My first reaction was probably pretty similar to yours. Sort of a 'wow' reaction. I loved Adam on American Idol, and because I am a teenage girl, I am looking forward to the new CD, which will be released on Nov. 23.
So I admit to feeling something along the lines of "oh no" when I saw this. And then, I got to thinking about it.
What it made me think of was how we've changed in 19 years. Take George Michael's "Listen Without Prejudice" for the sake of comparison.
First off, this was a GREAT album. Clearly George Michael was making a statement on it, and one of them was about his sexual orientation. "When I knew which side my bread was buttered, I took the knife as well," he sang on his hit single, Freedom 90.
It's an interesting statement in that it's a passive coming out. Similarly, he made the decision not to appear on his album cover, or in videos from the album. These were all statements about identity, it seems to me. He was taking the image he had created, and negating it, because it wasn't authentic.
At the same time, one must notice that he didn't put the authentic image out there. He made innuendos about it, and otherwise ignored it, disappearing from the spotlight and leaving pronouns out of his songs rather than sing about a woman when he meant to sing about a man. A good example would be the song Cowboys and Angels:
"Cowboys and angels, they all have the time for you. Why should I imagine, that I was designed for you?"
By describing the suitors of the object of his desire, he conveniently sidestepped the issues of sexuality invovled.
It was a great album. And a very telling one for the year it was released: 1989. Elton John wasn't out yet, not in any real way. Some might have called him "bisexual" at the time. Freddy Mercury wasn't out, either. Two years later, he'd be dead.
Now it's 2009, and Adam Lambert, to his credit, is going retro to a place no one has ever gone. He's harkening back to a 70s vibe and a type of androgeny that existed in the music and image of David Bowie and others. At the same time, he's taking it a step further: he's not bi, like Bowie was for a period; he's gay.
That fact, coupled with the way out there image he's portraying, purposefully campy or not, is a really interesting benchmark for the progress that we've made in 19 years. He is making the artistic choice to go there, so that's about him. But you'd have to be brain dead to think that the record company would allow this if they were dead set against it. Adam isn't just a mainstream star; he's about to be a megastar. A pop icon.
So here we are. You can be gay, and totally androgenous, and open about both, unabashedly. You'll still get clobbered by the homophobes, not to mention the snarky. But I think it's pretty cool that Adam Lambert can even go there. Can't wait to hear the music!
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