TORONTO - He barely registered on "American Idol" until he cut his hair and sang "Hello."
From then on, David Cook was the unlikely dark horse who reinvented hits from the '80s and '90s to the delight of his female fans, in the end trouncing teenage phenom David Archuleta in a landslide upset.
Cook and his fellow Top 10 competitors arrive in Toronto on Saturday, and it turns out that the emo-balladeer has a musical idol of his own - Canadian singer-songwriter Raine Maida.
Cook says he's long been a fan of the Our Lady Peace singer and requested a meeting with Maida when it came time to hash out material for his "Idol"-funded solo release.
"The songs that we wrote were, in my opinion, some of the strongest that we've done for this record," Cook says by phone from a recent tour stop in Detroit.
"I'm very pleased with how it turned out and I'm actually hoping to get together with him again before the record gets released and try to write some more."
Cook notes that Maida's edgy rock sound is very much in line with the type of material he hopes to put out himself. Other rockers he's written with include Ed Roland from Collective Soul and Zac Maloy from the Nixons.
"I wanted to write with people that I admired and respected and people that I thought could tune into the kind of vibe that I wanted. Raine's definitely one of those people," he says of the L.A. writing session, in which he also met Maida's wife, songstress Chantal Kreviazuk, and their sons.
"I put his name on a list, I turned that list in and next thing I know he was on the schedule. With it being my first session I remember being just really nervous because you always have that kind of anxiety, this person I look up to - 'Are they going to be nice?' ... And in the first 15 seconds he completely put me at ease. He's the most unassuming, down-to-earth person I think I've ever met."
Cook, who chose the Our Lady Peace song "Innocent" for his Top 8 performance, says he hopes to release the disc in the fall, and follow it up with another tour.
During the Idol competition, the 25-year-old singer distinguished himself from the pack with a harder rock sound and a breathy delivery that made his female fans swoon.
Unconventional arrangements of '80s and '90s classics including Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean," Mariah Carey's "Always Be My Baby," and Lionel Richie's "Hello" earned him glowing reviews from judges Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell.
Cook's alt-rock performance of "Billie Jean," was actually a Chris Cornell arrangement, but the Idol champ lays claim to unique interpretations of "Always Be My Baby" and "Hello," which came in at week 3 as he entered the Top 16.
Cook says his guitar-driven emo version of "Hello" started out as an inside joke with his buddies back home in Tulsa, Okla.
"We always joked around that that would be a great power ballad. And then I had the first two weeks where I kind of stumbled over myself a little bit, was just trying to find my footing and I really walked into that third week, and was just like...'I'm just going to have fun with this song - I'll do it.' "
The judges loved his rendition, and in many ways, that off-beat approach set the tone for Cook's gradual climb to the top.
Cook says he's going for similar musical surprises when he releases his solo album later this year.
"It's a rock record but in my opinion it's not the standard 'one-four-five' pop chord progression rock," he insists, noting the lyrics deal with "themes of love and displacement, being unsure and all those kind of vibes."
"I wanted there to be some room on this record to meander and do some interesting things that make a listener want to pay attention."
