Reading the Tea Leaves on David Cook’s Career
David Cook
Tulsa’s David Cook entered the competition on a lark and won a dark horse victory Wednesday against a teenage pop singer, and now Cook is an “American Idol.” Now comes the hard part: a lasting career that transcends the victory.
Before Cook, only one rock singer built a substantial following from “American Idol,” and he was a fourth-place finisher. But while Chris Daughtry’s mainstream rock approach might be the short-term template for Cook’s career, the new “Idol” champ is likely to be thinking bigger.
“I think we’ll see him go sort of down the Daughtry route — I say ‘sort of,’ because I don’t think they’re going to sound the same,” said Shirley Halperin, senior writer at Entertainment Weekly. “I don’t think we’re going to have two Nickelback clones, necessarily. I think that he’s going to go for a real rock record in the vein of someone like Jimmy Eat World or Foo Fighters, who he listed as among his favorite bands.”
Both Foo Fighters and Jimmy Eat World are groups with longevity who built a fan base that withstands shifts in popular taste. Halperin, who has covered “American Idol” since its first season, said she expects Cook to make hard rock music that will sound good for years.
“I just think he’s going to take the credible rock route as opposed to the sort of formulaic, borderline pop commercial route. He opts for things that are a little heavier, a little more complex,” Halperin said, noting Cook’s allegiance to the Canadian group Our Lady Peace. “He has the chance, finally, to really make a commercially viable album that people from all sides of the spectrum can embrace. For the first time, we have somebody who can really pull it off.”
Cook will record his major-label debut while under contract to “Idol” creator Simon Fuller’s 19 Entertainment and much will be riding on making his first record a creative and commercial success on a par with Oklahoma’s previous winner, Carrie Underwood.
The 25-year-old singer-songwriter benefits in the short term from pulling an upset victory over the performer many people expected to win, 17-year-old David Archuleta of Utah. Halperin said that it came down to voter preferences: when more rock-oriented singers such as Carly Smithson and Michael Johns got voted out, their fans were unlikely to gravitate to the teen-pop and Broadway-leaning Archuleta.
So when those disaffected fans called in and texted their preference, they had one place to go.
“It’s almost as if David Cook had his own secret stash of superdelegates, but they only came into play in the last 24 hours,” Halperin said.
Beyond mathematics, Halperin said Cook had a slight edge because he presented a humble, personable presence on the show.
“From everyone I’ve talked to, he seems genuinely unaffected and nice,” Halperin said. “I think we’ll see someone, like the Foo Fighters, who will look at the big picture and the long picture, not just what’s coming up in the next year. I think what we have here is a true artist. He’s got something very special.”
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