These are just my thoughts ladies and gentlemen, just my thoughts.
I think that Adam Lambert is insufferable.
Adam Lambert is what I call forced flamboyance. From the over the top album cover to his awful display of trying way too hard to shock people at the American Music Awards so that he’d be in the news the next day, none of what he’s doing seems natural. Some of your greatest performers in music are themselves, just turned up a couple of notches. When it comes to flamboyance, Cyndi Lauper seemed to have it right. It seemed like her energy and creativity was simply her, but just dialed up to a 10. I don’t feel the same way about Lambert. It all just feels so fake.
And then I saw his American Music Awards performance (I had to find the edited portion online). His over the top performance told me that he didn’t trust his record to stand on its own merits. And I absolutely hated his comments after he was asked his thoughts on whether or not he thought ABC would censor the West Coast version of his performance.
This is what he told Rolling Stone before knowing whether or not his performance would get edited on the West Coast feed of the American Music Awards:
“It’s a shame because I think that there’s a double standard going on in the entertainment community right now.
Female performers have been doing this for years . . . pushing the envelope about sexuality . . . and the minute a man does it, everybody freaks out.
We’re in 2009 . . . it’s time to take risks, be a little more brave, time to open people’s eyes and if it offends them, then maybe I’m not for them. My goal was not to piss people off, it was to promote freedom of expression and artistic freedom.”
“In a roundabout way it’s a form of discrimination because it is a double standard. They didn’t censor BRITNEY [SPEARS] and MADONNA macking onstage did they? But yet two men kissing they’ll censor.”
Discrimination? Ha!
Well, they didn’t censor the kiss but ABC sure did censor the facial pelvic thrust. I understand the guy is young and he has to fight the stereotype that he’s simply a byproduct of a television show, but to already have a built in excuse for getting censored shows me that whatever he did was completely planned, not a spur of the moment like he said it was, and just irresponsible. If you really are a rebel, don’t throw anyone else under the bus with you.
Oh, and Adam, lest you forget that what Madonna and Britney Spears did was on MTV which isn’t broadcast television.
But here’s the bigger thing for me. The dude had probably 60-100 million pairs of eye balls on him at one time or another during Idol. There was no need to turn some of those folks off on a low rated music awards show performance. It was quite silly actually and bad marketing. How about you sell some records first before resorting to those kinds of tactics?
Folks like me who were going to buy Lambert’s For Your Entertainment because of his body of “work” on Idol decided to skip out when we saw the shock value marketing ploy. The idea is to create a fanbase, not to turn off potential fans. It’s just not good business sense.
He’s talented enough to come back from this, but whatever he did didn’t work. It looks like he’s getting trounced this week by Susan Boyle who is also a byproduct of a television show. And she didn’t have to pelvic thrust anyone in the face (thankfully) to do it.
