David Cook Returns With New Single ‘Criminals’: Listen
David Cook, the first rocker to win American Idol, hasn’t released a full album since his sophomore effort for former label RCA Records in 2011. But he’s finally back, with a new album, Digital Vein, due out via the INgrooves Music Group on Sept. 18. And the album’s lead single, “Criminals,” makes it debut today. Cook describes the anthemic, Wallflowers-esque track to USA Today as “lyrically, it’s a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde, young love against the world.”
While Cook has been on a too-long recording hiatus and is no longer on a major label, he hasn’t exactly been twiddling his thumbs. Three years ago, he moved to Nashville, where he has been embraced by the songwriting community, starting an official working relationship with Warner Chappell and co-penning country star David Nail’s top 20 “Kiss You Tonight” single. And of course, he has continued to tour practically nonstop. “I can remember very vividly how few people were coming to my shows before all this, so the fact that people are still coming, this many years later, is awesome,” he told Yahoo Music in an interview earlier this year. “I’m looking forward, and [my new] record is forward, and that’s where I’m at. Success is cyclical anyway, and no matter what happens, man, if I can do this and make a living, awesome. I get to be a musician for a living. That’s pretty rad… And so far, it’s a good living and I get to do something that I love to do, and I get to travel. There’s not much to complain about.”
Cook also told Yahoo Music that he’s happier overall with Digital Vein than he was with his last RCA effort, This Loud Morning. “I think This Loud Morning was such an undertaking, and I did put a lot of pressure on myself, so much that I think I might have missed out on some of the fun,” he admitted. “I think I might have mentally gotten in my own way a little bit, as far as just the process of making that record and being able to walk into a studio every day and enjoy it. I mean, Jesus, this job’s supposed to be fun! But I’ve had a blast making this [new] record, and I’ve even, God forbid, actually enjoyed some of the business side of it, trying to get this record off the ground and out to the public. I think just being able to experiment with really no deadline and no pressure — I started this record not sure if I was even going to finish it — and just being able to try things and be creatively free, was huge. That’s what it’s all about.”
As for that “first Idol rocker” tag, Cook is still humble when asked if he thinks he altered American Idol history: “S---, I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s my definition to make… I guess one would hope, however many years from now, if the show’s still on the air, that I left something there in the pot for people to remember. But it was never my intention. It’s never really crossed my mind too much.”
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