6.22.15 Adam at the MMVAs, Week 1 charts, more news

time.com/3929027/adam-lambert-the-original-high-album-review/?xid=tcoshare

Review: Adam Lambert’s The Original High Is an Actual Pop Album
Katherine St. Asaph @katstasaph 11:35 AM ET

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.

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Adam is tied withe Nick Jonas for last place in Most Stylish Male last nite....lol



etalk ‏@etalkctv 1h1 hour ago

Who is your Most Stylish Male at the #MMVAs? VOTE: bit.ly/MMVAstyle @shawnmendes @edsheeran #etalkMMVAs

Seems Spotify finally updated.  (I can't seem to find any numbers on their site...don't know where to look ..lol)


Gelly ‏@14gelly 6m6 minutes ago

Gelly retweeted Marina

YES! 11.973.198