David Cook is the winner of the Seventh Season of American Idol, but these days the talented rocker with the fiery vocals and searing songwriting skills has entered an exciting new chapter marked by a newfound creative freedom and the maturity that comes with having a lot of life thrown at you. In the wake of Idol, Cook endured an emotional rollercoaster marked by career highs mixed with the devastating personal tragedy of losing his beloved brother Adam to brain cancer. He toured relentlessly and released his second RCA Records album, 'This Loud Morning', but when the dust settled, he found himself craving a major change. He discovered what he was looking for in Nashville’s songwriting community and relocated to Music City in June 2012.

“One of the things I love about songwriting here is that it’s more story telling based and there’s a little bit more of an emphasis on the lyrics,” says Cook, who was born in Texas and raised in Missouri. “When you listen to a lot of popular music right now, it almost seems like that’s becoming a lost art. I’ve always loved those songs that tell a great story and that’s something I’ve really tapped into here. I like writing in a way where I know I’m telling a story, and it’s obvious that there is a story there, but it’s big enough to where people can find what they want in it. That’s where a song like ‘I’m Gonna Love You’ comes from. My favorite thing about that song is that it makes me think of not only people that I have loved, but places and things and moments, even down to the sensory stuff like smells and touches.”

Cook is currently working on music for a new album. Having exited RCA after 'This Loud Morning', he’s reveling in the creative freedom he enjoyed for years as a successful indie artist long before he ever hit the Idol stage. “It’s nice to work on the record and take time to write and take some off and play shows,” Cook says. “I like to be busy. The last year has been spent getting acclimated to Nashville, getting into writing circles here, writing for other artists and trying to find time to work on my project.”

The result is an impressive new collection of tunes teeming with a restless creative spirit yet anchored by an emotional gravitas that is compelling. “Where Do We Go” showcases the power and range in Cook’s voice as well as his insightful songwriting. “A lot of my favorite love songs are us-against-the-world love songs, almost post-apocalyptic and this kind of falls into that. We started with this dub step thing that kind of cycles throughout the song, so I really just wanted the lyrics to have that same pulse,” he says of the tune he co-wrote with Andy Waldeck and Andy Skib. “The song talks about this couple and it’s posing the question: ‘Where do we go when we hit bottom?’ I’ve always found an inherent romanticism when you’ve got this person and no matter what, you’re together, but it’s also okay to be unsure sometimes and to be vulnerable.”