Despite being an overnight sensation, American Idol alum Adam Lambert proves honesty and hard work are primordial in showbiz.
Seizing the momentum of his runner-up victory on American Idol Season 8 in May 2009, Lambert dropped debut album For Your Entertainment just six months later, while worldwide TV viewers’ ears were still ringing with his Freddy Mercury-esque tenor vocals.
His eponymous first single was a here-I-am-look-at-me anthem with a devilish double entendre (Can you handle what I’m ’bout to do/’Cause it’s about to get rough for you/I’m here for your entertainment) that declared Lambert’s glam rock, sexually charged musical niche.
“I think [sexuality] has always been prevalent [in music], but we’re in a different time now and we can say more now,” Lambert said in a telephone interview. “With the information age being what it is, everything is literal. Everything has to be spelled out. We tweet everything and we text everything; everything is put into words. So nuance is kind of a dying thing.”
Debuting at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100, the album’s success spurned his headlining tour “Glam Nation,” making Lambert the first Idol alum to tour for a debut album.
To date, he is the only contestant to have received a standing ovation from notoriously implacable American Idol judge Simon Cowell.
Lambert’s second studio album, Trespassing, released in May 2012, features the hit “Never Close Our Eyes,” penned by Bruno Mars and two writing credits for Pharell Williams.
“Bruno is amazing. I’m such a fan – and the same with Pharrell. They’re both artists in their own right that I’ve been very inspired by. So, getting to work with them in the studio was really, really exciting,” Lambert said.
Lambert’s parents put their “hyperactive” son in musical theater at age 10.
“I was a drama nerd and a choir nerd. The kids on Glee remind me of high school,” Lambert said of growing up.
After a string of gigs in theater, including standing in as understudy for Fiyero Tigelaar in Wicked and portraying slave Joshua in The Ten Commandments: The Musical, Lambert mustered the nerve to audition for American Idol in January 2009.
From talking to people and gauging what the industry was like, I just felt like it was going to be a really tough thing – to break in,” says Lambert. “I knew that I needed the help of great producers and great writers in order to be up to speed. Idol seemed like the perfect way to do that [because] then the public gets to know me, they get to know my music, me as an artist – and the rest is history.”
Although the other three judges were immediately sold on Lambert’s rendition of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, Simon Cowell had this hedging remark: “I think you are theatrical and therefore not current.
“At first I thought: ‘Oh God, now I’m not gonna get through, I did all this auditioning for nothing. Oh, shoot,'” Lambert recalled.
And then there was another part of me that wanted to argue with him because ‘theatrical’ – especially at that time – was becoming very trendy. We had artists like Katy Perry and Lady Gaga breaking into the scene who were incredibly theatrical. But I was prepared to sit there and argue with him,” chuckled Lambert.
However, Cowell’s sentiment was echoed by stand-in judge Kara Dioguardi later in the competition. Undeterred, Lambert selected “Believe” by Cher, for his next performance, succeeding in reversing the judges’ opinion that his theatrical background was a setback.
“If it hadn’t been for my background in theatre I wouldn’t have known what to do in a lot of those circumstances: How to sell a song or connect with a song that might not have been my style. And I think it’s just understanding the theatre rule of the performer: to understand the audience’s perspective of the piece you’re creating.”
Now a chart-topping, Grammy-nominated recording artist, Lambert milks that “theatrical” quality that nearly undermined him as an Idol contestant for all its worth. His latest album, Trespassing, veers between the extremes of “light” and “dark”, a vacillation which Lambert interprets as a “reflection of the human condition.”
“The first half of the album is really upbeat; it’s really playful and fun and high energy and powerful and sexy – all pretty feel-good stuff,” he explained. “The latter half of it tends to get a bit more serious and reflective and it’s dealing with subjects that are more internal, that have to do with our own personal struggles and our demons and things we have to get over.”
Broken English” depicts a relationship in which the expression of love is stunted by language barriers, a hump Lambert had to overcome in his relationship with boyfriend of two years, Finnish entertainment reporter Sauli Koskinen.
However, perhaps most illustrative of the gradations of the human temperament is “Better Than I Know Myself.”
“We all have moments of light and moments of dark. It manifests itself differently for everybody,” Lambert says of the song’s music video, which contrasts a fiendish, yellow-eyed Adam with a mellow homebody version who does yoga and writes in his journal, living on opposite sides of one wall.
“I wanted to illustrate that from a literal sense and actually have two sides of the same person and showing them interacting with each other and at odds with each other and communicating with each other and ignoring each other. The two sides are fighting for dominance and then finally, one side has to help the other or both will die. I think there’s a lot of ways in which it represents our struggles that we go through,” Lambert shared.
“Outlaws of Love” is the album’s tearjerker, also depicting the quotidian human struggle to find self-acceptance (Hey, tears all fall the same/We all feel the rain/Everywhere we go we’re looking for the sun/We’re always on the run).
The album’s first single, “Trespassing”, which Lambert describes as a “battle cry”, parallels his journey as a relatively new artist who is “still learning and growing.”
“It’s a song about rebellion and being your own person and not letting the world tell you who you are, but you taking the reins and being in control of your own reality. And not feeling sorry for yourself along the way – just trying to make the most out of everything,” Lambert shares, displaying the thick skin that is key to longevity in showbiz.
“I really enjoyed the criticism,” Lambert said of the harsh mentoring he received on American Idol. “You know, you get up every week and you’re kind of guessing: ‘Okay, I hope this works’ and ‘Am I doing this right?’ When they were hard on you at least you know they felt something about it.”
