Posted on 05/18/2009 11:53:48 AM PDT by lewisglad
I am a greenhorn in the music world. If you gifted me an Ipod, I’d probably mistake it for a remote control. Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and Taylor Swift are names I have heard, but faces I could not place. I can’t operate a CD player and have always thought of concert-going as an activity other people do.
Until now. American Idol contestant Adam Lambert seems to have awakened my long lost music gene. It happened on a Tuesday in March when I coasted by the family room TV on my way to nab cashews from the kitchen. This male Elvira had cool, black nail polish, a Clark Gable confidence, an androgynous sex appeal and the ability to emote like I’ve never seen.
Heck, this is a concert I could attend, I thought.
With an alluring combination of pure talent, charisma, unpredictability and eccentricity, Lambert will no doubt go down in history as a superstar, not to mention American Idol’s greatest success story.
Commentators call Lambert a polarizing figure: you love him or you hate him. Could this stem largely from the partisan divide in America?
Lambert is a blue state. He is Hollywood, glamour and bigger than life. Using struts, vocal acrobatics, and bizarre song renditions, he sticks it to 'the man' and orthodoxy. He upsets society, chastising manners and mores, much the way Elvis Presley did on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956. Lambert is a comic book hero for those with an anti-establishment bent, such as 70’s children like me who learned early on to distrust government and convention.
His competitor, Kris Allen, is a red state. He is good ole boy from Arkansas who attends church and married his longtime sweetheart. On stage, he is as placid as a lake, even against the raging waterfall, Lambert. Allen is humble, casual and could live in Pleasantville. Lambert would be the Picasso of Pleasantville, upsetting the status quo.
In many cases, Lambert clearly transcends the red-blue divide, as evidenced by the statistics presented on 'Dial Idol' and other websites that estimate the percentage of votes each competitor receives by state. But I have to wonder if some of his angry detractors are those with a deep-seated dislike for all things liberal and idiosyncratic. .
The controversy surrounding Lambert’s sexuality also plays into this theory. Bill O’Reilly, for example, thought it newsworthy to ask his Fox News viewers if they thought the singer was gay. Successful same-sex marriage initiatives are sweeping this country, and opponents may see Lambert as a poster boy for alternate lifestyles and as a threat to conservative values.
Could an Adam Lambert victory represent a new level of acceptance for difference? Would a Kris Allen win reinforce communitarian values and the familiar? Some may see this season’s contest as a battle of hope and change pitted against tradition and custom.
Win or lose, Lambert will be a music icon. And win or lose, I guess I’d better figure out what those shapes on the CD player mean.
________
Charlotte Laws, Ph.D. is a Los Angeles TV host and the author of the book, Meet the Stars, which explains how to hobnob with the rich and famous.
Just what we need... another androgynous “idol” for our children.
They are pushing Lambert for sure. That's just Simon looking out for Simon. He will have a stake in the record sales for whoever wins. But his reasoning is simple: Adam is marketable and Chris really isn't. Win or lose Lambert will be big time and Chris, win or lose, won't.
Yep, it was cutting edge when Bowie was doing it in the 70s, now it's just another tired cliche.
Since an adjective was the best he could do to describe Adam, I figured I would return the action.
I see Adam as the best performer. He is flamboyant -
though Queen-like.
Kris is far more artistic in a different way. Now that
Danny is gone, I believe the lion’s share of those votes
will go to Kris, swamping Adam.
We’ll see Adam on Broadway - and in Vegas.
No. He still would have been handsome. But all sex appeal would have disappeared the moment I knew what kind of disgusting things he was doing with other men, and when I knew there wasn’t a chance in Hell that he was actually attracted to the women he did love scenes with. It was all an ugly sham.
I don’t think they “swooned.” I think he was just interesting. I remember people making fun of him even before his homosexuality was confirmed.
You think actors actually get aroused when they are doing love scenes? EWWW.
LOL...I have to say that if I had been doing a love scene with Rachel Welch I would have had trouble not being aroused.
I don't watch the show because I find it boring. I do not like the songs that Lambert is currently singing or his style of singing. But I ran across this on Youtube. Here is Lambert a few years ago singing in a production of "Brigadoon":
"Come to Me, Bend to Me"
(You will have to stop the audio after the song finishes because it goes into some awful rock stuff later.)
Please note the phrasing at about 3:20 minutes into the song. He has an incredible voice. Too bad he isn't using it anymore.
I’m sure some do. But, that’s not the point. The point is that any romantic interaction between him and any female was a sham.
My gut says that Chris will win because in last week’s contest the top two were separated by only 1M votes. I figure that the majority of Danny voters (if they vote) will probably throw their vote to Chris.
Having said that, I do like both Adam and Chris. They were my early pick for finals. If I look at my iphone I have three songs from Chris and two from Adam.
Adam will be the bigger long term star but I think Chris will do well enough for his career.
I think you’re right. I think that’s why Simon was pimping Adam so openly last week. I think that when the “normal” vote is undiluted, Chris will win.
BTW. I agree that in terms of talent and polished, experienced performance, Adam wins. But I’m confident that, if he wins, his not-at-all-hidden gayness will be in our faces all the time. So, I’m voting for the first time tomorrow, and I will dial for Chris as many times as I can.
anyone at this stage of the competition will get a shot at a career after......but I believe even AI is not ready for such a blatantly weird winner.....while it’s been Adam’s to lose, I think Kris will win it all. and isn’t adam rather old compared to the rest of them? at 28, he must be one of the oldest.
He’s a good singer for sure, but I agree with the FReeper who said on one of the AI huge long threads that Johnny Cash should have crawled out of his grave and strangled him after he “sang” Ring of Fire.
Being on American Idol isn’t very “metal.”
I was making fun of the sentence structure.
I suspect what you meant was, “So, you’ve missed the pictures on the internet of his tonguing another man?”
I know. My response was an apparently lame attempt at a joke.
Did you listen to him sing Tracks of my tears or MAD WORLD? When he sings a ballad, like this, nobody can hold a candle to him. And he does still sing longs like that. I posted youtubes here of him singing the one you posted and a later song called I JUST LOVE YOU...he’s brilliant.
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