2012-05 Promo Interviews and Performances

Chart Talk
100 & Single: Buy An Adam Lambert Album, Strike A Tiny Blow For Gay Rights
By Chris Molanphy Mon., May 7 2012 at 9:00 AM
blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2012/05/adam_lambert_gay_pop_star.php


About a year ago, the movie Bridesmaids opened in the U.S. and was the subject of a rather unusual awareness campaign.
Female movie fans, largely independently of the film's producers, compelled women to go see the film in its opening weekend and defy common Hollywood wisdom that non-rom-com movies aimed at ladies were box-office laggards. To many cultural critics, it was a dubious effort: a Judd Apatow-produced flick that was still, after all, about a wedding—and with one notorious scene riddled with bodily humiliations—this was a feminist cause célèbre?

The thing is, it kinda worked. Bridesmaids opened very well for a "chick flick," with $26 million in ticket sales, and went on to gross just shy of $170 million domestically, soundly beating such summer tentpoles as Green Lantern and X-Men: First Class. The fact that the star-free, Kristin Wiig-led movie was actually good suggests it would've found its audience under any circumstances. We'll never know, but given Hollywood's ever-increasing promotional emphasis on opening weekends, it's totally defensible that the impassioned grass-roots launch was critical to the movie's ultimate success. It also sent a consumer-driven message ("This half of the population shouldn't be ignored or pandered to") that should've been screamingly obvious in 2011 but somehow wasn't.

One year later, I'd like to invite you to get behind another consumerist message that, in 2012, should be equally uncontroversial: Being openly gay shouldn't prevent you from having a No. 1 album in the United States.


The album we can support to send this message is Adam Lambert's second major-label disc Trespassing, which arrives in stores on May 15—virtually one year to the day after the successful Bridesmaids opening.

Why am I proposing we shell out hard cash for this frothy and reportedly fun pop disc, which is as light and apolitical as Bridesmaids was? Because in the nearly 60-year history of the weekly Billboard album chart, no single-artist title credited to an out gay performer has ever been our No. 1 album. (Nope, not him. Or him, either. Or her.)

The key word in the above sentence is, of course, out. Numerous artists who have emerged from the closet in the last few decades, as the gay-rights movement has come out of the shadows, have topped the album chart. But crucially, not a one of them did so while fully public about his or her sexual orientation.

This column is largely about hard data, and being out is about as unspecific a designation as you can discuss. It's hard to come up with pinpointed dates for when even the most public personages declared their homosexuality, especially among those artists who emerged by degrees. (We'll get to Elton John and Freddie Mercury in a minute.) I am also completely uninterested in outing anyone; I don't believe in it, and as a straight person I have even less right to ask it of public figures, for the sake of awareness, than a gay person would. But gay rights is a cause I firmly believe in, and it's rare that one has the opportunity to mix one's nerdy passion and sociopolitical beliefs.

Besides, we can examine this purely by considering the most uncontroversial of publicly out musicians. It's a list of acts who either topped the chart closeted or couldn't reach the penthouse either out or in.

A couple of out gay performers (fewer than you might imagine) have topped the Hot 100 singles chart. But I would argue that the Billboard 200 album chart is a specifically important yardstick. Albums are how the recording industry makes the bulk of its profits, and it's particularly meaningful to see Americans willing to shell out more than a buck for a performer's work—especially in a recording's opening week, which in the Soundscan era has become as important to the music business as opening weekend is for Hollywood.

The album chart is ecumenical and all-encompassing, its penthouse regularly occupied by pop, rock, R&B, hip-hop and country albums, all competing on roughly equal footing. And to Americans who consider themselves at the cultural middle of the road, a successful album is, still, the way an artist is perceived as culturally relevant—or, to borrow a term heavy with gay-rights baggage, real.

How probable is this feat for Lambert, an American Idol finalist who neither won the show nor topped the Billboard 200 in 2009, the year he had the Idol promotional machine backing him up? Before we game it out—short answer: a bit of a long shot, but not at all impossible—let's run down the list of now famously out performers who went the distance while still in the vinyl closet. I'll start with a few near-miss acts who for all their popularity never topped the list.

Among lesbian artists, you might have guessed that the music business's two most celebrated, Melissa Etheridge and k.d. lang, would have broken that barrier. Etheridge is a rare example of an artist who, by her own telling, had a more profitable career out of the closet than in. The data unequivocally backs her up—her just-came-out 1993 album Yes I Am is six times platinum and by far her best-seller—but it sold well over a long, multi-single radio campaign and never got past No. 15 on the album chart. Her followup to that triumph, 1995's Your Little Secret, debuted and peaked at No. 6, a modest showing for a performer of her stature at that career stage. As for lang, her best-selling album remains 1992's double-platinum Ingénue, which peaked at No. 18.

On the male side, Boy George's self-declared status as America's favorite drag queen (about as far as a pop star could go publicly in 1984), didn't hurt Culture Club at all on the Hot 100, where they scored six Top 10 hits including a No. 1 ("Karma Chameleon"). But despite selling four million U.S. copies, 1983's Colour by Numbers spent a frustrating six weeks at No. 2, a reflection mainly of its misfortune at being released within the same year as Michael Jackson's Thriller.

That leaves a handful of acts who did top the chart closeted, and in many cases their status was the subject of much speculation and even regarded as a demerit to their stardom. Here they are in alphabetical order.

Clay Aiken: Like Adam Lambert, Aiken was a top-two American Idol finalist who went on to outsell the singer who beat him (Ruben Studdard in Aiken's case, Kris Allen in Lambert's). Aiken's fanbase—largely female and often teased online for their limited gaydar, but to be fair Aiken himself denied years of rumors—was particularly impassioned. To this day, the chart-topping debut of his 2003 album Measure of a Man with 613,000 copies remains the highest one-week sales total ever by any Idol competitor. Aiken never returned to No. 1 on the album chart, either before or after his coming-out to People magazine in 2008.

Lance Bass (of 'N Sync): One of five vocalists in the smash boy band, Bass sang on two chart-topping albums: 2000's No Strings Attached—which rolled 2.4 million CDs in seven days, still the biggest one-week sales total of all time—and 2001's Celebrity. The group's hiatus since 2002 has had everything to do with Justin Timberlake's solo career and the waning of millennial precision-dance pop (only now being revived by One Direction and the Wanted), and nothing to do with Bass's then-rumored sexuality, which was affirmed by the singer himself in 2006.

Elton John: All conversations regarding music superstardom and sexual orientation must revolve around the erstwhile Reginald Dwight. Elton John's string of chart-topping albums in the '70s—seven in a row, from 1972's Honky Chateau through 1975's Rock of the Westies—remains one of the greatest runs of pop dominance in history. Then in 1976, John admitted to bisexuality in a Rolling Stone cover story, and it was as if some homophobic deity turned off the stardom spigot—his next album Blue Moves peaked at No. 3, and he spent the late '70s in the pop wilderness, out of the Top 10 altogether. (One can imagine many a label-headquarters conversation in which John's mid-'70s experience was the cautionary tale for gay pop stars considering revealing themselves.)

Even after staging a solid radio comeback in the '80s; marrying and then divorcing a woman; coming out fully as a gay man in 1988 and entering a public long-term relationship with David Furnish; and finally scoring his first Top 10 album in nearly two decades (1992's The One), John has never again occupied the Billboard 200 penthouse. That is, with one semi-exception: the 1994 soundtrack album to the Lion King, for which Elton penned just over half the songs but was the credited performer on only three. Considering this album featured an image of a cartoon lion on the cover and sports John's name in tiny letters, that it was largely performed by others, and that it was a triumph mostly for the Disney marketing machine, it's a bit hard to regard it as full album-chart acknowledgment for a gay performer. Since the '90s John has had far greater success on the Hot 100 singles chart, where in his fully out persona he has scored two No. 1 hits—coincidentally, both of them rerecordings of songs from his early-'70s golden period. There was the 1991-92 chart-topper "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me," a duet with George Michael (more on him in a bit) and later, the blockbuster "Candle in the Wind '97," recorded in memory of Princess Diana and now the best-selling single of all time.

Janis Ian: The only thing less likely than a lyrical 17-year-old Janis Ian getting a date was the real-life 24-year-old scoring a chart-topping album singing about it. But that's precisely what happened to Between the Lines, Ian's 1975 album, featuring the wistful Top Five mopefest "At Seventeen." Ian's album-chart victory came nearly two decades before she came out publicly.

Jonathan Knight (of New Kids on the Block): One of two Knights in the hugely successful late-'80s boy band (along with brother Jordan), Jonathan sang on the 1989 chart-topping album Hangin' Tough and the 1990 followup smash Step by Step. New Kids' inability to return to the penthouse after 1990 was entirely related to the aging of their fanbase, rather than issues over with any member's sexuality. Fun fact: Knight's 2011 revelation came after an accidental and reportedly friendly 2011 outing by fellow late-'80s teenpop star Tiffany, one of the few girls he dated. Interestingly, unlike fellow boy-band alumnus Lance Bass, the decades-long delay in Knight's coming-out meant he emerged as a working boy-band member—New Kids have been reunited and recording for several years.

Ricky Martin: Few music stars must be as relieved to be off the public's gaydar as this guy. Martin's 1999 transition from established Latin radio fixture to cross-cultural megastar was dogged by the most intense sexual-identity speculation of any act in millennial pop. His self-titled English-language debut, sporting the über-hit "Livin' la Vida Loca," debuted in the penthouse with 661,000 copies, still the best sales week for a Latin pop star in history—but he spent his peak fame years dodging questions about his sexuality, lobbed by everyone from Rolling Stone to Barbara Walters. In 2010, long past his explosive Anglo-pop moment, Martin finally ended the speculation. After all that agita, the revelation didn't seem to hurt his career much; his 2011 album Música + Alma + Sexo debuted at a healthy No. 3.

Freddie Mercury (of Queen): Somewhat belying the premise of this column is the fact that everyone's favorite mustachioed rock god told a U.K. interviewer, way back in 1974, that he was "as gay as a daffodil, my dear." But Mercury's openness during his storied two-decade career is a matter of some dispute. The thing is, when that interview quip occurred—the March 12, 1974, issue of New Musical Express, to be precise—Queen was a curio of a rock band with exactly one medium-size British hit, "Seven Seas of Rhye," under its belt. And even less U.S. chart presence: their debut album had peaked at No. 83 here in 1973 and didn't go gold for another four years. On both sides of the Atlantic, the band was months away from their first big hit, "Killer Queen." After that NME interview, Mercury never directly addressed his sexuality again and, in later years, asked the few journalists he trusted not to mention his boyfriends.

By the time Queen scored their transatlantic No. 1 album The Game in 1980, the band was an American rock-radio fixture, releasing nude-women-bedecked record covers and music videos and generally not addressing Mercury's hiding-in-plain-sight orientation. Moreover, it's difficult to regard the Queen frontman as a paragon of openness given his sad end: denying his HIV-positive status to the relentless U.K. tabloid press until days before he died of AIDS in 1991 at age 45. That galvanizing death, followed immediately and coincidentally by the release of the Queen-celebrating movie Wayne's World in 1992, led to a resurgence of Queen sales. But other than a brief U.S. chart-topping appearance by the film's soundtrack, which did include "Bohemian Rhapsody," no Queen album has occupied the penthouse since Mercury's passing. Ironically given the theme of this column, Adam Lambert has served as a replacement singer for Mercury in recent performances by Queen's Brian May and Roger Taylor, and they are about to go back onstage for a handful of shows later this year fronted by Lambert.

George Michael: The only person on the list of gay chart-toppers to crown the Billboard 200 both with a group (Wham!'s Make It Big, 1985) and as a solo star (Faith, 1988), Michael was the male pop star of the late '80s save perhaps Michael Jackson. Like so many on this list, George Michael's identity seems obvious only in retrospect; at the height of his fame in 1988, he was a major straight-identified sex symbol, appearing in his "I Want Your Sex" video with women in varying states of undress. A '90s war with his label Sony, which led to a lawsuit in which Michael accused them of underpromoting his recordings, meant the falloff in his career is attributable to many factors besides his sexuality. By the time he was thrust out of the closet in 1998, his days as a chart-topping star, at least in America, were over; he remained a chart-topper in England.

Michael Stipe (of R.E.M.): One of very few out gay frontmen of a major rock band, Stipe has always been as elliptical as his band's old lyrics. Which makes it hard to say when, exactly, he came out—whether, for example, the 1994 interview in which he dubbed himself "an equal-opportunity lech" makes that year's R.E.M. chart-topper Monster the work of a closeted man per se. Since it took until 2001 for Stipe to fully vocalize his sexuality after years of speculation, we can't really attribute that 1994 album or 1991's No. 1 smash Out of Time as out works per se. However progressive his politics, Stipe waited to make his full revelation for a moment when the band's fortunes were secure and its hitmaking days behind it.

There are not many common threads among the backstories of the above artists. With the exception of Elton John, few indisputably suffered a direct career impact from their gay status—either at moments of speculation or revelation. But we'll never really know, and these are artists whose careers were solid enough that they could eventually come out; of course most of them look unstoppable with 20/20 hindsight. Other than intermittently successful Janis Ian, this is not a list of small-time acts; even the two boy-band dudes, neither one the star of his respective group, were members of acts considered demigods in their day.

Even among these established stars, one also senses that the pressure, spoken or unspoken, to remain closeted must have been intense. Finally, the simple fact that these eight artists couldn't top the album chart while out speaks for itself.

(Anyone taking to the comments section to offer other examples of stars who are "in denial" or fall into that "Oh, come on, everybody knows about him/her" category are only backing up my point. I know I'm avoiding listing a handful of other widely rumored stars, alive and deceased. Again, we don't need rumors to present the case here.)

By comparison, what Adam Lambert is attempting in his career is remarkable and perhaps unprecedented: full-on mainstream pop stardom combined with early gay identity. While on Idol, Lambert was coy about his sexuality, saving the full revelation until immediately after the competition was over—further evidence that the mainstream spotlight is intense for even the most secure performer.

What's perhaps even more notable about Lambert is how unremarkable his orientation is in 2012. It doesn't seem to be hurting him much now that he's off the show. His first album For Your Entertainment debuted in the fall of 2009 at No. 3 and spawned the 2010 Top 10 hit "Whataya Want from Me." The debut's opening-week sales total of 198,000 copies was the highest debut-week total for an Idol competitor in the last four years. That total not only beat Lambert's opponent Kris Allen, it also edged out the subsequent No. 1 debut by 2011 Idol Scotty McCreery, as I noted in a recent column.

As I also explained in that column, the difference between a No. 1 debut and a No. 3 debut is often all about release date: McCreery's 197,000 was enough to top the chart because it was dropped during an October week with light competition, while Lambert's 198,000 in the busy holiday season meant he fell short.

For Lambert's second album, his label's chosen date of May 15 offers Lambert a fair fight. Trespassing's biggest competition includes another in the long, seemingly bimonthly string of Glee cast albums, which stopped topping the charts a year ago; a live album by Godsmack, who are a regular presence in the album-chart No. 1 spot, but we have seen very few concert-album chart-toppers in recent years by any act; and a new disc, Heroes, by Willie Nelson, who has never scored a pop No. 1 album (and also, frankly, deserves one).

Of course, to make it to No. 1, Lambert will probably need at least a low six-figure sum just to contend with penthouse fixture Adele, whose 21 is No. 2 this week and regularly sells around 100,000 copies a week, even now. In the absence of a big current hit at radio, Lambert will need more than his hardcore fans turning up; a sales-goosing TV appearance would help.

For all I know, Trespassing will not only fall short of the penthouse, it'll debut outside of the Top 10. Speculating about whether Lambert could pull this off is mostly the sort of sporting interest I regularly take in the pop charts—and it's hard to predict what will capture the public's fancy. If you'd told me at the start of 2012 that the only artist besides Adele to top the Billboard 200 for more than one week this year would be Lionel Richie, I'd have looked at you funny.

I offer all of this data mostly as an observation. A No. 1 album by Adam Lambert would make him not only the first openly gay artist to top the Billboard 200 but also the first openly gay American to top either of Billboard's two flagship charts. (Past Hot 100 chart-toppers by out gay or bisexual artists include British stars Elton John and David Bowie, and Right Said Fred's Richard Fairbrass.)

Even at this tipping-point moment for acceptance of gay civil rights, there's still another tiny cultural barrier left to cross. If anyone wants to start a Bridesmaids-style grassroots movement in the next couple of weeks, it might be fun to see if a gang of progressive-minded pop fans and chart geeks could help lift Lambert into the penthouse.

Probably won't happen. But wouldn't it be fun if it did?

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JUDGEMENT DAY: POP HEAVEN OR HELL? ADAM LAMBERT’S “TRESPASSING”
MAY 08 2012 | ALBUM REVIEW
popmessiahblog.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/judgement-day-pop-heaven-or-hell-adam-lamberts-trespassing/

Well hello Ladies and Gents! It’s time for another installment of Judgement Day: Pop Heaven or Hell!

Today Adam Lambert’s long-awaited sophomore album: “Trespassing” (in stores on 5/15/2012) is standing at the pearly gates of Pop Heaven waiting to find out what The Pop Gods have decided as it’s fate. Will it be allowed into Pop Heaven, banished to Pop Hell or simply left to wallow somewhere in Pop Limbo?

Now, before the verdict is revealed, I must admit that I may have said in the last instalment of Judgement Day that I was going to depart from the formulaic track-by-track album review. Since I started this blog back in November, I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with lots of pop culture enthusiasts, be they fellow pop bloggers or simply fans. While I have yet to encounter every fan base, I would have to say you’d be hard pressed to find any fan group who are more devoted and supportive than that of The “Glamily” (also known as “Glamberts” and some as “Fanberts,” others just “Berts”.) I posted back in December 2011 about lead single “Better Than I Know Myself” as someone who had not always called himself a fan of Lambert’s and in the time since I would say that I’ve hopefully become at least a distant member of the Glamily and I’m confident that my fellow Glamberts would prefer I give “Trespassing” it’s due time and consideration.

Check out the Judgement Day: Scorecard and the track by track review, after the break…

The title track opens the set and immediately I’m floored. “Trespassing“, produced by Pharrell Williams, starts the album “balls out” and sounds like an iconic 70′s rock anthem brought onto the dance floor for 2012. Equal parts Queen (particularly “Another One Bites The Dust”) and Michael Jackson, you will probably be sing-humming and stomp-clapping along to this one for the rest of the day!

The onslaught of Glamitude doesn’t stop there as the album heads from one banger into another. Next up is the BRILLIANT “Cuckoo.” When performed live this track sounded very pop-rock but here it’s found to be a gorgeously produced dance track that exudes the 1980′s triumphantly and even defiantly. (Those vocal arrangements scream 80′s hair rock, don’t they?) I dare say, if “Cuckoo” doesn’t have its day at the top of the charts then there is something wrong in the world. I’m not being melodramatic.

Track three: “Shady” finds Adam once again channelling the King of Pop with the help of UK singer/songwriter Sam Sparro. Funky and reminiscent of songs like “Superstition” by Stevie Wonder, this is a definite contender for single in my eyes, especially if radio does what it should and starts to move away from the barrage of David Guetta sound-alikes. Adam’s vocals are soulful and on point as he croons: “No I ain’t broken but I need a fix” and powerful as he goes on to snarl “Turn it up, Turn it wayyyyyy up, don’t stop the beat!” In case you weren’t paying attention, this track is FIRE!

The second (and current) single “Never Close Our Eyes” is up next. This track throbs with energy and emotion. It’s by some accounts a beautiful love song but otherwise applicable to simply living life to the fullest. Penned by Bruno Mars, Adam’s voice is tender and/or powerful when and where it needs to be. Having heard the other songs on the album, I do question this now as the second single choice but it does seem to be getting great buzz thus far and hopefully will be a hit and put this album on the map. Those harmonies and that soaring note on the chorus, though. Goosebumps!

Track four entitled “Kickin’ In” is beat-heavy but in a different way than anything we’ve heard thus far on the album. I would go so far as to say I haven’t heard anything like this song in pop music in recent years but it seems like it could have been a Justin Timberlake track. While it certainly references many genres and feels sort of familiar in parts, as a whole it’s produced in a very spastic way, once again by Pharrell Williams. This track has great energy and I can see myself dancing to it. On repeat listens it’s grown on me but remains one of my least favorites of the set.

The vocal pacing on the next song: “Naked Love” took some getting used to for me (the delivery felt so slow on those verses) but by listen #3 that vocal melody worked me over! Classic pop through and through, this Benny Blanco production is just too infectious not to love it. Like many of the album tracks, it has a certain 80′s or 90′s sensibility in the vocal melody and truthfully seems like the most obvious choice for a summer 2012 single. I can hear this blasting from the speakers of a convertible cruising in the summer breeze. While not a personal favorite, this song quickly went from Pop Limbo to Pop Heaven in a couple of listens!

Track #6, entitled “Pop That Lock” was another one that didn’t grab me right away. If you’re anything like me and think you’re not sure about this track, please put on some high quality headphones and listen to it at a bearable but somewhat overwhelming volume. There is something about the refrain of “If you’ve got the key then baby pop that lock” that makes me think of classic Madonna, though I’m sure others will think that’s ridiculous. Overall this track is pretty fun! “Werk, Bitch!”

The album is meant to have a light and dark component, like the yin and yang. While I don’t necessarily think it was meant to be divided so clearly, here (for the most part) the album starts to get both slower and moodier.

I reviewed the lead single: ”Better Than I Know Myself” back in December. Nothing new here; Still head over heels in love with this song. Gorgeous.

Where the dub step breakdown has become a pop staple over the last few years, Lambert takes it to the extreme with track #8: “Broken English.” The track boasts intense, full-length dub-step production, making it one of the less commercial sounding tracks on the album. It has transcendent, soaring vocals, tight hypnotic harmonies and a breakdown that sounds a bit like Darren Hayes on a horror movie score. Experimental, Gritty and ever so beautiful!

In the next track, “Underneath,” Adam has written what could end up being the most breathtaking song of his career. Dark, emotional and atmospheric; it is a lyrical and sonic masterpiece in every way. (“Strip away the flesh and bone, look beyond the lies you’ve known, everybody wants to talk about a freak, no one wants to dig that deep, let me take you underneath…”) Imagine that Richard Marx wrote a confessional song about his dark side in the vein of Madonna’s “Ray of Light” album – then imagine it modern. One of the most haunting and beautiful songs, ever. Period.

Adam ventures into territory a step closer to that on his debut album “For Your Entertainment” in the next song: “Chokehold.” It’s a step back toward a more pop-rock vibe but with very pop-forward production securing a cohesive fit with the other tracks from this era. It’s doesn’t stand out as a potential single, but does separate itself from the pack for being different and is a great song nonetheless.

“Outlaws of Love” has been making the rounds for a while in live performances. The good news is that the recorded version of this anthem for “misfit” lovers is just as satisfying. This track should ring especially true to the LGBT community, particularly in this time with the fight for marriage equality in the U.S. Lambert cries out: “They say we’ll rot in hell, but I don’t think we will, they’ve branded us enough Outlaws of Love…” Heartbreakingly beautiful, this song concludes the standard edition of the album.

On first deluxe editon bonus track: ”Runnin“, Lambert sings in his rarely featured low register over a strong, almost industrial beat. The build in the vocal melody on the chorus is phenomenal as Adam moves from lower to upper registers from line to line. The song builds overwhelmingly in intensity and has a certain triumph about it and has become an unexpected favorite. I would have included this track in the standard edition and made “Kickin’ In” a bonus track. My only complaint is the way the track ends in a flurry of blips and feedback. So very abrupt!

“Take Back” wins the award for the least interesting track on the deluxe version of the album, which is probably why it was a bonus track. It’s a perfectly good song, but among the gems this album holds it comes off as the most ordinary and even production-wise, feels like the odd man out. It sounds like it could easily have fit on Pink’s last two albums.

We close with the gorgeous electronic lullaby that is “Nirvana“, where Lambert sings “We can escape.. to a higher plane.. in Nirvana.. stay where the dreamers lay” over a rippling beat. The synths, the bassline and the flawless vocal harmonies are enough to send me to another plane of consciousness. The track contains echoes of pop singer Darren Hayes, but is distinctly Adam. If Lambert was “Tresspassing” when this journey began, I think it’s safe to say that he’s feeling a lot more welcome here.

Here’s the Judgement Day: Scorecard showing how we rated the individual tracks:

Trespassing is in stores on 5/15/2012 and is available now for Pre-Order on iTunes and many other online music retailers!

Pre-order “Trespassing” iTunes Deluxe Edition
Pre-order “Trespassing” iTunes Standard Edition

It’s pretty obvious: Adam Lambert’s “Trespassing” is…

Adam Lambert @adamlambert
1:46 PM - 8 May 12 via WhoSay
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NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Album Review: Adam Lambert, 'Trespassing'
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
'American Idol' alum is over the top and proud of it,
moving in a catchy dance direction
Jim Farber | Tuesday, May 8, 2012, 8:00 AM
www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/album-review-adam-lambert-trespassing-article-1.1072512


On Adam Lambert’s new CD, he sings about barging through boundaries, crossing all lines, and being a flagrant “outlaw of love.”

“No trespassers/Yeah, my ass,” he declares in the title track.

“Walk that walk/Like u don’t give a f—,” he asserts in the next track. “U got a right to turn it up.”

Sound like the fighting words of a righteous activist? True, Lambert’s new lyrics can roil with earned anger on the page. But, once sung, they tell a different story. His vocals exude such confidence, freedom and charm, it makes it seem like there’s no need for the revolution he annnounces. It feels like he’s already won the fight.

In a way, he has. During his days on “American Idol” three years ago, Lambert sang, dressed, and animated himself in a way so joyously individual, and effortlessly nonconforming, it made any statements about his unconventionality redundant. There’s an ease and playfulness to his vocals that have made him the most likable, sure, and witty performer in “Idol” history.

He carried that raucous character over to his 2009 debut CD, aptly titled “For Your Entertainment.” It continued the kind of hair-on-fire singing, and more-is-more arrangements that made him the contest’s greatest ever conversation starter.

For his follow-up, “Trepassing,” Lambert tips the music in a dancier direction, blatantly courting current radio trends. There’s more electronics going on. Some tracks could have been written for Britney Spears. Unsurprisingly, one of her great enablers, Dr. Luke, turns up on the writing and producing credits. So do heavy hitters like Pharrell Williams and Bruno Mars, who keep the beats bracing and the tone pummelling. Williams does best by Lambert in the title track, which smartly riffs off the rhythm of Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust.”

As serviceably catchy as most of the songs may be, it’s only Lambert’s performance that raises them above radio fodder. His vocal attack remains a dizzying mix of the awesome and the absurd. For “Kickin’ In,” — whose lyrics provide Lambert’s only semi-gay allusion, involving a proposed three-way — he shrieks like someone just dropped a TV set on his toe. In “Underneath,” the album’s sole ballad, Lambert belts the notes with a rock-operatic flourish, like some demented mix of Freddie Mercury, Ian Gillan and Ethel Merman.

The latter cut means to reveal Lambert’s inner life, his secret vulnerability. While in reality he must have some, his deepest value as a singer, and a star, is his riveting certitude. That’s both politically potent (given his role as an out gay man), and artistically riveting: It’s the sound of liberation achieved.