DeGraw has soul, star power to please the ladies -- and men

If you are a single guy, the Wilbur Theatre was a good place to be on Thursday. So noted Matt Wertz, the opening act, a cute guy with an acoustic guitar, a sweet falsetto, and a slew of pretty pop songs that were born to waft through teen dramas. The similarly endowed headliner, Gavin DeGraw, has already been anointed by prime-time powerhouse TV network the CW, which chose his song "I Don't Want to Be" as the theme to "One Tree Hill." Young ladies who love cute guys, teen dramas, and pretty pop songs packed the place - hence, demographic heaven for dudes.

It was also a pretty good night for that most insidious subset of mainstream popular music: male singer-songwriters. Ever since John Mayer hit it big, we've been inundated with fresh-scrubbed tunesmiths (Josh Kelley, Jason Mraz, Daniel Powter, Howie Day, Matt Nathanson, Ari Hest, Mat Kearney, need I go on?), most as competent and indistinctive as the next. Happily, DeGraw brings something more to the corporate choruses: genuine soul and understated star power.

He's touring behind his eponymous second album, which shares so much musical DNA with "Chariot," DeGraw's 2003 debut, it's hard to fathom the five-year wait. But while all the songs are cut from familiar cloth, outfitted with buttons made for pushing and a swoon-inducing sheen, DeGraw wears them very, very well - partly because he's a gifted singer, and partly because his charisma transcends simple flirtation.

It was neither a stretch nor a joke when DeGraw inserted a verse of "Proud Mary" into the middle of his own funk-flecked rocker "Chemical Party"; on the contrary, it was pretty electrifying. He followed it with "Young Love," a bluesy waltz that's one of the new album's highlights, and both the song's energy and his chemistry with the crowd were cobbled with such command it was impossible to know if DeGraw was feeling it or selling it.

Maybe that's what makes him so good at his job. DeGraw, who in addition to being charming is no dummy, introduced "I Don't Want to Be" as the biggest hit he will probably have in his lifetime, and then he played it like it was the last song on earth: huge, heartfelt, and more urgent than it really is. By contrast, he encouraged the chorus of angels in the audience to do the heavy lifting on lesser smashes: winsome "Follow Through," rousing "Chariot," lilting "In Love With a Girl." The rest was top-grade filler, full of echoes, by the numbers, and expertly rendered.

Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com.