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 |  Subject: Digital Spy - Adam Lambert: 'For Your Entertainment'  17.05.10 15:43 | |
| - Quote :
- Gay (yes, in both senses), theatrical (not intended as a euphemism – why bother?), Jewish (well, that one speaks for itself), enough of a showman to get Brian May's cogs whirring, and blessed with a falsetto that should give Mika the heebeegeebees, Adam Lambert is easily the most intriguing artist American Idol has discovered. Just look at his debut album cover – pictured right – on which he resembles a cross between a Rocky Horror character, Pink's gender bender younger brother and a model for a make-up range aimed at the discerning Eastern European drag queen.
Fortunately, the music within is frequently just as arresting, making good on the implied promise of the title. Featuring songs written by an eclectic cast of popstars and A-list hitmakers - Lady GaGa, Justin Hawkins, Kara DioGuardi, Max Martin and Muse's Matt Bellamy all pop up on the credits - For Your Entertainment mixes glammy electropop stompers with arena-ready rock ballads, chucking in a cock rock guitar solo, a Queen-style vocal overdub or a melodramatic string hook whenever the law of excess demands. This, as you can imagine, is really quite often across its slightly bloated 56 minutes.
It avoids becoming a big glittery mess for two reasons. First, the quality of the songwriting rarely falters. The Goldfrapp-ish title track, the Hawkins-penned 'Music Again', the swaggering 'Surefire Winners', the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin 'Strut' and the Pink-meets-Britney thump of 'If I Had You' are fun, flashy pop tunes with choruses bigger than Lambert's monthly invoice from Mac Cosmetics. The slowies are more hit than miss too, with top honours going to Ryan Tedder's 'Sleepwalker' and the lighters-aloft empowerment ballad 'Aftermath', one of four tracks on which Lambert has a co-writing credit.
The other, of course, is Lambo himself. He's great at getting the party started, a hopeless and lovable romantic too, and he's got the chutzpah to pull off a couplet as ridiculous as this one from 'Surefire Winners': "I was born with glitter on my face / My baby clothes made of leather and lace." Elsewhere, he shows his sensitive side on 'A Loaded Smile', a swirling, angsty break-up song, and 'Broken Open', on which he encourages a buttoned-up lover to confide in him. His only real faux pas? Aping Matt Bellamy a bit too closely on 'Soaked', a track written by the Muse frontman that sounds a bit too much like Bellamy's band anyway.
It's also worth noting that, in contrast to his man-snogging, fellatio-faking performance at the AMAs this week, Lambert doesn't set out to shock here. He may promise that "It's about to get rough" on the title track, but it doesn't really – Lady GaGa's 'Fever', which features a reference to ménage a trois and Lambert singing about a "he", is as risqué as it gets. For Your Entertainment is more glitzy than gritty, playful rather than provocative. It's also a cracking pop record that – much as Leona and Alexandra have done for The X Factor - makes you reconsider what an AmIdol star can achieve on their debut effort. http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/music/albumreviews/a188967/adam-lambert-for-your-entertainment.html | |
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