As most of the country knows by now (or just the 97.5 million fans that happened to have voted), the rocker has beaten the boy next door. David Cook has won the latest season of American Idol beating out David Archuleta by the surprisingly large margin of 12 million votes (56 percent vs 44 percent). This comes after the hype had stated that this would probably be the closest American Idol finale yet. Cook’s win took all three of the Idol judges, Paula Abdul, Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson by surprise.


After David Archuleta’s performance the previous night, Simon Cowell even declared that Archuleta had scored a knock-out victory, oblivious to whom Idol audiences actually preferred. Cowell did actually apologize to Cook immediately prior to the announcement of the winner, so perhaps Cook’s performance that evening made Simon realize that he may have been a bit hasty declaring Archuleta would probably win this season’s American Idol.

Ryan Seacrest announced the percentages early on in the 2 hour finale, but did not of course state which David had won the voter’s hearts. Season 7 ended with Cook, a from Blue Springs, Missouri belting out Regie Ham’s “Time of my life”. This is the first time a real ‘rocker’ has won an American Idol (thank goodness)… although David Archuleta’s story of coming back from a paralyzed vocal cord to sing even better than before was the most touching of all the contestants through all 7 seasons.

Of course, it is a shame that Jason Castro couldn’t hang in there even with the endorsement from voteforetheworst.com, then perhaps more money for worthy causes like Relay for Life and the American Cancer society could’ve been raised… definitely a worthier cause then a seventh American Idol… how many American Idol’s do we actually need??!