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.