American Idol

The closing song, sung by David Cook, was "Time of My Life."

For this episode, the show was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for "Outstanding Picture Editing Of Clip Packages For Talk, Performance, Award Or Reality Competition Programs" in 2008.

This is the third time that a male contestant has won the competition.

Ryan danced on stage with the cast of So You Think You Can Dance during the performance of Donna Summer and the Top 6 girls.

Ryan announced that one contestant had 56% of the vote and the other had 44%. This makes it the second time percentages have been used on the show. The first was in the Top 3 Results Show in Season 5.

Jeri Ryan, Blake Lewis, Ruben Studdard, Fantasia Barrino, Melinda Doolittle, Justin Guarini, Bo Bice, Teri Hatcher and Cat Deeley were all in the audience.

This episode did not have live on-air questions or a Top 2 Ford Music Video.

The Ford music video showed bloopers from all the music videos shown this season.

A new record of votes was set. 97.5 million votes were cast beating season six's record by 21.5 million votes.

This is the first time in 7 seasons that a person won by a total number of votes. David Cook won by 12 million votes.

David Archuleta is the 3rd youngest contestant to ever be in the final two. Diana Degarmo was the first. Jordin Sparks was the Second.

David Archuleta is the fifth male runner-up in the series. Justin Guarini was first, Clay Aiken was second, Bo Bice was the third and Blake Lewis was the fourth.

David Cook is the second male contestant to win without being in the bottom two or the bottom three. Taylor Hicks was the first.

David Cook is the third male contestant to win in the series. Ruben Studdard was the first, Taylor Hicks was the second.

This is the first time since Season 2 that two guys make the final two. The first was Clay Aiken and Ruben Studdard.

Winner of American Idol 2008: David Cook.