Trade places with Taylor? Not Chris Daughtry

For all his talk about preferring to be among bandmates, Daughtry was out there all alone performing the national anthem at the recent National Football Conference championship game between the Chicago Bears and the New Orleans Saints. He shed a tear as he sang.

“It’s perfect timing,” he says. “I mean, it comes out right at the right moment. ... There’s all kinds of emotions going on.”

In the course of this interview, Daughtry, who appeared stoic at times on “Idol,” reveals himself to be an easygoing guy. He gets especially animated when discussing the first mini-scandal of his career, perpetuated by none other than actress Melissa Joan Hart, of TV’s defunct “Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.”

In a recent post on her MySpace.com page, an angry Hart claimed that Daughtry and his good friend, “Idol” also-ran Ace Young, were taking all the credit for writing “It’s Not Over.” Her husband, musician Mark Wilkerson, wrote an early draft of the song with producer Greg Wattenberg, who later asked Daughtry and Young to add a chorus.

“I’ve never met Melissa Joan Hart,” says Daughtry, who phoned Wilkerson, who was not aware of Hart’s rant, to smooth things over. “I don’t know her from Adam. If she’s mad at me for something that I don’t know about, that’s pretty funny actually! ... I was like, Sabrina’s mad at me? For WHAT?”

Hart has since removed the post, yet Daughtry remains bemused. Stuff like this comes with the territory — especially for a rock star on the make.

He turns serious when discussing his goals, which include replicating the successes of arena-packing bands like U2 and Bon Jovi.

“I wanna look back 20 years from now and still be in the game in a big way,” he says. “I wanna be...a very important part of the music industry, whether it be playing or developing other bands. I would still honestly like to be performing every night and doing what I love to do.”

Even Simon Cowell, that acerbic king of sarcasm, wouldn’t scoff at such earnestness.

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