The Original High

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Album Review: Adam Lambert 'The Original High'



Adam Lambert is a clearly a man who doesn't like to stand still. In the last two years he has enjoyed repeated cameos on TV show Glee, rocked nearly 70 shows worldwide fronting Queen, and parted company with record label RCA, joining Warner Bros Records in early 2015 .

With his third studio album, Adam Lambert has teamed-up with superstar production/songwriting team Max Martin & Shellback, who cumulatively have responsible for most top 40 hits in the last two decades, penning classics for the likes of Pink, Taylor Swift and Kelly Clarkson.

Opening single 'Ghost Town' grabs attention immediately, unlike anything Lambert has recorded so far. Melancholy lyrics and guitar suddenly drop into a dirty, bass-heavy house track. Straight out of the 90s, this is an instant earworm, complete with a whistle hook that will work its way into your mind.

I got a voice in my head that keeps singing / My heart is a ghost town

As much as last album 'Trespassing' was a blast from the 80s, 'The Original High' features strong 90s influences. Another Lonely Night bounces along, punctuated with synths and marimbas, and Lambert rides the groove with soul and energy.

'There I Said It' throws back to Adam's musical days- a simple, melodic ballad that wouldn't sound out of place on a MTV montage show. Elsewhere, 'The Light' is more house-flavoured dance - drawing-in early Todd Terry/Prodigy influences.

'Evil In The Night' is another highlight- bringing all the funk of Avicii's 2013 Lambert colloboration 'Lay Me Down' but minus the heavy-handed production.

My life flashed before my eyes / Razorblade lips and daggers up in your eyes / Baby, your love is a crime / Danger by day but you're evil in the night

Oh, and if someone doesn't remix EITN with Daft Punk's 'Get Lucky', I will! You have been warned people.

Muted guitars from the legendary Brian May kick-off the album's second duet 'Lucy' (Swedish singer Tove Lo features on lacklustre duet 'Rumours'). 'Lucy' is evocative of classic Michael Jackson, hitting a tone somewhere between 'Dirty Diana' and 'Beat It'. I have to admit, after seeing Queen/Adam Lambert live twice, I'd kill to hear more like this on the next album.

Despite the leaning towards 90s dance/funk, fans of Adam's renowned range won't be disappointed- his powerhouse vocals lift even the weaker songs here - Max Martin & Shellback's skilful production complementing rather than overpowering.

With 'The Original High' already reaching #4 in the UK chart (already his most successful UK launch to date) Adam Lambert's third record deserves to be his most commercially-successfully album so far.

Now....where is that tour announcement?

Posted on June 18, 2015 and filed under Album Reviews

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Adam Lambert’s “The Original High”(Deluxe Version) ***

By ALLAN RAIBLE (@allanraible)
Jun 20, 2015, 1:57 AM ET

Adam Lambert is probably still most famous for his stint on “American Idol.” His first album in three years is also his Warner Brothers debut and it is a confident, albeit formulaic pop record. This is a crisp collection and Lambert shows he has some dynamite pipes. The set has a unified quality to it as well, which is remarkable considering that it is essentially a compilation of Lambert’s work with a variety of writers and producers. The most common producers that wind up on the list are Max Martin and Shellback.

As defined a performer as Lambert is, and as well as he does with these songs, this album still does possess a factory-like quality on the whole, even if there are some really catchy and beautiful moments interspersed into its song-set. Lambert, for instance nails the soaring emotion in “There I Said It,” and he proves to be a fitting duet partner to Tove Lo on “Rumors.” Hit, “Ghost Town” easily bounces from an acoustic ballad to dub-step-flavored pop.

Lambert has been known to fill in for the late Freddie Mercury in Queen from time to time. While he is no Mercury, that association pays off well here on the Brian May-assisted “Lucy.”

This is one of the few albums that actually does not benefit from its deluxe edition bonus tracks, of which the set offers three. “Shame” in particular sounds like a demo from 1984 and “These Boys” is a weak slice of lite-disco funk.

Overall, however, as an album, “The Original High” leaves a somewhat positive vibe. It doesn’t have any cringe-worthy moments outside of the above-mentioned bonus-tracks. Really its biggest flaw is that its uber-clean and slick production sounds like everything else on pop radio. Lambert is given more room than ever to stretch out. He deserves even more. As unique and gifted a performer as he is, part of me feels listening to this record that he still feels too constrained by “pop” ideals. A few more chances and risks could really prove to be potentially rewarding.

Focus Tracks:

“Ghost Town” This main single and album opener begins in slow, melodic territory and then tethers back and forth in and out of club and “house” territory.

“Rumors” (Featuring Tove Lo) Tove Lo begins this song and this song recalls the excellent work on her “Queen Of The Clouds” last year. This should be a decent-sized hit for both of them.

“Things I Didn’t Say” A nicely but oddly-timed bell pattern gives way to a driving beat and a soaring chorus. This is Lambert working at his best.

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Adam Lambert – The Original High album review
Posted on June 20, 2015 By Pip Ellwood

Three years have passed since Adam Lambert released his last album. 2012’s Trespassing debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 but fell short of the sales of his 2009 debut album For Your Entertainment. In the years since that album Lambert has collaborated with Queen for a world tour, tried his hand at acting in Glee, and scored himself a new label deal with Warner Bros. Now he’s ready to refocus on his solo career with the release of his eagerly awaited third album The Original High. 

For the album Lambert has teamed up with Max Martin and Shellback and explored some news sounds. Lead single Ghost Town has been well received by fans and critics with its mix of hypnotic beats and restrained vocal from the vocally gifted singer. The track signalled an artist that’s come into his own and created a lot of buzz for The Original High prior to its release. 

One of the things you notice instantly is that The Original High is Lambert’s most cohesive album to date. By working with Max Martin and Shellback, he’s crafted a collection of songs most of which he’s credited as co-writer on. For the most part The Original High mixes up dance rhythms harking back to the 90s and moving Lambert away from the glam-rock/pop sound he sported on his first two records. It’s a sound that works for him and the title track is one of the most euphoric and catchy moments on the record as Lambert employs his falsetto to drive you to the chorus beats.

The Original High isn’t restricted purely to dance pop though. Underground hints at a darker R&B sound – something we hope he continues to explore as he sounds great on the track – and There I Said It is a heartfelt ballad that really showcases Lambert’s ability as a vocalist. Album standout Rumors with Tove Lo merges electro-pop with sensual R&B once again showcasing a new sound for the singer.

Elsewhere on the record Lambert embraces his rock roots on the storming Lucy featuring Brian May, gives more than a passing nod to the 80s on Another Lonely Night, and offers up a late-night club jam on The Light. The album comes to a close with the beat-driven Heavy Fire bringing things to a satisfactory end.

There’s no doubt that The Original High is the strongest record that Lambert has released to date. It’s not schizophrenic in styles like his previous efforts and it feels more like a concept album than anything he’s done before. The dance rhythms work well for him and the forays into R&B promise a direction he could follow in the future. The Original High has been worth the wait but we hope it’s not another three years until the next record arrives! 

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Review: Adam Lambert’s The Original High Is an Actual Pop Album
Katherine St. Asaph @katstasaph June 22, 2015

After two LPs that didn't quite deliver on his potential, Lambert finally finds collaborators who help him draw out his talents

Former American Idol runner-up turned glam soft-rocker Adam Lambert has had some trouble, as Idol finalists often do, settling on a sound. His last studio album, Trespassing, is faintly remembered for its two lead singles: the stodgy power ballad “Better Than I Know Myself” and energetic piece of Bruno Mars showmanship “Never Close Our Eyes.” Neither did much on the charts, and neither represents the album all that well. To get a better sense of this slept-on if uneven release, one must revisit the album tracks, like Pharrell-produced “Kickin’ In,” or Sam Sparro-Nile Rodgers collaboration “Shady”: funky, sexy, and quite ‘70s.

None of that sounds particularly unusual—Pharrell, after all, produced a huge swath of 2013’s pop music, and Rodgers, with his fellow disco-era artists, has graduated from session-musician legend to marquee Top 40 guest—but look at the date. Trespassing was released in 2012, a full year before ubiquitous songs-of-the-summer “Blurred Lines” and “Get Lucky,” and well before everyone from Maroon 5 to Ed Sheeran had begun churning out disco-funk. Rising pop artists, who are both too early in their career to be pigeonholed and too green not to be on the most cutting of edges, often record albums that sound eerily prescient years on, from the coquettish retro-pop of Ariana Grande’s Yours Truly to Icona Pop’s shouty, gonzo electro. Adam Lambert, it turns out, may merely have been ahead of his time.

Lambert has since switched labels over “creative differences”—here, a euphemism for his label pushing him to release an album of ‘80s covers, which is both a godawful idea and well short of Lambert’s ambitions. While Lambert has the voice—and religiously devout fan base—to coast on a post-Idol career of Broadway spots and franchise compilations, his ambitions are the charts, the higher the better. So it’s little wonder that the first two tracks on The Original High cast Lambert as an L.A. sleaze antihero—an imaginary genderflipped Lana Del Rey narrative, perhaps, where “God and James Dean” haunt “the summer back in Hollywood”—and let him revel in sex, drugs, EDM and the sounds of the moment. Nor is it much surprise who’s responsible: unsinkable pop juggernaut Max Martin and his protégés Shellback and relative EDM-world newcomer Ali Payami. Whatever one thinks of Martin—his first go-round with Lambert, “Whadaya Want From Me,” was a second-tier single from cowriter P!nk—on The Original High he’s a godsend. He allows Adam Lambert up to record actual pop songs rather than dated power ballads.

The timing is spot-on. Lambert’s sound fits right in next to funk-pop showmen like Jason Derulo, Maroon 5, Nick Jonas and the newly Max Martin-produced The Weeknd, not to mention belters like Sam Smith, Patrick Stump and Bruno Mars. “Ghost Town” is not far off from Avicii, “Another Lonely Night” from Disclosure’s “Latch.” Often, he outdoes them. On house-inflected “The Light,” Lambert out-Sam Smiths the Brit without any of Smith’s vocal histrionics; “Evil in the Night” and Brian May collaboration “Lucy” are as campy—in a good way—as any of this year’s Fall Out Boy singles, without even having to sample The Munsters.

The album tracks on Trespassing predicted all this, of course; if you’ll allow a little pop prognostication, the album tracks on The Original High might predict something else. For better or worse, male artists tend to be given deeper repertoire than female artists, and Lambert’s songwriting certainly gets introspective, but what’s interesting is that the moodiness comes out in the sonics as well. Much has been written about R&B’s long brood state, born of quietstorm and popularized by the nocturnal slow jams of Noah Shebib; though R&B radio has moved on from this sound somewhat, Payami evokes it on “Underground,” with a disarmingly plaintive vocal from Lambert which recalls Shebib and Alicia Keys’ similarly submerged-sounding “Un-Thinkable.” Going further underground, album closer “Heavy Fire” suggests someone’s been listening to Massive Attack—specifically, the riff to “Dissolved Girl” and the gentle click of “Teardrop.” In fact, it’s almost a shame when the chorus ignites. Tove Lo, probably Lambert’s closest female counterpart, joins Lambert on the moody “Rumors,” adds 808 handclaps, lonely synth peals, sinuous vocal echoes and a Drakean cadence. The result is far more haunting than any song containing the lyric “get out of the haterade” should be.

That’s not to say the album is perfect. “Things I Didn’t Say” is maybe the sixth-best midtempo EDM track on the album, which suggests there are too many. “There I Said It” is one of those power ballads Lambert is theoretically moving away from, and the lyric doesn’t contain a retort worthy of the title. But it’s easily the most coherent album Lambert has released. Where For Your Entertainment was an Idol alumnus’s album, and Trespassing was the work of an artist with intermittently interesting material, The Original High is a pretty good pop album, with ambitions toward more.


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