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"American Idol crowned Scotty McCreery the winner of season ten during a star-studded finale special last night. The 17-year-old from North Carolina beat competition from runner-up Lauren Alaina (the youngest final two in the show&amp;#039;s history) to win the prize after a record-breaking total of 122.4 million votes were cast by the public. His winner&amp;#039;s song is the country track &amp;#039;I Love You This Big&amp;#039;.  Scotty spoke to reporters earlier today to talk about his American Idol experience, future plans, and rumours of a romance with Lauren... Lauren has said that she thought you would win going into the finale. How were you feeling? &amp;quot;My thought was that she wrapped it up when she sang that finale song, that mama song [&amp;#039;Like My Mother Does&amp;#039;]. It&amp;#039;s one of the most beautiful songs I&amp;#039;ve heard. I was more than nervous coming into last night, but it worked out in my favor. Lauren is sweet and she has been supporting me and I&amp;#039;ve been supporting her throughout this whole process. We&amp;#039;re really close friends and we both came out winners last night.&amp;quot; You were seen as a favourite all season - was there any point where you had doubts or thought you could be going home this week? &amp;quot;This week especially, Lauren Alaina is something else. She sings like a bird and is an amazing young lady. I&amp;#039;ve heard people say frontrunner and favorite and stuff, but to me, it never even crossed my mind because everybody this year from the Top 40 down was just so talented, and it was just an amazing ride. As far as doubting myself, I don&amp;#039;t think I ever really gave myself a chance before the show as a musician and now it&amp;#039;s about the confidence. I&amp;#039;ve always had confidence in me; it was weird, the nerves for the show, it&amp;#039;s something else.&amp;quot;  How you are handling all the attention? &amp;quot;This is pretty wild, I&amp;#039;ve got to say. It&amp;#039;s a whole lot more than I bargained for coming into this. I never would have expected it but I&amp;#039;m handling it well. This is what I asked for and this is my new life. It&amp;#039;s a crazy ride so far.&amp;quot;  Did you have any sort of game-plan going into this? You stayed in your comfort zone - was that a conscious decision? &amp;quot;Everybody had their own niche. Casey would sing his jazzy kind of rocker, growly music, Jacob sang his gospel music, James sang his rock music, and I would sing my country music. Country music is me and what I grew up with - it&amp;#039;s what I do. I didn&amp;#039;t have any intentions of changing it. My thing was that if it got me this far then why change it up? It&amp;#039;s what I love to do.&amp;quot; There was an emotional moment when you returned home to Garner. What was going through your head at that time? &amp;quot;We were driving up to the school and I just looked out the window and saw all the familiar faces that I had missed. I rolled down the window and someone said, &amp;#039;We miss you, we love you, brother&amp;#039;, and it really got me. I cry just thinking about it. I missed them so much and it was such a great moment for me to be back there. They&amp;#039;re my friends and they were my friends before the show, the true ones that I really love.&amp;quot; At what point did you notice your voice changing? &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve always kind of sounded the same, other than when I was young and had a really high voice. Vegas Week was when I really discovered I could kind of sing higher than I had been singing in the competition before. One of the vocal coaches kind of got it out of me.&amp;quot; Are there any plans to follow in the footsteps of Carrie Underwood and play at the CMA Music Festival in Nashville? &amp;quot;I was talking to some people last night and I think they&amp;#039;re going to try to get me and Lauren out this year. They&amp;#039;re trying to work out the specifics and the booth signings and maybe playing at the Grand Ole Opry. They&amp;#039;re working it out as we speak. We&amp;#039;re gonna be down there for sure, I think.&amp;quot; After Lauren gave you the kiss last night she said you might be her boyfriend. Is there any romance between you? &amp;quot;No. We&amp;#039;ve been getting that question a lot today. It&amp;#039;s more like a brother/sister thing. She told me before the show yesterday that she would do that as a joke. She&amp;#039;s a character. She&amp;#039;s lovely. We&amp;#039;re really close friends. I met her day one of Hollywood Week and we were schoolmates through the whole experience. She&amp;#039;s great but it is more a brother/sister friendship between us.&amp;quot; What sort of album can we expect from you? &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m really looking forward to getting my music out there. We recorded two songs this week and we weren&amp;#039;t sure what we would do. &amp;#039;Love You This Big&amp;#039; turned out to be the one we did but I&amp;#039;m really excited about the other one too, I think it will be a great album. I&amp;#039;ve got to pick some good songs, that&amp;#039;s what it&amp;#039;s all about after the show because the fans got me to where I am right now and it&amp;#039;s my job to get them the music they want to hear and have good songs. Hopefully Lauren Alaina and I will be able to do a duet sometime; I&amp;#039;m not sure about that on the first album but hopefully some time soon.&amp;quot; Your song &amp;#039;I Love You This Big&amp;#039; is currently number one on iTunes. How do you feel about that? &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s the first I&amp;#039;ve heard! That&amp;#039;s amazing! That is wild. I love the song, it&amp;#039;s a great song. When they pitched it to me, I fell in love with it. Last night, when I sang it for my finale song, it was kind of a choked up performance but I got through and hugged my family. That&amp;#039;s amazing that it&amp;#039;s number one!&amp;quot;  American Idol airs on Fox. &amp;gt; Read the full Q&amp;amp;A with American Idol&amp;#039;s Lauren Alaina More on the American Idol season finale: &amp;gt; Lady GaGa, Beyonc\u00E9, J.Lo perform on American Idol finale: Pictures &amp;gt; American Idol recap: The finale performances &amp;gt; American Idol finale: Stars react &amp;gt; American Idol finale: Former contestants react &amp;gt; Lauren Alaina loses voice before &amp;#039;Idol&amp;#039; final &amp;gt; American Idol finale performance night: Pictures &amp;gt; American Idol attracts record-breaking votes &amp;gt; Poll result: Who should win American Idol? &amp;gt; Read our American Idol news, recaps and features "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/american-idol/interviews/a321649/american-idol-winner-scotty-mccreery-qa/>