleta by a 12 million-vote margin in the record 97.5
million votes cast by viewers by telephone and text message.
Cook's first single "The Time of My Life" and the three
songs he sang in this week's "American Idol" finale were the
top four downloads on Apple Inc's iTunes music store on Friday.
Cook said he would not be putting out an album of standards
even though he won fans on the show, which is broadcast on the
Fox network, a unit of News Corp, with alternative versions of
pop classics such as "Billie Jean" and Lionel Richie's "Hello."
"I think it's going to be a mixture of my writing and
hopefully writing with other people. I just want to come out of
the gate with a solid record," he told reporters in a telephone
conference call.
Cook is not likely to start work on the first album until
the Top 10 Idols finish a three-month U.S. tour starting in
July.
Cook, who played in bands for 10 years trying to make it in
the music business, said his biggest lesson came from an
article he read during the show on how the late Frank Sinatra
focused first on the lyrics of his records.
"It made me think I needed to step back and before I even
tried to learn the song, I needed to read the lyrics," he said.
"That really helped as far as trying to find the vibe."
Despite a new haircut and losing about 15 pounds during the
hectic "Idol" schedule, Cook said he had changed little else.
"I didn't have any expectations of what the show was going
to do for me or what I was going to do for the show," he said.
"I just went into it as an opportunity to expose myself to a
large audience."
"American Idol," has become a pop culture phenomenon,
drawing an average 28 million viewers this year and producing
stars such as Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood and Chris
Daughtry.
(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Bill Trott)
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