Chris Daughtry, Unplugged

Chris Daughtry finished fourth on American Idol in 2006, but the debut album from his band, Daughtry, went on to become the best-selling record of 2007. Their second album, Leave This Town, drops Tuesday. He spoke with NEWSWEEK's Ramin Setoodeh—excerpts:

As I was driving over here, I saw that you were updating your Twitter page about the rain.
I'm on that thing nonstop. I think it's an awesome tool. I've found out that the fans, it's the closest thing they could get to being on my cell phone and getting personal texts.

Your wife's on there, too, as Mrs. Daughtry.
My wife kept asking me to join it. The reason I joined it, is because Rob Thomas found my wife on Twitter and they started talking. I didn't really appreciate that so much. So I called Rob, I was like, "Dude, I hear you're Tweeting my wife. So now I'm joining just so I can monitor your conversations." No, Rob's a good friend of mine. It was all in good fun. So my wife and I will be in the exact same house, one room over, and we'll be Tweeting each other. She's in the office, I'm in the kitchen. I'm like, "Do you want some coffee?"

I mean this as a compliment, but your new album is more of the same.
There are definitely some similarities in there. We have the big arena rock ballads and the catchy pop rock tunes, but also we experimented with some country flavor.

Your last album became the bestselling album of the year. Did you feel pressure to top yourself?
We try not to think about that so much. The good thing is we didn't have a deadline when we were work-ing on this record. We felt like we had the freedom to write, and we did—we wrote like 70 tunes.

How many did you write yourself?
We all wrote and co-wrote. We'd write songs together. I'd write songs with other co-writers. The hardest process was figuring out which songs felt like the record. Which songs made up this body of work. Even at the end, when we recorded 19 songs, it was still like is this too predictable? Is this too "first record"?

What happens to the songs you don't use?
Some songs won't get heard for a reason. Sometimes it's not a bad song. It seems like it would be perfect for somebody else.

Do you think rock and roll is an endangered species?
I think it's bigger than it's been in a while. It's more mainstream than it used to be. Shinedown, Theory of a Dead Man, these bands that were only on active rock are now on top 40 and exploding. With the explosion of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, kids are wanting to hear ripping guitar solos now. In the '90s, guitar solos were dead.