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closeMonday, Nov. 17, 2008
David Cook lets his vulnerability shine through
The American Idol champ tries to fulfill his own artistic desires with his new CD.
By PRESTON JONES
dfw.com
If David Cook, American Idol’s seventh-season champion, seems a bit circumspect about his post-Idol career, it’s understandable.
This is, after all, a televised singing competition that for every Kelly Clarkson turns out a Ruben Studdard or a Taylor Hicks.
Nevertheless, the first full-blown rock dude to win the contest — Idol’s other high-profile rocker, Chris Daughtry, was only a fifth-season finalist — is confident his self-titled, major-label debut, in stores Tuesday, will give the many millions who voted for him (a total of 97 million votes were cast for Cook and David Archuleta, the season seven runner-up) a peek behind the curtain.
"For me, records are always a snapshot . . . so all I’m really trying to do is catch people up, because obviously the audience for this record will, knock on wood, hopefully be greater than the ones for records prior," said Cook during the Dallas stop of the American Idols Live! tour.
"I’m trying to basically put a stamp on the last 25 years of my life and present it in a 45-, 50-minute CD."
The verdict is still out on whether he accomplished that goal (click here to read my review), but despite critical opinion — a point the singer/songwriter emphasized throughout the conversation, held in the bowels of American Airlines Center — Cook is primarily interested in satisfying his own artistic needs, as well as ensuring that fans enjoy the collection he has assembled.
"Whether it’s an escape or a message or a feeling — some people see colors with music," Cook said. "Look, I’m going to get what I get out of the record regardless of what anyone else gets. If I meet my standards, nobody’s going to surpass mine, so I just hope people get out of the record something positive."
The Rob Cavallo-produced disc is a well-calibrated effort, balanced between heart-on-sleeve ballads (lead single Light On, Come Back to Me) and crunchy rockers with willfully quirky flourishes (Bar-Ba-Sol, Life on the Moon). But meeting expectations didn’t daunt Cook — instead, one of his biggest challenges, aside from trying to be creative amid the chaos of a 50-city tour this summer — was being himself.
"I think I’ve had to be more vulnerable," Cook said. "You can get away with a lot when you’re an independent artist [Cook released his 2006 debut Analog Heart on his own]. In this kind of scenario, I think part of what worked for me was I wanted my performances to be vulnerable; I wanted to bring people in and in doing so, I set the bar for myself on this record to do the same thing.
"These songwriting sessions have been very strange but very fruitful for me," he added. "The good thing about a songwriting session and also the weird thing is you have to come in and immediately open yourself up to a complete stranger, but in doing so . . . it allows you to dissect your personality a little bit differently."
Just as it’s too early to discern whether Cook’s post-Idol career is taking off or tanking (although Light On has performed well on radio and on iTunes), he’s also beginning the delicate dance all Idol champions must undertake: forming an identity while being careful not to, well, end up like season five victor Hicks. It’s not for nothing Cook only name-checks the most visible Idol offspring.
"I think to learn from mistakes and everything of that ilk is always beneficial," he says. "I’ve tried to pick as many people’s brains that have been through the process as I can, but I think to some degree, I’m trying to make my own way. I don’t want to be Carrie [Underwood] or Daughtry or Kelly or Clay [Aiken] — I just want to be me.
"Hopefully it works out, and if it doesn’t, then I get to go home and continue to wear the badge that only six other people have, [which] is that I won American Idol."
Preston Jones is DFW.com's pop music critic.
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