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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.”

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