ITunes Chart Sizzles with Cook on Top

The new American Idol this year, 25-year old David Cook from Missouri, is having the time of his life right now. After comfortably beating his Idol final adversary, 17-year old David Archuleta, by a comfortable 12 million votes-margin, Cook is now also on top of the iTunes music download charts.

Four of Cook's songs – The Time of My Life, which was his first single and three other songs he sang during the Idol finale - figured in the first four slots of iTunes, the online music store owned by Apple inc.

Cook’s rise to American Idol superstardom is the stuff that fairy tales are made of. He was a guitarist and also a bartender when he first came to American Idol to cheer his brother who had come to audition. He ended up auditioning himself, thus marking the start of a journey that finally ended with him remaining the last man standing on the show.

Speaking on Friday after his idol success, Cook said he was going to bring out an album, a rock album, that he guaranteed would ‘make the hair on your neck stand up.’ He also said that the best piece of musical advice for him came from none other than Frank Sinatra.

Talking about the Sinatra connection, Cook said he drew inspiration from an article he read during the course of American Idol. The article apparently was about legendary singer Frank Sinatra and the way his focus was primarily on his lyrics. Cook said, “It made me think I needed to step back and before I even tried to learn the song, I needed to read the lyrics. That really helped as far as trying to find the vibe.”

Cook said he was looking forward to putting out something different, and not just alternative versions of classic songs from the pop firmament, though these songs were the ones that had won him a huge fan following and finally, the title of American Idol. During the show, he had won over people with his individually stylized renditions of classics like Billie Jean and Hello, a song by Lionel Richie.

During a conference call, Cook told reporters, “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. It'll probably be a rock record. I just want to make a record that’s going to make the hair on your neck stand up ... Even if it doesn’t do well commercially, as long as I can put out a record I am proud of – that’s the goal right now. And hopefully the success will follow.”

Cook said during the call that he had not changed too many things during his time at Idol, other than a new look and a really busy schedule. “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. I just went into it as an opportunity to expose myself to a large audience,” Cook said.