No escaping the cold, hard truth

This week’s round of the “American Idol” competition exposed a few undying truths about pop music. First: One man’s meat is another woman’s poison. The first two performances had me wondering if I needed to have my ear buds checked, or if the problem was with the judges, who couldn’t tell a clever bit of blue-eyed soul from a dance in a cornfield.

Danny Gokey’s serious but blustery take on the soul classic “Stand by Me” was just all right, compared with Kris Allen’s inventively sleazy reworking of Don Henley’s “All She Wants to Do Is Dance.” (Plus, I think Gokey cheated: Asked to choose a song from his birth year, 1980, he nodded to Mickey Gilley’s laid-back country remake. But his declarative style was more like the one Ben E. King used in 1961.)

Gokey earned rapturous kudos from Kara, Simon, Paula and Randy; Allen had them blowing mournful raspberries. The two church-bred Jason Mraz wannabes took exactly the same approach; why was one declared victorious and the other made to feel at risk?

There could be a hidden agenda, but it could also come down to taste, and not only in music. This is where another pop truth becomes relevant: In television, successful stars flesh out particular types, whereas in music it’s better to develop multiple personalities. The show’s most appealing champions (Fantasia, David Cook) fulfill a specific pop image, but its most resonant voices (Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood) need to keep pushing at constraints.

Tuesday night’s high points saw singers coming to terms with their types, and its flops happened when contestants were defeated by them. Lil Rounds shrugged her way through Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” showing zero personality, and Scott MacIntyre, bashing at an electric guitar while bellowing an abysmal power ballad, seemed anesthetized by earnestness.

Matt Giraud, however, won big points making peace with the type foisted on him: the Timberlake. He bopped through Stevie Wonder’s “Part Time Lover” in a rakish fedora. Anoop Desai eased into the heartthrob role that fits him best with a misty rendition of Cyndi Lauper’s “True Colors.” And Allison Iraheta took literally the judges’ insistence that she is wise beyond her years, claiming the greatest middle-aged love song of the 1990s, Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me.”

Closing the show, Adam Lambert also played to type, but because his type is “artist,” he gets to sing first and project his personality outward from that act. Bathed in David Bowie-esque white light, he deployed that unstoppable falsetto in a version of “Mad World” by Tears for Fears that nodded strongly toward the remake from the “Donnie Darko” soundtrack, heightening the song’s vulnerability with an almost hymn-like sense of rapture. That Adam. He’s so full of tricks. A final pop truth: Sometimes, talent does stand out.

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ann.powers@latimes.com