Idol Chatter & Voice Views

One of the pluckiest contestants ever to grace the American Idol stage has a new single.

That would be Kristy Lee Cook, who seemed forever on the brink of elimination during Season 7 of Idol yet managed to finish a very respectable seventh among one of the show’s most talented casts ever.

Kristy Lee’s new single is called “Airborne Ranger Infantry,” and you can hear the tune as part of the “First Listen” series on The Boot. A live version is embedded below. And the song is available on iTunes as of Tuesday.

There’s an interesting story behind the song. Some of the lyrics come from poems her father wrote about his service in Vietnam.

He had trouble talking about his experience, she said, but her mom had the poems framed and “hung them in the house as a way to honor him.”

With the help of co-writers Michael Logan and Luke Sheets, she turned those poems into song, hoping her dad would like the end result.

He loved it, of course, and now he’ll be appearing in the upcoming video for the song.

Kristy Lee shared that news in a recent live-streamed appearance on Big Coyote Country, during which she talked about her upcoming album on Broken Bow Records.

Among the things we learned …

* Jason Aldean is serving as executive producer of that album and will duet with her on one of the songs, “Bottom of Your Boots.”

* Another new song is called “I Don’t Care.” “I wish i could have sung this to Simon on Idol,” Kristy Lee, now 28, said with a smile. “But it came to me a little too late.”

* Kristy Lee, who’s kept busy since Idol hosting cable shows like “Goin’ Country,” still loves to wear torn jeans.

* And she isn’t certain when the album will be released, but is grateful for the opportunity. It will be her first since 2008’s “Why Wait” resulted in a minor hit “Fifteen Minutes of Shame.”

“They’re taking their time and letting me do the music I’ve always wanted to do,” Kristy Lee said.