STACK #186 Apr 2020

FEATURE MUSIC

Lambert is here to spruik his upcoming album, Velvet . Lambert‘s energy is welcoming and we immediately sense that no topic is off limits. Lambert sports a long- sleeved taupe shirt with “Smokin‘“ embroidered above the left breast pocket (accurate), Gucci GC pattern trousers, trainers with leopard-print trim and slightly tinted designer sunnies with bedazzled frames (want!). Lambert says he approached the creation of his fourth studio album with a clear intention. “I just started to realise over the years - now having some experience under my belt - that pop music can become dated so quickly, and also if you‘re so busy chasing some sort of trend, or if you‘re chasing chart positions and streams - and all the business side of the music thing - it‘s really easy to lose the integrity,“ he shares, “and I consciously was like, ‘Okay, I

Our discussion turns to the late, great George Michael who felt relentless pressure to hide his sexual identity. “Poor guy,“ Lambert sympathises. “When that whole thing happened for him in the ‘90s with his outing, which was basically entrapment as we know it - that‘s horrible. But that was also a time where [being openly gay] was like the kiss of death, you know? Terrible.“ After revisiting Lambert‘s 2009 American Idol audition as part of my research, I was impressed by how composed he seemed.

Queer artists... can prove mainstream success is definitely viable, and executives aren‘t frightened of it anymore

“I was a little baby,“ he grins. “I was a 27-year-old baby, but I was a baby. Inside I was

trembling, because there was so much riding on it. You know, when you go in for the TV judges, you‘ve already gone through, like, four rounds of producers and all this stuff; it‘s this whole drawn-out thing

before, which was awesome. I feel like the point of view and the energy on the album just feels closer to home, do you know what I mean? It feels good. It feels like it‘s more of a reflection of who I am, and my world.“ His debut album, For Your Entertainment , came out back in 2009 and Lambert reflects, “It‘s been a really interesting decade, being a queer person in the music industry, because ten years ago in the U.S. it just was like, ‘Whoa!‘ you know? I think people were scared of it; people didn‘t know how it would connect. I don‘t think people realised that there was a real audience for it on a mainstream level, and now we know that most people don‘t care. They don‘t care.“ Trespassing - Lambert‘s second album (2012) - debuted at number one in the U.S., making him the first openly gay artist to top the Billboard 200 chart. That‘s insane, right? “I know,“ Lambert concurs. “When they told

need to shift my priorities a little bit, and really make this album for myself first and foremost. And just make it something that I love, that I would want to listen to‘... And so that‘s what drove it.“ The first single to be lifted from Velvet was Roses , featuring the unmistakable funk of Nile Rodgers. “We‘ve worked together before,“ Lambert reveals. “He and I and Sam Sparro wrote a song together called Shady , on Trespassing, and he was so lovely to work with. After that, I did some stuff with him: I went and sang with him and Chic at a couple of different events, and he and I wrote a song with Avicii called Lay Me Down that was on that big Avicii album [ True ]. We have a collaboration relationship now. And so I wrote this song with Fred Ball and some other guys, and it was cool, but it was like, ‘It needs a groove,‘ so we rang up Nile and he said yes! He transformed it. He made it dance. He made you wanna groove to it.“ He worked with a lot of new songwriters on Velvet and Lambert enthuses, “I also found myself working with more queer people than I ever have before: gay writers, lesbian, gender nonconforming - everybody under that umbrella; it was a lot more of my community involved in this album, which was great. Also more women than I‘ve ever worked with

over a couple of weeks. And I had to actually quit my job in Wicked , the musical - I was working. I had to quit in order to get to that round, because you can‘t have any professional contracts in play. So it was like, ‘Okay, if this doesn‘t work out, I‘ve just quit my job.‘ I was like, ‘I can‘t leave this room without nailing them down and making sure that they put me through,‘ and so I sang a Michael Jackson song first actually, which was not on the broadcast, and the judges all kind of looked at me like, ‘Huh?‘ And I could tell they weren‘t quite on board, so I said, ‘Do you wanna hear something else? I could sing something else,‘ and they were like, ‘Like what?‘ And I‘m like, ‘What about Bohemian Rhapsody ?‘ And they were like, ‘Oh,‘ and the minute I did that there was like a click, like lightbulbs went off, and thank God!“ So had the judges put him straight through on the strength of his performance of a Michael Jackson song, Lambert wouldn‘t have

me that I was like, “Huh? No one‘s done that? It‘s crazy. It‘s changed so much. It‘s so different now, and that‘s exciting; it‘s exciting to have been part of that wave. And now looking at all these queer artists that can prove mainstream success is definitely viable and executives aren‘t frightened of it anymore - it‘s great!“

slayed Bohemian Rhapsody to the point where Brian May‘s inbox was flooded with messages from people telling him to check out this young singer they believed to be the natural successor to Freddie Mercury. “I know. It‘s so weird,“ Lambert muses. “It‘s like fate came in.“

Velvet by Adam Lambert is out now via Inertia.

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