Hey 'American Idol' judges, you stink! Poor song picks for Adam Lambert, Kris Allen and Danny Gokey

BY Jim Farber
DAILY NEWS MUSIC CRITIC

Wednesday, May 13th 2009, 10:47 AM

It's official: Song choice isn't the determining factor in dooming the performance of an "American Idol" finalist. Song arrangement is.

Last night's "Idol" proved that conclusively since the same four judges who regularly bitch and moan about a singer's song selection finally got to do the picking themselves.

As it turned out - in two out of three cases, - it wasn't the material that made the singer crash or soar. It was the tone, tempo, tune, and style which the band and singer together brought to the piece assigned.

The most obvious example concerned twinkle-eyed Kris. Kara and Randy saddled him with that whiney OneRepublic drone "Apologize," which the singer dutifully delivered in a near mimic of the original.

Then the judges slammed him for it.

"Show us who you can be," Randy pleaded.

A different version of this Catch-22 plagued dorky Danny Gokey.

Paula commanded him to deliver Terence Trent D'Arby's "Dance Little Sister," a song with plenty of rhythm and grit but no melody whatsoever. Gokey stuck close enough to D'Arby's take to seem imprisoned by it.

Of course, Adam Lambert wasn't having any of that in his run at U2's "One." He came at the song from both extremes - first sensitizing its opening then sending the second part shrieking through the ceiling. It may have been weird, but that's also why it was winning.

At least when the final trio shook free of the show's initial conceit, and got to select their own songs, they brought on the quirks. Gokey's take on Billy Preston's "You Are So Beautiful" may have lacked the violent subtext that helped Joe Cocker's version avoid the song's essential corniness.

But corniness is next to Godliness in this context. So Gokey's sappy version will only help him in his race for the gold.

Kris did something even rarer with Kanye West's "Heartless," delivering it as Jason Mraz might. It had no organic heart, but it did snow the judges with its oddity.

Not to be outdone, Adam delivered Aerosmith's "Crying" as if he were in the world's showiest version of "Jesus Christ Superstar," howling the big notes to the heavens.

What viewer/voters will make of it all won't be known until this evening. But their decision will likely to have far less to do with what the guys sang than with how they sang it.

jfarber@nydailynews.com