14 DAY TRIAL // Though many weeks have gone by since the infamous American Music Awards performance, which inevitably threw Adam Lambert behind an iron curtain with many television networks and even some fans, it continues to be the talk of the town. What audiences need to understand, Adam says in a recent interview with Xtra, is that shocking is what he’s here for, just like androgyny and pushing the envelope are his main things.
Even as early as his days on American Idol, Adam made no secret of who he was as an artist: his main characteristic is his willingness, as well as his ability to shock, which means people should at least come to expect to be taken aback by what he does. However, above all, Lambert aims to show that what we hold as a given can shatter any moment because boundaries and standards are what we set when we lack something that obstinately refuses to fit into one given category. Such is the case of Adam’s music and his artistic persona, for instance.
“I mean, I kind of went for shock value on Idol. Did you guys not see me with rhinestones around my eyes and platform glitter boots on the finale? I kind of thought I had stepped it up and bought myself that leeway. It’s been a while since a very visible male performer has publicly experimented with androgyny. It’s just not current anymore. I’m trying to make it current again. I’ve always been attracted to that. That’s my thing,” Lambert says.
Aside from bringing androgyny back, Adam also wants to have his music ultimately stand for the freedom of speech. Take his American Music Awards 2009 performance for that, if you will: though aired late at night, he got a lot of flack for it because of certain gestures he included in the choreography, gestures that were not deemed appropriate for young audiences. And what exactly where the parents of said young audiences doing all that time, Adam has asked on more than one occasion. As an artist, he has no responsibility towards educating young people, though he did admit he understood why his performance “offended.”
“I don’t deal well with oppression. I like to get things out in the open and be honest – and me. I want to be myself. I feel like that’s what I was doing the other night,” Adam also says in the same interview.