Singers’ vanity doesn’t chart

Hubris. Whoever remains to sing and, eventually, go on the summer tour after Wednesday’s elimination round on “American Idol” should spend some time pondering that very old but suddenly relevant term. Though this season’s remaining bunch is hardly overconfident, the ridiculous song choices and emotionally tone-deaf performances Tuesday night showed a lack of self-awareness that translated into fatal overreaching.

In the ancient world, hubris was the sin a blindly arrogant hero might commit before the gods -- dragging around the corpse of somebody he’d vanquished, for example, or desecrating a temple out of sheer carelessness. In more current psychological or spiritual terms, hubris is a symptom of being out of touch with yourself; unlike the freeing kind of pride, which is deserved and heartening, hubris bangs around like a toddler showing off the newfound ability to run.

That’s what it seemed like on this most unfortunate of “Idol” episodes. It suffered from the lethal combination of a mentor who, though decent, didn’t earn a lot of respect from her charges; a meaningless theme, Billboard No. 1 hits; and the curse of this season as a whole -- a group of survivors who lack both inner strength and the crucial “Idol” spirit of daring fun.

Seventeen-year-old Miley Cyrus actually gave decent advice to most contestants, but besides the crushed-out teens Aaron Kelly and Katie Stevens -- who accepted her guidance and did well -- few of the hopefuls clutching sheet music in front of her seemed to absorb what she said. “I’m a big fan -- of your dad,” said 27-year-old Casey James, as if to tell himself to step away from the jailbait. That kind of deliberate refusal to engage extended from the mentor sessions with Cyrus to the performances themselves, which betrayed (mostly) great material with lack of imagination.

The night started out dismally when inexplicable judges’ favorite Lee Dewyze performed “The Letter” by the Box Tops. It seemed that our Idol Tracker blogger Shirley Halperin’s dream had come true, and the most mainstream pop show ever was honoring one of rock’s great unknown legends: Alex Chilton, who sang that hit for that group, co-founded the great band Big Star, and inspired many an indie rock band. After groaning out the song a la Joe Cocker, Dewyze was critiqued and departed without mention of Chilton. Somewhere, Clio, the muse of history, reeled from that slap in the face.

Nothing that followed really lifted the show beyond that stupid beginning. A few turns were solid. The hippie-rific Crystal Bowersox served up her specialty, bluesy rock, with a take on the Janis Joplin-identified “Me and Bobby McGee.” Simon Cowell, keeping the spirit of ahistoricism alive, compared her to Pink. Kelly, singing “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” the ballad Diane Warren gave Aerosmith, did fine; so did Stevens, imitating Fergie. Michael Lynche opted for gritty, classic soul and predictably delivered. Siobhan Magnus closed the show with a Stevie Wonder song that she attacked as if she were a dragon slayer, but her pluck and that inimitable screech didn’t make up for the fact that she showed no personal connection with “Superstition.”

Those were the highlights. Let us not speak at length of the off-tune and miserable Paige Miles, the frowny Didi Benami, the Tom Cruise-in-”Risky Business”-channeling Tim Urban, or the utterly lost Andrew Garcia.

These would-be stars showed so little charisma that it seems odd to accuse them of arrogance. Yet their vanity showed in their failure to exhibit any sense of what these hugely beloved songs (from the likes of Marvin Gaye and Queen) meant to their original audiences, or have come to mean over the years.

It all made you appreciate James, who knows himself well enough to never get above his station. He chose a Huey Lewis song, the kind of often-dismissed crowd favorite that doesn’t require an Idol to give the performance of his life -- just something decent and friendly. Playing concise, tasty guitar and singing with grit, he delivered exactly what “The Power of Love” required. No deity of the Top 40 would have been offended. James will certainly live to perform again, and work on the real confidence all of these would-be champions need.

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