‘Idol’ duo team up for now

Associated Press

NEW YORK

In their own style, Scotty McCreery and Lauren Alaina are the newest duo on the country scene.

Just a week after the season finale of “American Idol,” the teenagers are together doing press like a team.

McCreery beat Alaina to become the Season 10 champ, but the fact that they are both young country singers with similar goals puts them on the same career track.

Ahead of their “Idol” Top 11 tour — which starts next month — they will visit Nashville to begin work on their debut albums.

“We’re going to work with the record people down there and get some songs straightened out, and hopefully, I’ll get to listen to them, get to learn them,” McCreery said.

Alaina, 16, thinks country-music fans are what kept her and McCreery in the running.

“Well, country fans are really loyal, so I think that’s why Scotty and I did so good,” she said. “We’re young, and so we appeal to a younger crowd, and I think that the combination of those two things really helped us out.”

McCreery, a 17-year-old from Garner, N.C., said growing up, his friends listened to Backstreet Boys and *NSync, while he jammed to Elvis and Johnny Cash.

“I guess you could say I was the weird one. But, no, I was the one who listened to good music,” he said. McCreery says that uniqueness — along with his baritone-style voice — is what led to his victory.