Rocker, David Cook, triumphed over his competitor David Archuleta last night and rightfully claimed the “American Idol” title.

While the judges Tuesday crowned Archuleta the winner of the three singing rounds, the voters decided otherwise and in a huge unexpected way. Ryan Seacrest announced that Cook won by 12 million votes.

Right before the winner was announced, Simon Cowell said that he wanted to apologize to Cook because looking back at the tape, the competition “wasn’t quite so clear cut as we called it.” He felt he was on the verge of being disrespectful when he commented on how stupid it was for David Cook to pick the final song he sang. He also said that both guys deserved to be there and for the first time in American Idol history, he really didn’t care who won.

When Ryan announced Cook’s name, he became overwhelmed with emotion. Bending down and coming back up with tear filled eyes, the second time in many nights that the scruffy-faced rocker broke down.

“This is amazing,” he said. “This is all your fault,” he added, addressing his brother, Andrew. The story goes that Cook was only tagging along with his sibling to the “Idol” auditions to lend support, and wound up getting on the show.

To close out the show, Cook took the mic one last time on the American Idol stage and sang his new single “Time of My Life,” a song written by Nashville singer/songwriter Reggie Hamm, winner of the annual “Idol” songwriting competition.

“If I had to choose between playing a song that not a whole lot of people know that I could get behind, or the opposite, I’ll choose the lesser-known every time,” Cook told The Associated Press backstage Tuesday.

While “Idol” ratings were down all season, the final contest turned that tide. The viewership of Tuesday’s show went up 3 percent over last year’s performance finale. The David competition provoked a frenzy with a record 97.5 million audience votes cast by phone and text. Last year’s total vote count was 74 million.

*For those David Cook fans, here is David Cook in a Guitar Hero commercial, Risky Business style.

This is a hard battle. I have no idea which David is going to win tonight on American Idol. Due to yesterdays judges decision, the winner should be David Archuleta. But in my opinion, based on the performances, I think that David Cook should win.

My money is on David Archuleta. He is a 16 year-old power house, who sings ballads so beautifully and has been consistent every week. The only problem is that it seems like he can only sing ballads. When he tries to sing up beat pop songs he just sounds off, like he can’t keep up with the melody. So I don’t know exactly what he has to offer record wise.

I would love, love, love it if David Cook won. I have been a fan of his since he sang Lionel Richie’s Hello. And although some of his performances haven’t been that good, I must admit, when he sang Billie Jean and Eleanor Rigby, he got me excited about competition again. And like he said last night, this competition is about growth as an artist, and he has truely grown more than Archuleta has.

Both of these singers are phenomenal. I don’t think it really matters who actually wins. Both of their albums I’m sure will be great. But if Archuleta doesn’t win he can always follow Clay Aiken’s footsteps and do Broadway.

Finally!!! Brooke White gets voted off American Idol. I don’t know if I could take another week of her butchering up classic American songs.

I hope Jason Castro leaves next week. He also hasn’t been able to step up his game since he sang “Some Where Over The Rainbow.” Where did his sweet reggae vibe go?

And in other Idol news:

Paula Abdul apparently has been getting a lot of slack for her comment she made to Jason Castro on Tuesday where she said that she liked his first song he sang better than his second. Funny thing, he hadn’t sang his second song yet.

“ Jason, first song, I loved hearing your lower register, which we never really hear, um… the second song, I felt like your usual charm wasn’t - it was missing for me. It kind of left me a little empty.

“The two songs made me feel like you’re not fighting hard enough to get into the top four,” she said, before being told by fellow judge Randy Jackson that only one song had been performed.

After realizing her blunder, Abdul said: “Oh my god, I thought you sang twice!”

Ryan Seacrest tried to smooth over the situation by saying, “You’re seeing the future, baby!”, before cutting her off and asking another judge, Simon Cowell, for his comments.

“This was officially the strangest show we’ve ever done,” Cowell said at the end of the program.

Paula Abdul found it necessary to quash the confusion rumors and called in to Ryan Seacrest on his KIISFM radio show Wednesday morning to discuss what happened and what she was thinking at that moment.

She explained that Nigel Lythgoe, the executive producer of AI, changed things up at the last minute and asked the judges to comment about the contestants singing midway through the show instead of at the end.

“It was so confusing,” said Paula. “The whole thing is like, ‘Hello?’ It was crazy for us. In seven years, we’ve never had to do that.”"So, the kids are coming out, and I’m like ‘Oh my God, what do we do?’ ” recalls Paula. “I just started looking at what I had written down and we’ve never had to do this before. I was reading the critique of what I had written for Jason Castro, and on the same page, I also wrote David. I got lost on my notes. And that’s as simple as it was.”

“So, you were talking about two different people, but accidentally, you said second song,” confirms Ryan.Ryan has also said this to try to help clear the Paula rumors (what rumors, I’m not quite sure): “Now, one thing before we move on – last night on the show the judges were thrown a curve ball while we were on the air, which is just part of a live show, but it sparked a lot of gossip about Paula. And, I read some of this online this morning, and just for the record – the rumors, they’re not true. She’s part of our family, and we love her.”

Ramiele Malubay is the next American Idol contestant to go home after singing Dolly Parton’s “Do I Ever Cross Your Mind?” I actually really like Ramiele, I think she has a very pretty voice. But she definitely keeps singing the wrong songs. The girl let me down, I was waiting to hear her belt just once.

Well at least the bottom three was right this time. Although I like Brooke White, she is definitely not one of the stronger singers. And Kristy Lee Cook, who other than last week, seems to have a permanent place in the bottom three, should have gone home. I just don’t like that girl. It’s not that she’s bad, just very very boring. I’m crossing my fingers so tightly that next week she will finally leave. I can’t stand to see all those good singers get the boot before she does. Ugh, such a travesty.