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 |  Subject: Adam Lambert works at getting beyond 'the kiss'  27.01.10 15:09 | |
| - Quote :
- It was David Bowie who first cannily reasoned that if you look and act enough like a rock star, you might actually become a rock star.
The same thinking paid off in spades for last season's American Idol runner-up, Adam Lambert. He might have lost the final vote to Kris Allen, but his attitude, his charisma and his gift for playing rock 'n' roll dress-up – not to mention a supple voice that can really wrap itself around the high notes – marked him as one of the few true, born entertainers ever to grace the series. He arrived a star. He just needed a venue.
Granted, Lambert's cockiness has since cost him a few fans on the "family values" side of things. Two days shy of the release of his debut album last November, the neo-glam extravaganza For Your Entertainment, he earned the ire of puritanical TV viewers and conservative pundits when he kissed a male keyboardist and shoved a male dancer's face into his crotch during a live performance of the title track on the American Music Awards. One of the most ridiculously overblown epidemics of gay panic this side of Brüno erupted, and America still hasn't completely gotten over it.
"The TV networks have been punishing me for it. They wouldn't let me do any live TV. They still haven't," says Lambert, 27 (until Friday), reclining beneath a painting of Marilyn Monroe in a trendy Ossington Ave. boite. "I'm not bothered by it anymore. It is what it is and I do think it'll blow over. Time heals and people are fickle and all that. But it's even made some other networks nervous about other projects, ones I shouldn't talk about for `political' reasons.
"It's too bad. Especially because, I feel, the media has a responsibility to progress society. It would be really nice if the media tried to open their minds and desensitize certain parts of the U.S. to certain things. I see straight people kissing all the time, so why is two men kissing obscene?"
Lambert – in town this week for a Monday MuchMusic appearance and some interviews before he heads to the Grammy Awards Sunday night as a fashion correspondent for Entertainment Tonight – has earned innumerable cool points by refusing to apologize ever since. Still, there's been some speculation that For Your Entertainment has stalled about 40,000 copies shy of gold status in the States because of lingering homophobia.
For his part, Lambert is just incensed that 1,500 angry letters to the FCC in a nation of 300 million can have such repercussions. Team Lambert, for instance, is still trying to figure out what scale of tour it should mount this year, if any.
Ideally, of course, he'd love to go big and theatrical, with "costumes and video and lighting and explosions: the whole thing."
What he'd prefer not to do in the meantime is become a crusader for gay rights in pop music. "On the one hand, I think it's cool because there isn't a lot of visibility for a young, gay, male musician. But ... I do resent slightly the fact that when I'm presented in the media, it's `openly gay singer and American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert.' ... My occupation is not `openly gay guy.' I'm a singer. My sexuality should be a sidebar, if anything." http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/music/article/756298--adam-lambert-works-at-getting-beyond-the-kiss | |
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