Yeah - the judges got conned on this one...

AOL published this article on the topic on March 26 - the day after I posted this poll

Here is the link
http://news.aol.com/entertain...

and here is the AOL text:

Cook's Covers of Covers Win 'Idol' Praise
AOL
Posted: 2008-03-26 15:22:41
Filed Under: American Idol, TV News
(March 26) - On Tuesday night's 'American Idol,' David Cook covered Michael Jackson's pop masterpiece 'Billie Jean' as a slow-burning, acoustic-guitar-and-string enhanced gothic anthem.

The crowd roared and the judges raved.

Randy Jackson said David Cook was possibly the "most original, most bold contestant we've ever had ... you might be the one to win the whole lot. Blazing molten hot."

Paula Abdul was nearly in tears. "I can't sit down," she gushed. "I have to tell you how smart you are, how brave you are, how willing you are to stretch the boundries. You do it right to the edge without going over. I thnk you're brilliant.

Even the hard-to-impress Cowell said "David, that was brave. It could have either been insane or amazing and I've got to tell you, it was amazing."

Did any of the judges hear Ryan Seacrest announce that Cook was simply performing a popular cover of 'Billie Jean' by former Soundgarden and Audioslave frontman Chris ...
Yeah - the judges got conned on this one...

AOL published this article on the topic on March 26 - the day after I posted this poll

Here is the link
http://news.aol.com/entertain...

and here is the AOL text:

Cook's Covers of Covers Win 'Idol' Praise
AOL
Posted: 2008-03-26 15:22:41
Filed Under: American Idol, TV News
(March 26) - On Tuesday night's 'American Idol,' David Cook covered Michael Jackson's pop masterpiece 'Billie Jean' as a slow-burning, acoustic-guitar-and-string enhanced gothic anthem.

The crowd roared and the judges raved.

Randy Jackson said David Cook was possibly the "most original, most bold contestant we've ever had ... you might be the one to win the whole lot. Blazing molten hot."

Paula Abdul was nearly in tears. "I can't sit down," she gushed. "I have to tell you how smart you are, how brave you are, how willing you are to stretch the boundries. You do it right to the edge without going over. I thnk you're brilliant.

Even the hard-to-impress Cowell said "David, that was brave. It could have either been insane or amazing and I've got to tell you, it was amazing."

Did any of the judges hear Ryan Seacrest announce that Cook was simply performing a popular cover of 'Billie Jean' by former Soundgarden and Audioslave frontman Chris Cornell?

Cornell had covered 'Jean' for his second solo album back in 2006. He has been performing it live ever since. Howard Stern was such a fan that he invited Cornell on his Sirius satellite program to play it.

"I didn't plan on it," he told MTV at the time. "It just sort of happened organically. I changed the music quite a bit, I didn't touch the lyrics. And it's not a joke."

It's not the first cover of a cover that's given Cook the leg up in this year's 'Idol' competition.

In the first installment of Beatles week, Cook took on 'Eleanor Rigby,' turning one of the Lennon and McCartney's bleakest tales into an emo-fueled rocker. One day later, TMZ reported that a Seattle band named Doxology had been performing a similar cover for over a year and a half. Their cover of 'Rigby' is currently posted on their MySpace page.

For last week's second part of Beatles week, Cook admitted that he was taking on Whitesnake's cover of 'Day Tripper,' complete with a vocoder break.

With Cook apperaring to have wrestled the frontrunner status away from early favorite David Archuleta, it remains to be seen whether he'll continue to tackle old favorites with a new rock edge, and whether that edge will be his own, or another band's.

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2008-03-26 10:55:39