Wherein Adam sings the bejeebers out of I Want To Break Free . . .

Inspired by the lyrics, his tuchus makes the same declaration and his pants comply:



Gorgeous up-close video by riddle601b.

This was at the Hammersmith Apollo theater in London, July 12, 2012 in their fifth concert together.  Queen and Adam have only one more scheduled concert on Saturday.  My fingers remain crossed that they will do shows in the U.S. though nothing has been announced yet.  Reviews have been stellar; Brian, Roger and Adam all seem to be having a blast; Queen fans seem satisfied; and Adam's fans are thrilled.

And here's how they've been doing Bohemian Rhapsody, including a non-holographic contribution from Freddie:



If your leather laced-crotch pants give out mid-show, what do you wear?  Sparkly zebra pants, of course.

But I think my favorite song of these shows has been consistently Who Wants To Live Forever.



Video from Suz526.

And my second favorite is the opening medley, including The Seven Seas of Rhye and Keep Yourself Alive.  Skip ahead to 1:45 in this video:

Pop history is made - Trespassing debuts at #1

Adam's album, Trespassing, will debut on the charts at Number 1 for pop albums this week, according to Hits Daily Double.  This is the first time that an openly gay musician has achieved this feat.  History is made.

Update 10:58 pm:  Screenshot from Hits Daily Double.  This is a prediction of what Billboard charts will show tomorrow.

Adam's new album Trespassing is here!

It's outstanding. I love every song except the title track, but if I had to pick favorites, they'd be:

• Shady, featuring Nile Rodgers (bass player for Chic, back in the day) and Sam Sparro - disco funk you might not realize you are craving, but you are;
• Broken English - haunting, unusual slow groove with electro touches;
• Chokehold;
• Pop That Lock - 2:32-2:39 might be my favorite seven seconds of the album;
• Underneath - ballad beyond;
• Naked Love - if summer were music, it would sound like this.

The three bonus tracks (Runnin', Take Back, and Nirvana) on the deluxe version of the album have a different, darker, more rock-ish flavor, and I'm madly in love with them.

Buy it at Amazon (physical CD) or iTunes or on Adam's web site (where you can get it on vinyl).

Update 5/16/12:

Tweet from Adam's proud dad (who was a DJ during his college days):

Awwwwwww.

And the Rolling Stone 4-star review:  

So here's the great pop album everybody was hoping Adam Lambert would make, ever since he ran wild on "American Idol" three years ago. 

It wasn't just Glambert's dynamite-with-a-laser-beam voice that got him into our national knickers: It was his warmth, his humor, his burlesque bravado.

His 2010 debut, "For Your Entertainment," was a typical "Idol" quickie -- decent, but it needed more personality.

"Trespassing" delivers, with a mix of tinsel disco-club sleaze and leather-boy love ballads. While he excels in a radio cheddar bomb like "Naked Love," he gets deeper in slow jams like "Underneath" and "Outlaws of Love." But all over "Trespassing," Glambert sings everything like Zeus in a thong.

Update 5/18/12:  Let's enjoy some more reviews, shall we?

John Kearns for CityBeat in the UK:

The album is artistic dynamite, oozes decadent charm and sheer talent from every pore . . . [The] celebratory songs such as Cuckoo and Pop That Lock are the aural equivalent of being kissed by a thousand cherry lip-glossed supermodels all at once. . . Broken English is a track that boasts a soaring death-defying vocal and beautifully evocative and plaintive lyric. 

Joey Guerra for the Houston Chronicle:

This is fierce, fun dance music, lifted high into the heavens by Lambert's supernatural range . . . The album's first half is a beat-per-minute celebration, all sex and clubs and smoky disco haze. 

Gawker:

Adam Lambert's consistently electrifying second album, Tresspassing (out this week), is that freedom [to be at peace with queerness] set to music. It's freer than anything I've heard since the drag queen Sylvester disguised himself all over again in baritone at the conclusion of his "Dance (Disco Heat)."  . . .  Lambert is one to mix it up, too, as he often unleashes a hair-metal yowl that harkens back to yet a different era of masculine/feminine fluidity. . . There's almost nothing here that a straight dude could get away with singing. On Tresspassing, Lambert is here, queer and it sure sounds like he's used to it. It's a boon to his art.

Adam performed at the New Next Now Awards

Adam closed the show at the New Next Now Awards that aired on Logo last night. This is the title song on the new album, Trespassing, that will be out May 15, 2012. It's MJ crossed with Prince crossed with Queen, with a decidedly funky groove. It might be the second single off the album, but it hasn't been announced yet.

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This is my least favorite song of the ones I've heard snippets of from the new album, but I love it, so I'm looking forward to the album.

The band is: Tommy Joe Ratliff on guitar; Ashley Dzerigian on bass; Byron Cooke Brian London on organ-sounding keys and musical director; Isaac Carpenter on drums (I think); Octavia Latrice and Keisha Renee singing backup vocals. I'm excited that there is no canned backing anything.

Adam will perform on Idol in May sometime. And then, for extra credit, he's fronting Queen for at least four shows this summer: one in Moscow, one in Kiev (with Elton John), and two in London. (The whole Sonisphere festival has been canceled.) I have my fingers crossed for at least one U.S. Queen+Adam gig.

Better Than I Know Myself

Adam's video for the lead single, Better Than I Know Myself, from the new album, Trespassing, premiered yesterday. Floofy Cuddly Sweater Adam Who Reads Books, Drinks Tea and Sweeps lives side-by-side with Angry Destructive Leather Adam Who Plays With Fire, Slugs Alcohol and Disrespects Books. You have to watch to the end for the reveal about where the two Adams really reside -- or maybe you'll know right off the bat.



In the end, Angry Adam's medges save Sweater Adam. The message of the video is that a man cannot live by sweaters alone; he must have medges too.

Both Floofy Adam and Angry Adam have perfect noses. And they both sing like crazy.

Enjoy. Buy the single on Itunes. The album will be out March 20.

The Queen rumors--that Adam is the new frontman for Queen--are greatly exaggerated. They are planning to do something(s) together, but Adam isn't giving up his day job--pop star in his own right--for it.

Adam sang with Queen at the MTV EMAs yesterday

It went like this:

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Queen is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. MTV European Music Awards gave Queen a Global Icon award yesterday.

I love Adam with Queen. He's not trying to copy Freddie, and his voice is big enough and he's theatrical enough to pull off Queen's music.

Update 11/8: I should note that Freddie did not have a chance to sing this song live before he passed, though he recorded it. Also, after The Show Must Go On, Adam and Queen performed We Will Rock You and We Are the Champions. MTV hasn't posted video of that part yet.

Adam Lambert - Outlaws of Love on Album #2

Adam's second album (title unknown) will be out in November, probably. Last night, at a concert in MontrealSte. Agathe, Quebec, he debuted a song, Outlaws of Love, from the new album. Video is courtesy of a fan.

The lyrics are sort of stunning to me. He's gone two years trying to avoid being a mascot for gay rights. In interviews after his Idol season, he specifically described not wanting to be an activist; he just wanted to be a singer. In more recent interviews, he's expressed ambivalence. This song, written by Adam, addresses the political issue of gay marriage, while being intensely personal. Lyrics below.



Lyrics:

Oh, nowhere left to go
Are we getting closer, closer?
No, all we know is no,
Nights are getting colder, colder.

Hey, tears all fall the same,
We all feel the rain,
We can't change.

Everywhere we go, we're lookin for the sun,
Nowhere to grow old, we're always on the run.
They say we'll rot in hell, but I don't think we will
They’ve branded us enough, outlaws of love.

Scars make us who we are,
Hearts and homes are broken, broken
Far, we could go so far,
With our minds wide open, open

Hey, tears all fall the same,
We all feel the rain,
We can't change.

And everywhere we go, we're lookin for the sun
Nowhere to grow old, we're always on the run.
They say we'll rot in hell, but I don't think we will.
They’ve branded us enough, outlaws of love.

Everywhere we go, we're looking for the sun.
Nowhere to grow old, we're always on the run.
They say we'll rot in hell, but I don't think we will.
They’ve branded us enough, outlaws of love.
Outlaws of love.
Outlaws of love.
Outlaws of love.
Outlaws of love.

Charity:Water says thanks to Adam and fans for almost $300,000, providing water to 15,000 people

Update on Adam's Charity:Water campaign

From Charity: Water:

. . . Saturday was Adam Lambert’s 29th birthday, where he raised more than $115,000 in one day, all for clean water projects. That’s the most raised in one day on mycharity: water! And this made his campaign the highest-raising one in mycharity: water history (and he hasn’t hit his goal yet!).

We were blown away by his fans’ support and continue to watch his campaign page, excited for him to reach his goal of $290,000 by the campaign’s end. Thank, you Adam! And thanks to your devoted fans.

Go here to donate.

Update 2/4/11: HuffPo has the story on its front page today.

Tis the season of high profile Star Spangled Banner performances

None of which Adam is singing.

But here are a couple of past performances, for your patriotic listening pleasure:

Fandom power applied to charity

Earlier this evening, Adam posted an announcement on his official fansite that he'd like fans to make donations to a charity in lieu of sending him birthday gifts. The charity he selected this time is charity : water that funds clean drinking projects (wells and so forth) in areas lacking clean drinking water.

In honor of this being his 29th birthday, he set the goal amount at $29,000 to be raised over 85 days.

In under 6 hours, his fans donated . . . [drum roll] . . . more than $29,000 dollars.

This was accomplished without any distribution of a press release and no announcement on Twitter.

I may have played a role in this

According to Amplicate.com, as reported by Marketwire:

Adam Lambert has emerged as the best loved topic in social media for 2010, according to Amplicate's annual review of public opinions expressed on social media.

Updated: As USAToday reported it: "Adam Lambert is More Beloved Than Ice Cream."

Sleepwalker and Fever, Club Nokia

Another couple videos from Thursday night. This is Sleepwalker. On the FYE album, this song is highly produced and emotionally flat, but live he sings this emotionally intense, angry, energetic version that I love.



The last one I'll post is Fever, my favorite uptempo song on the album.



Both videos shot by cos2mwiz.

Soaked at Club Nokia

And for a complete contrast from Adam's Purple Haze and Whole Lotta Love encore, posted below, here's Soaked, also from Thursday night at Club Nokia.  Stunning.  The tone in his quiet notes is even more breathtakingly beautiful live.  This video is also shot by cos2mwiz.

Final Glam Nation show

The final show of Adam's Glam Nation tour was Thursday, Dec. 16 at Club Nokia in LA.  Here's the encore.  This show was unreal.  It's an experience I'll never forget.  His speaking voice was really hoarse, so his stellar vocal performance was all the more unbelievable.  Vocal pyrotechnics all over the place.  I'll post some more later, but for starters, here's the encore (Purple Haze and Whole Lotta Love) as videotaped by a fan, cos2mwiz fans and edited by fan terraj.  (Warning or enticement:  Contains Not-Safe-for-Homophobe gestures):

Aftermath, Indianapolis

The live recording of Aftermath that appears on Adam's Acoustic Live EP was recorded during his Indianapolis show on August 31, 2010. Fan-recorded video below from indybeck71:



It's hard to believe he can sing like this sitting down.

Aftermath

Here's Aftermath, another of the songs on Adam's Acoustic Live EP (made available for embed by his official site):



Aftermath was written by Adam, Alisan Porter and Ferras Alqaisi. Alisan and Ferras are singers themselves. Alisan sings extraordinary backing vocals for this song on the FYE album. Here's Ferras singing Hollywood's Not America. And here's Alisan singing Into the Fire in The Zodiac Show and singing Over the Rainbow on Star Search when she was 5 years old (too sweet to watch safely if you have a cavity that needs to be filled).

Update to add more Alisan info: Adam and Alisan have been friends for years. Here they both are in The Zodiac Show in September 2008 singing Led Zep's Black Dog. Adam is Singer #3 (starting at 1:26) and Alisan is #4 (starting at 1:46).


Alisan's band, The Canyons, will open for Adam at his LA shows Dec. 15 and 16.

Update 12/6/10: Adam's Acoustic Live EP is now available for download from iTunes here. Rockstar Weekly reviews it here (5 of 5 stars).

Adam's Grammy nomination

Adam was nominated for a Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for the song Whataya Want From Me. To refresh your memory, here's the video for this song:



An acoustic, live version of this song is included on Adam's Acoustic Live EP that is set to be released in a few days. I like this even better.



The EP includes 4 songs from his album, performed and recorded live and acoustic, plus a live acoustic version of Mad World. The first printing of the EP is sold out, though it hasn't been released yet. An additional printing is expected, though. It'd make an excellent stocking stuffer for Adam fans or all fans of great voices.

Full list of all Grammy categories and nominees is here.

20th Century Boy again

I just saw Velvet Goldmine for the first time. In the film, Placebo performs the song 20th Century Boy as a fictitous band, the Flaming Creatures. Adam has been covering 2CB during encores for several weeks. I posted one video of it earlier. Here's one with good audio and gorgeous video from September 15, 2010, in Atlanta. (Adam and the band are wearing dreadlock wigs in honor of this being the last night that Longinue Parsons, their dreadlocked drummer, was with them on this tour before leaving to return to his band Yellowcard.)



Adam has cited Bowie as an influence many times and has talked about his love for the film Velvet Goldmine. Adam has paid homage to both in several ways in his first year of his career. As I mentioned before, the album cover for FYE nods to the Hunky Dory cover. There's a favorite image of Adam, taken by Lee Cherry, that you'll see in the beginning of the video, in a feather collar thing that nods to the feather collar that Brian Slade wears in VG. He may have borrowed some tongue action and homoerotic stage antics from Slade, though maybe that's just Adam being Adam.

Velvet Goldmine explores the issue of artifice in the pop/rock world. Every artist has to find the right blend (for them) of artifice versus authenticity in their work and their image. I think this is a tricky thing for Adam to navigate. He's happy adopting a character and wearing costumes and being all artifice, but it's difficult when you've established a fan base via American Idol to suddenly hide yourself behind a character. He's also personally charismatic and plenty talented enough to not need to rely on gimmicky artifice, but he can't compete with singer/songwriter types for angsty authenticity. At present, he sort of comes in and out of character based on a song's mood or lyric. Fans get this about him, but it may be confusing for non-fans and that may make it difficult to grow fandom.

This video is compelling to me because it's apparent that by this point in the tour he's so much more comfortable and skilled at being a rock star on stage than he was at the beginning of this tour. He knows, by this point, exactly what his audience enjoys from him. As skilled a singer as he is and as comfortable as he has always looked performing, he had some stagecraft to master when he started the tour, and now he's developed that.

I also find the video compelling because of the blend of masculine and feminine that I've mentioned before. The wig is supposed to read as dreadlocked rasta. But it doesn't. He looks like he's in drag. The lipstick probably contributes to that. And he's gorgeous. But then his performance is sprinkled with masculine, aggressive, body language.

Yeah, the "Indian giver" reference is reprehensible. He heard about it from fans.

Update: I should note that for the encore songs (like 20th Century Boy and Whole Lotta Love), Adam is just Adam - no character.

Adam in Malaysia

HuffPo ran a story (I think it's the AP story) about Adam's decision to perform in Malaysia sans stage kiss, rather than cancel his show there.  I was shocked at the comments that the story generated.  I suppose it's just a handful of hateful bigoted people, but to see it in writing, at HuffPo no less, was disheartening.

And of course, some loser made the predictable "I'm sure he'd love going to prison" comment, but HuffPo deleted that one.  You know how I love him, so it breaks my heart to see people be so hateful to him.  I can't imagine what it's like for parents to see their child bullied or be the object of hate.

In a press conference in Malaysia yesterday, Adam noted the hate that he sees in the comments section of news stories about him:
"[I]f you go down into the comments section, there's a lot of hate.  But you know what? If I focused on the hate and let it affect me, I'd be letting that hate win and I refuse to do that.  I'm going to focus on the positive, focus on the love, and ignore all the hate."

Here's the press conference, in which he could not be more charming:


His Malaysia show was finished a couple hours ago.  He blew the audience a kiss in "Fever" instead of kissing Tommy.  All reports are that his vocals were insane (as judged by people who've seen video of every song in every concert this summer).  Over 16,000 Malaysian fans attended and showed him love.

Update 2:20 pm  Perfect commentary from peacevehicle via Twitter