8.30.11 Adam News & Info

I truly believe that Adam does in many ways not know how exceptional his voice is. Of course he knows this theoretically, he has been told a thousand times, but I don't think he understands it in his soul, he is not truly feeling that within him.

Just like he also does not know how good looking he is, even though he has been called gorgeous and most sexiest and everything along those lines by the media and fans for at least 2 years now.

I think the reason for this is two-fold. a) he is overly self-critical.
b) We hear ourselves differently than others do. Vocally, we hear the internal voice and are always surprised when we hear our own recorded voice, usually not liking it (most people I know say so about themselves). Who knows how Adam hears himself internally and when he hears himself on record, then the internal voice he perceives as his own and the external one he now hears on record conflict with each other in the brain and make the sound experience different for him than it does for any one of us who do not have Adam's internal perception in our head.

c) Adam always remains humble and does not praise himself easily, he certainly does not want to use his voice to brag. So trying to shoot for technical extremes and records seems conceited and wrong to him, but also he is not a numbers person. Collecting records is for data oriented folks. Adam is an artist and a deep soul. How often has he said that it means nothing to him whether somebody can reach a G5.

I think that what Adam is exploring is not so much what he technically can do with his voice, I think that for the most part he does understand that, give or take a few experiments he may still have ahead of him. But for the most part he has explored that.

I think what he is trying to understand is how to USE what he has at his disposal. i.e. What emotions can he express differently than it has been done and how can he do so? How can he bring a more intense or complex topic close to his listeners and yet remain entertaining while doing so? How can he use a certain sound that he can make in a creative way? How can he really grab us and what does he want to do once he has us grabbed? How can he make what he feels become what we feel by using his voice or his performance as a whole? What does he want to use his public platform for?

He needed to be away from musical theater to explore the topics he wanted to sing about and to be able to have enough expressive freedom to go further than the theater characters allowed him to go, but what I often wonder is why he chose pop?

Given that pop does not value the vocals, does not value the male artists (at the moment), does not value deeper content, does not value complexity in either music or topic or language or phrasing or anything else for that matter, why would Adam choose it, given that his arsenal is pretty much the opposite of the just described?

There are only a few things I can think of:
1. He went after the biggest challenge - the outsider who always wanted to fight his way in, is comfortable in the role of the outsider, he does not like to fit in too easily.
2. The genre is positive and a happy place. Adam knows that he himself can get dark or negative when spinning too much in his own thoughts and wants to remain in a genre that requires him to remain uplifting.
3. He does not want to make it about the vocals.
4. He wants to reach a large number of people with his message. He does want to have influence, make a difference in the world.
5. He likes a lot of pop music. This is the answer he has actually given in interviews, so it is the only safe bet on this list. All the others are just guesses on my part. I have no idea what of this is right and what is not. But I sure have wondered about it many times.

As far as Nica and Cassie's wish: I myself am not sure I really want to hear him sing lots of opera, because it may be too big a detour for him to make to spend many years re-routing. But I sure would love to hear him sing together with opera singers. Pavarotti used to do that all the time with pop stars. Usually, the opera star was vastly superior. With Adam that would be a far more even playing field, where both sides would be able to bring something unique to the table. I hope this will still happen, one day when he is more established.