25th
On Adam Lambert
I’ve watched the last three seasons of American Idol, and I don’t think any contestant has been a better at pure performance than Adam Lambert (David Cook, from the previous year is a better artist overall). No one else from the season came close to Lambert’s cocky, theatrical stage presence.
Despite that, I’m probably not going to buy his new album because his brand of pop music really doesn’t wear well on my ipod, but I’m pretty tempted after the interview he gave this morning.
If you don’t follow these, things, Lambert gave a “sexually charged” performance at the AMAs earlier this week, including a kiss with another man. This led some people to complain, and he was dropped from an appearance on Good Morning America. CBS’s ‘Early Show’ then invited him on to talk about the performance, and he offered a defense of his music and performance so articulate and unapologetic that I want to compare it to Frank Zappa’s defense of free speech before the Senate.
That’s probably over the top, but watching the interview, I was really happy to see him push back on the notion that all entertainment needs to be kid-friendly, or that his performance was somehow worse for family viewing than Eminem’s. More to the point, I’m really glad to see a gay man on television who’s confident and sexual.
Americans have proven themselves relatively tolerant of gay men as long as they relegate themselves to the roles of neutered best friend, minstrel show stereotype, or tortured cowboy, but I think a lot of the outrage over this performance is rooted in the fact that it was clearly about sex and unapologetically gay. That makes a lot of people uncomfortable, and I can appreciate that, but they’re going to have to move past it.
