And America chose Hicks as the winner.

"Soul Patrol!" Hicks shouted, acknowledging his avid fans by their nickname. (Contact us: Did the public get it right?)

The choice for TV viewers was between the sultry McPhee, whose trained voice was shown to perfection Tuesday on the standard "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," and the raw sound and footloose moves of Hicks, who made his mark on Stevie Wonder's "Living for the City."

It was Katharine vs. Taylor, McPheever vs. the Soul Patrol fans, with a recording contract and the fifth "Idol" title up for grabs.

McPhee, 22, was the first Los Angeles native to make it big on "American Idol," with a shot at becoming the only winner outside the South or Midwest. With a singer-vocal coach mom behind her and a starlet's beauty, McPhee looked and sounded groomed for success.

Hicks, 29, of Birmingham, Alabama, whose thatch of prematurely gray hair helped him stand out from the pack, had barely survived the first audition, at which judge Simon Cowell warned he didn't have a chance of advancing in the contest.

They weren't as odd a finals pairing as Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken, but close.

McPhee attended the prestigious Boston Conservatory for a semester; Hicks has been a fixture on honky-tonk stages. McPhee skillfully played to the cameras, all calculated seduction; Hicks stomped across the set, wildly enough that Cowell compared him to a drunken dad at a wedding.

The finale closed out a relatively tame contest compared to seasons past, when jammed phone lines, technical glitches and annoyingly untalented singers drew complaints from fans. Last year, judge Paula Abdul denied an ex-competitor's claims of an affair in 2003.

This season's biggest jolt came when rocker Chris Daughtry of McLeansville, North Carolina, was voted out before the finale. Many observers had predicted he would win the contest after routinely drawing praise from the judges and online support.

Despite the lack of offstage drama, or because of it, this edition of "American Idol" was the most-watched yet. Compared to last year, the show was up 14 percent in total viewers with an average weekly audience of 30.3 million -- impressive growth for an established program.

The Tuesday and Wednesday episodes routinely ranked as the top-rated TV shows, drawing 28 million or more viewers. The series also is seen via delayed broadcast or satellite delivery in more than 150 other countries.