When it was all over, when the audience had gone home and the guitars had been unplugged, and Lukas Rossi had been crowned the new lead singer of Supernova — or, as Tommy Lee put it, “Lukas, you’re our boy” — the media had a few questions for the spike-haired powerhouse from Toronto.

They had dragged their cameras and equipment from Iceland, and Australia, and Malaysia and all over the U.S. to cover the finale of Mark Burnett’s hit reality show, Rock Star: Supernova, and they wanted to know one thing:

“Is there something in the water up there?”

That would be our water, Canadian water, because Rossi’s coronation Wednesday as Supernova’s frontman, after a two-month televised audition, was clearly proof that lightning can strike twice: In the show’s first season, Toronto’s J.D. Fortune won Rock Star: INXS.

Rossi, already at ease with the press, laughed.

“I don’t know, Canada has a lot of talent. But I heard that J.D. lived about four blocks from me. How weird is that.”

Turns out that it isn’t weird, or even something in the water, for that matter. Turns out it’s that Canadian swagger, that Great White North confidence and attitude, for which Fortune, and now Rossi, have found fame.

At least that’s how Rossi’s new bandmates put it. They picked him, they said, because he looks the part, he acts the part, and he sings the part. He has, they say, the rock royal jelly.

“He’s sexy, and he sings like hell,” said Tommy Lee, the heavy metal Motley Crue drummer who last spring formed the new band with fellow rock veterans, bassist Jason Newsted (Metallica) and guitarist Gilby Clarke (Guns N’ Roses).

The trio needed a frontman, and after 25,000 international applicants, 12,000 auditions and 15 finalists (including Vancouver’s Jenny Galt), they found him.

For Lee, there was never any question that Rossi was the one.

“I realized he was the guy for us the very first day we met him. The first time I saw him, I was, like, ‘That’s my boy,”‘ said Lee. “All my life, I’ve always wanted to be in a band with a singer like this. You can’t teach someone to be a rock star. The way he moves … you either have that, or you don’t.”

Newsted, who coached Rossi throughout the competition to resist his tendency to constrain his voice, agreed: “Lukas has a certain swagger. He always has his thing going.”

Added Clarke: “We were looking for something special. And he’s it.”

The second- and third-place finishers, South Africa-born Dilana Robichaux and Aussie Toby Rand, also harbour a dominant rock ‘n roll gene, and will join the upcoming Supernova tour, fronting The House Band, which provided the live music on the show.

(Ironically, the Supernova moniker will likely be changed after a U.S. court ruled that an Orange Country band also named Supernova has rights to the name.)

When Rand wanders into the press conference, held right after the show on the empty Rock Star set, he’s wearing an Aussie flag and is instantly swarmed by Australian camera crews and newspaper reporters.

Rand is big news Down Under, and is shocked to hear about his celebrity status and the show’s ratings in his country, details that he and the other contestants were shielded from while staying in virtual seclusion in the hill-top Rock Star mansion not far from the CBS studios.

Rand, the gregarious 28-year-old, is gracious in defeat, partly because he and Rossi have become tight since the show began July 5, and partly because he intends to move to Los Angeles and exploit his 15 minutes of fame.

And, he says, Rossi simply wanted the job more than any of them, and deserves it the most.

“I’m walking out of here with a car (won for a special encore), some good friends and the opportunity of a lifetime.”

His brothers have brought his favourite surfboard from Melbourne, and he’s looking to find a place that he and Rossi (who has a girlfriend) can move into, which will be “the bachelor pad from hell.

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