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November 14, 2009

David Cook has had the highest of career highs and the lowest of personal lows in the past year.

After auditioning only at the last minute, he went on to actually win the 2008 American Idol competition with his distinctive rock wail.

Following the victory, he had 11 songs debut on the Billboard Hot 100, the highest number of new songs by one artist in a single week since The Beatles in 1964.

"It's pretty incredible," Cook, 26, said down the line from Milwaukee prior to a show Monday at Casino Rama north of Toronto, his final stop on a short eastern swing of Canada. "I refuse to wrap my head around that because it's a little strange."

Cook released his self-titled major-label debut last November, with song contributions from Canadians (and real-life couple) Raine Maida of Toronto band Our Lady Peace and Winnipeger Chantal Kreviazuk, among others. He has been touring North America since February.

Contrasting all that monster career was the tragedy in his personal life; his older brother, Adam, died in May after a well-documented battle with brain cancer.

The Kansas City, Mo.,-raised singer says he and his family are coping as well as they can with the loss of Adam.

"It put the brakes on for a second," Cook said. "But I think, for me, and really for my family, the sooner that we could get back to the normal routine (was) best, as far as the grieving is concerned. We missed a show for the funeral and stayed out on the road. I'm lucky. I've surrounded myself with great guys, both the band and the crew, and we all rallied around each other and pulled through it."

Among the four tracks that Cook co-wrote on his album with Maida was Permanent, a song about -- and dedicated to -- Adam.

"I wanted to write a song that was lyrically and emotionally naked, and we were able to pull that off with that song."

Cook grew up loving OLP, so getting the chance to write with Maida was a "massive" deal for him. Not just for musical reasons, but also because Cook admires Maida for other reasons, such as his fundraising efforts with Kreviazuk for such charities as WarChild Canada.

"If my career kind of followed that of Raine's, I'd be pretty happy with that," Cook said.

Just two weeks ago, on Halloween, Cook got on stage to sing with OLP on their song Starseed, during the band's stop in Kansas City.

"(It was) surreal," Cook said. "It wasn't that long ago, I was sitting in the back of the audience watching those guys."

Cook said he watched most, but not all, of the 2009 American Idol season that concluded in May, when sweet-sounding soft-rocker Kris Allen narrowly defeated glam-rocker Adam Lambert. Cook performed with both men at Good Morning America's summer concert series in Central Park.

"As I've said all along, I hope everybody sells a million records and I sell a million-and-one," Cook said with a laugh. "They're good guys and I consider them both friends, but they're also, at this point, the enemy."

As for the news that Ellen DeGeneres will be the new fourth judge on the next season of America Idol, replacing Paula Abdul, Cook is ever the diplomat.

"I think it's great. Obviously, Paula was just a very integral part of the whole Idol experience for me, and for a lot of other people, so I'm sad to see her go. But I've met Ellen a handful of times, I've been on her show, and she is a knowledgeable fan of Idol. And so I'm happy for her and I'm excited to see what she does with it."

Cooking something special

2008 American Idol 2008 winner David Cook will appear on Carrie Underwood's FOX-TV holiday special on Dec. 7.

Cook told Sun Media he performs his own song Lie and duets with Underwood on the Van Halen song Why Can't This Be Love?

Cook said he formed a friendship with Underwood, the winner of American Idol's fourth season in 2005, after she performed on an episode when he was a contestant.

"She came in, I think it was for Idol Gives Back, and just immediately made herself accessible to anybody, just in the sense of she'd obviously been through it," Cook said. "So she's been a great friend the past couple of years. She's as advertised. I think she's got all the success she has 'cause she works her butt off, and she's a good person."