Well, well, well… here we are. An “American Idol” has been chosen yet again, and those of us who have been following the show moment-by-moment are in what can only be described as a post-”Idol” hangover.

That’s especially true for those of us in the media who hung around for hours backstage at L.A.’s Nokia theater last night waiting to interview the “Idol” himself, David Cook. Once he did finally appear, Cook talked to reporters about Simon’s apology, how it felt to win, and what kind of a record he wants to make.

Here’s what he said:

Q: What did you think of Simon Cowell’s apology?

A: I didn’t really know that the apology was warranted. I thought what he said was an opinion and nothing more. At no point did I feel disrespected. But yeah, I’m appreciative of the fact that he decided to apologize. An apology from Simon is a pretty rare gem.

Q: What went through your mind in the moment you found out you had won?

A: That my music teacher made me sing in a Christmas pageant in second grade, and now I’m here. And so the ride’s been pretty nuts. You couldn’t write this. Maybe you guys can, but I can’t.

Q: Did you think you were going to win?

A: I didn’t. The respect I have for David Archuleta is very much past a competitor thing. He has more talent at his age than I know what to do with at 25, so to be able to share the stage with him was an honor for me. I kinda went into Tuesday just to have fun, and the fact that I walk out of here as the next “American Idol” is not a testament to me so much as it’s a testament to the other 23 contestants we had this season and to everybody behind the scenes.

Q: What was your favorite performance of the season?

A: Of mine? The last one. I have been holding my breath for four months, so tonight was just about exhaling and enjoying what this show is and what it isn’t.

Q: What kind of a record do you want to make?

A: A good one. That’s the kind of record I want to make.

Q: What are your expectations of being the “American Idol?”

A: I actually walked into this with no expectations, and I’m walking out of it with no expectations. I think this show is a springboard, but it’s still a crap shoot. I could easily walk out of this arena and be just a regular Joe tomorrow. I hope that doesn’t happen.

Q: How important was it to share this experience with your brother, who you auditioned for “American Idol” with?

A: For me it just made the whole experience full circle. In August, I stood in line in Omaha, Nebraska at 5:30 in the morning and it was raining, with no intention of auditioning. And now I’m here and I got to share that moment with the same two people I stood in line with seven or eight months ago. So it was a nice bookend.

For the full story, click here.

After all these months, is it really going to come down to “the Chosen One” after all?

David Archuleta, the teenage crooner whose satiny voice and babyfaced looks have stolen the hearts of teenage girls, was all but crowned the winner of this season’s “American Idol” by judges Simon Cowell and Randy Jackson on Tuesday night. Playing on a boxing theme the show took on to highlight the showdown between two guys named David, Cowell called Archuleta’s performance “a knockout” of his older rival, rocker David Cook.

But was it really that cut and dry? After four months of performances by scores of wannabe pop stars, dozens of dramatic contestant ousters and hundreds of millions of votes from “Idol” viewers, will it all come down to the 17-year-old who was dubbed the one to beat way back when there were 24 contestants?

It seems, after Tuesday night’s show, that the answer is yes. While the judges praised both Cook’s and Archuleta’s three performances each, they clearly favored Archuleta. It’s almost too bad, given that going into the finale, the outcome appeared far less certain than in recent seasons. Last year, for instance, Jordin Sparks’ victory over Blake Lewis was virtually set in stone before either one of them sang a note.

Cook, however, has been a serious contender this season, delivering solid rock performances week after week that recalled Season 5 contestant and current music sensation Chris Daughtry. Also, like Archuleta, Cook never landed among the show’s bottom three vote-getters all season.

Still, the quality of Archuleta’s singing and his appeal among the show’s teenage viewers is undeniable. And, having been raised watching “Idol,” his song choices were almost always impeccable.

At least Cook seemed to take the competition in stride, proclaiming on Tuesday night that the “competition’s over, we’re just having fun.” Translation: I know I’m going to be set up with a record deal whether I win this thing or not.

So get ready. There are less than 24 hours to go before we find out whether David Archuleta really is, in fact, “the Chosen One,” or whether fate will instead side with a scrappy Missouri bartender who shares his name.

It was supposed to be Syesha’s night. After all, it was the axed Floridian’s last chance to shine on “American Idol” after a meteoric rise to third place that no one expected.

But here we are, the top two “American Idol” finalists decided after four intense months, and yet the buzz following Wednesday night’s elimination show centered not around the impending David showdown, or on the ouster of Syesha Mercado, but an over-the-top performance by an “Idol” winner from four years ago.

Fantasia, the passionate, raspy-voiced single mother from North Carolina, to this day is arguably the edgiest “Idol” winner ever (Taylor Hicks and his premature head of gray hair don’t count). Tonight, however, she truly outdid herself, bursting onto the stage with a head of fire engine red hair and three backup dancers and delivering a high-energy performance of her song “Bore Me.”

The performance immediately sparked a lively debate on the Web over whether Fantasia was back to her magnetic self or had completely lost her mind.

“I loved it…it was FUN and CRAAAAZZZY! I was up dancing!” wrote one fan on the “Idol” forums, while another said: “What was all the screaming about? That’s talent? She’s lost it.”

Many viewers commented on Simon Cowell’s slack-jawed stare during Fantasia’s performance, saying he couldn’t have made his feelings any clearer.

On YouTube, where several versions of the performance were posted following the show, one viewer panned the performance, but admitted to being unable stop watching the video.

“For some strange reason beyond my own comprehension I can’t stop watching the vid!!! It’s like deep down inside I want to punish myself for all the mistakes I did in my life by watching this freakshow!”

Isn’t that what reality TV is all about?

For more on the elimination show, click here.

 The final two haven’t even been announced yet, but outspoken judge Simon Cowell has already made clear who he thinks should be crowned “American Idol” next week.

“Probably David Cook,” Cowell told Blender.com in an interview when asked who he thought most deserved to win.

 ”I think he’s done more to deserve it over the eleven weeks. He’s taken more risks, he’s done things with certain songs that have been more interesting. If I’m gonna base it on who has done the best performances over the live shows, David Cook deserves to win,” Cowell said.

For most Idol fans,  it’s been a foregone conclusion for weeks that the two Davids — rocker Cook and baby-faced Archuleta — would meet in the final showdown on May 20.

But the winner will be chosen not by the three judges, but by the 25 million or so viewers of the show. What will you base your decision on? Talent, good looks, likeability, or most deserving?

Not many “American Idol” viewers expected to see Syesha Mercado make it past this week. Let’s face it, a face-off between the two Davids, Archuleta and Cook, has been considered a foregone conclusion for weeks now.

But notwithstanding the near certainty of a David showdown, it was still a shock to see Paula Abdul administer Mercado’s death sentence on Tuesday night’s episode.

The perennial “good cop” judge, who at least tells the contestant that they “look beautiful”when she doesn’t have anything nice to say about a performance, told Mercado at the end of her third performance of the night that she was probably not going to make it to the show’s finale next week.

“I don’t know if it’s going to be good enough to get into the finals of “American Idol,” Abdul said of Mercado’s rendition of Gia Farrell’s “Hit Me Up” from the movie “Happy Feet.”

Abdul tried to atone for her comment afterwards, adding: “I love you, though.”

Mercado’s second performance of the night, a cabaret-inspired version of “Fever,” was also uniformly panned by the judges, with Simon Cowell saying she missed her chance to prove that she can be a contemporary recording artist and would probably regret choosing that song tomorrow.

Oh well, hopefully Syesha will be taking comfort in the fact that Paula loves her while she packs her bags tonight.

Truth be told, the night wasn’t stellar for the Davids, either. Cowell said Dan Fogelberg’s “Longer,” which the show’s producers chose for David Archuleta to sing, was “something you would choose for like a 90-year-old,” while the 17-year-old’s performance of Chris Brown’s “With You” was “a little bit like a chihuahua trying to be a tiger.”

David Cook, meanwhile, got lukewarm reviews from Randy Jackson on all three of his performances. Cowell and Abdul were kinder, with Cowell declaring at the end of the show that “David Cook wins the night.”

That may be true, but the season’s biggest battle is still to come. Davids, it’s time to step it up.

There’s no question that Syesha Mercado is one tough “American Idol” contestant.

Week after week, the 21-year-old beauty from Sarasota, Florida, has stepped up her game, delivering performances in recent episodes that many thought she wasn’t capable of. Now, despite having been among the lowest three vote-getters a whopping five times, Mercado is the only woman to have made it to the show’s Top 4.

For making it this, Mercado certainly deserves a lot of credit. On Tuesday night’s episode, judge Randy Jackson singled out the TV commercial actress after her performance of “Proud Mary” for “showing the heat late in the competition when you need it.”

Paula Abdul, meanwhile, told Mercado: “You started this competiton as a pretty girl with a big voice, and you turned into this beautiful woman with a magnetic voice and presence.”

Still, it was more than a little strange when, just before singing her second song of the evening, Mercado appeared to liken her run on “Idol” to the U.S. Civil Rights Movement.

In a pre-taped interview shown before her performance of “A Change is Gonna Come,” Mercado explained why she chose the song by legendary R&B singer Sam Cooke.

“It was released after his death in 1965 during the Civil Rights Movement, which was a very pivotal time in history. And now I’m singing it during a pivotal time in my life — Top 4, amazing experience… I’m just so thankful to still be here and this song just took on a totally different meaning for me.”

Later, Mercado broke down in tears after judge Randy Jackson said he hadn’t liked her performance, while Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell both praised her singing.

Choking back tears, she explained again that the song meant a lot to her, again referencing its links with the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

“I just couldn’t stop crying, because I feel like I’ve changed a lot,” Mercado said.

Then, as she wiped the streams of tears off her face, Mercado suddenly snapped back to the harsh reality of live TV: “I probably look like crap right now,” she said.

That’s it. The next time Simon Cowell actually likes a performance on “American Idol,” he should just keep it to himself. No one tunes in to see him say anything nice, anyway.

Carly Smithson’s elimination on Wednesday night’s show simply defied any rational explanation, even in the cruel and unforgiving world of reality TV. For the first time in weeks, the Irish diva on Tuesday night received uniform praise from all three judges for her passionate performance of “Superstar” from the musical “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Composer Andew Lloyd Webber was the show’s guest mentor.

The praise from Cowell was enough to make Smithson, who last week accused Cowell of being too hard on her, whip out a blue T-shirt that read “Simon Loves Me (This Week).”

But besides Smithson’s standout performance, rival contestants Brooke White and Jason Castro were both panned up and down both on the show and in the blogosphere, including right here on Fan Fare. One of them surely appeared headed for the axe on Wednesday.

So what happened?

During Wednesday’s episode, Cowell took a stab at explaining the results, saying White had shown herself to be human by stumbling over the beginning of her performance of “You Must Love Me,” from the film “Evita.”

And Castro, he said, was “charming” even though his rendition of “Memory,” from the musical “Cats,” was an agreed upon disaster. Admittedly, Castro saying “I didn’t know a cat was singing it” in his pre-taped interview before his performance is likely to go down as one of the highlights of this season.

On the “Idol” forums, some fans tried to explain Smithson’s departure by saying the show had become more of a popularity contest than a singing competition. Others said the choice of “Superstar” was a controversial one that may have alienated some religious Christian voters. One fan, however, really got to the root of the issue:

“Carly didn’t get enough votes.”

For the full elimination night story, click here.

She started. She stopped. She started again. And still, “American Idol” contestant Brooke White never seemed to get it together. In fact, does anyone even remember the rest of the performance?

White, the 24-year-old blonde songstress who has won viewers’ hearts with her bluesy voice and down-to-earth style, is almost sure to be among the show’s bottom three vote-getters this week after stumbling over the beginning of her performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “You Must Love Me.”

It was the second time this season White stopped singing and restarted a song from the beginning, this time because she forgot the words to the ballad originally performed by Madonna in the film “Evita.”

Surprisingly, White took the most heat from perennial contestant cheerleader Paula Abdul, who said bluntly:

“You must never start and stop.”

Jude Simon Cowell disagreed with Abdul, saying the move had been “brave.” But, he also warned White that “it completely threw you… you are going to be very disappointed when you watch this back.”

White’s face, with her lips pursed together and head cocked to the side, said it all following the performance. She has already been in the show’s bottom 3 twice this season, most recently last week. And with the show down to just six contestants now, there are few left who could break her fall. (Except for maybe Jason Castro after his grueling performance of “Memory” — Randy Jackson put it best when he called it a “train wreck”)

Lloyd Webber, the show’s guest mentor for the week, also must have been disappointed by White’s poor showing. Earlier this week, he told the “Los Angeles Times” that he had been “really quite impressed” with White. “I got something out of her,” he added.

Whatever it was that Sir Andrew “got” out of White during the show’s rehearsals, it sure eluded her on Tuesday night. Sorry Brooke, but the Bottom 3 looks tailor-made for you this week.

You have to hand it to Kristy Lee Cook.

The 24-year-old country girl and latest “American Idol” casualty hung on to her slot on the show, apparently by the skin of her teeth, week after week after week. Despite seemingly endless attacks from the acid-tongued Simon Cowell, who predicted early in the competition that she would not make it past tenth place, Cook repeatedly appeared to defy the odds.

As Cook herself noted before her offing on Wednesday night, she sure proved Cowell wrong, coming in seventh place this season. Heck, she even lasted longer than that Aussie hunk Michael Johns. Who could have predicted that after sitting through her gruelling “Eight Days a Week” performance all those weeks ago?

So, it’s back to Oregon for Cook, where she already has her next challenge cut out for her. Forced to sell her beloved horse to pay for the trip to the “Idol” audition in Philadelphia, Cook told a fan who dialed into the show on Wednesday night that she wants to buy him back. The problem is, the man she sold it to doesn’t want to sell it back to her.

After delivering the news that Cook would no longer be part of the show, host Ryan Seacrest asked the man, on live television, to sell the horse back to her. A teary-eyed Cook also appealed to him for sympathy.

“Can I go ride my horse now?” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

Call us crazy, but something tells us that the woman who not only proved Simon Cowell wrong, but also survived the show’s “bottom 3″ three times before finally getting the axe isn’t going to let one little person get between her and her horse. But maybe that’s just us.

It must have been conceived as some sort of cruel joke.

For seven seasons now, the judges of “American Idol” have repeatedly told contestants to steer clear of singing songs by Mariah Carey, ostensibly because the singing competition’s up-and-coming star wannabes could never hope to measure up to one of the great voices of pop music.

So, let’s just say it was a little strange to find Carey as the guest judge on Tuesday night’s show. Because you know what that means: the contestants were allowed to perform an old Mariah song, a new Mariah song, or any other Mariah song of their choosing.

As judge Simon Cowell predicted at the beginning of the show, the night indeed turned out to be lackluster one for the girls because of the unavoidable comparisons between them and the great Carey herself. That didn’t stop Cowell from delivering his usual barbs, however.

“It was a bit like ordering a hamburger and only getting the bun,” Cowell told Brooke White after her performance of “Hero.” “In other words the vital ingredient, the bit in the middle, was missing.”

Ouch.

The other girls — Syesha Mercado, Kristy Lee Cook, and Carly Smithson — emerged without being compared to fast food, but they didn’t get any overwhelming love from the judges.

The remaining three boys, however, put the judges in a festive mood. A leather pants-clad David Archuleta’s performance of “When You Believe” was declared the evening’s benchmark by Cowell, and David Cook’s rock take on “Always Be My Baby” received a standing ovation from judge Randy Jackson.

Later, Jackson likened Jason Castro’s take on “I Don’t Wanna Cry” to “a weird beach luau,” but Paula Abdul said it was a luau that she would “love to be at.” Cowell agreed with Abdul, saying that “the guys completely won the night.”