Adam Lambert

platform shoes. Were certainly born to wear such things. We talked about the four years it took him to make his new album Velvet, about what it would take to bring him to Broadway, and about his experience opening the nineteen Oscars singing we Will Rock You and We Are the Champions with Queen Now. A few performers appear to have been quite as preordained to be a rock star as Adam Lambert, whose origin story is equal parts Jim

Morrison in the Desert in a CinemaScope movie musical. It's the sort of collision of accident, preparation and lifelong dream that feels like it was cooked up in a writer's room rather than being something real. But it was sometime around two thousand and eight Lambert, who had started out singing on cruise ships at age nineteen and had worked hard to land a spot in a Los Angeles production of the Broadway musical Wicked was in the Nevada Desert.

He was there for the party slash Pagan throw down, Burning Man, and he was tripping on mushrooms. He looked up at the sky and had a psychedelic epiphany. I realized that we all have our own power, and that whatever I wanted to do, I had to make it happen, he later said. And what he wanted to do was stop being a chorus boy and try out for American Idol.

So he auditioned for American Idol's eighth season, singing Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and nailing the drama and high notes well enough that he didn't just make the show, but people started sending Queen guitarist Brian May the video of Adam's audition because this just might be the singer you're looking for. Flash forward eighteen weeks and there's Adams singing We Are the Champions alongside Queen themselves in the American Idol finale.

Flashed forward a few more years from there, and Adam's second album, Trespassing, has made him the first out and proud man to top the Billboard Album charts, and he's on tour with Queen as their front man. Adam and I spoke after his EP, Velvet Side A came out last year, and it's now been expanded into a full album. In a couple of ways, this is music about liberation. It's Lambert's first release on an independent label, and he oversaw the A and R in production, so it's his

first time calling all the shots himself. But in some ways lamb Its whole career revolves around liberation. In two thousand and nine, shortly after he finished Idle Is runner up to Chris Allen, Lambert was on the cover of Rolling Stone. He took the opportunity to make clear something that he'd never really kept a secret, but he also hadn't talked about directly during the competition. I don't think it should come as a surprise for anyone to hear

that I'm gay, he explained. He also told Rolling Stone that he had performed the Sam Cook song A Change is Going to Come on IDOL with the fight for marriage equality in mind. Lambert's second album, Trespassing, found him still singing about freedom. It finished with a song called Outlaws of Love about that same fight for marriage equality. At the time of his third album, The Original High,

and he was celebrating a different sort of freedom. This was his first album since he left the management company and record label he'd been with since Idol Now. Liberation is a core value of rock and roll from the start in the nineteen fifties, when the music was about freeing the body and letting the mind follow. One of the things about rock stars has always been that they live free. They move, sing, dress and act in a way that most of us just can't in our day

to day lives. And you only have to take one look at Little Richard or Elvis, or Mick Jagger or Lady Gaga to know that Adam Lambert has always been really good at embodying this core value. From his eyeliner to his studded boots, he lives and performs free. So I was interested by the songs on Velvet Side A that we're about a kind of struggle for freedom, like the Stranger You Are, where Lambert sings about feeling the more different you are, the more they try to keep

you locked in the dark. When I first heard that, I thought he gets to be whoever he wants. He's Adam Lambert, He's already fought this bad but even so he still had to struggle to find a way to make the music he wanted. Some of this is like me having to affirm it to myself. I went to a couple of different writing sessions with great, great talented people, where what we ended up with at the end was something that sounded just sort of like everybody else's song.

Right now, I would like walk away from that lessen be like, how have I so easily lead? Why did I just fall into that? And that's how, you know, has to do with a lot of just trying to be a good team player. But it's so easy to fall into the same thing that everybody else is doing, and it takes a little bit of extra work and discipline and sort of clarity in order to fight against that and do your own thing. The fight to do

your own thing. After ten years, Adam Lambert wanted to make his own music, his own way, something more geared to a funk strut than a pop bounce. He was a little tired of the Top forty Carnival. It's important to remember just how central and how good it he was at that carnival. His first album four year Entertainment in two thousand and nine drew on what was happening right then in pop music, but it also drew a

blueprint for much of the next decade. It's packed with producers whose impact was already clear, like Max Martin and Dr Luke, but it also features producers whose impact was just then unfolding, like Ryan Tedter and Jeff Basker. The co writers include pop prose like Linda Perry, but also

Pink and Lady Gaga and Rivers Cuomo from Weezer. And this is five or six years before all rock got sucked into the pop mainstream, with Caroline Policheck from Chairlift getting a co write on a Beyonce track, and rost Him from Vampire Weekend producing and writing with Carly ray Jepson on Lambert's second album, Trespassing In. He takes a bigger hand in the songwriting, co writing eight of the

twelve tracks, but things are no less major league. The producers include Dr Luke again, along with Pharrell Williams and Bruno Mars's crew, The Smeezington's the original High and finds Lambert working in Sweden for the whole album with Max Martin Who's then riding high with huge hits for Taylor Swift in the Weekend. And this is probably Lambert's most

coherent album from start to finish. But I see it's plain to me it presented its own set of challenges, and I don't just mean spending two months in Sweden during the dead of winter when it can be dark for almost eighteen hours a day. So when he made Velvet, he wanted to step outside the whole race to the top ermost of the poppermost, as the Beatles used to

put it. He wanted to make something a little more organic, which is why last year's EP was called Velvet Side A. There's that sense of throwing back to the old school way of recording albums in the digital vinyl era, a bunch of people sitting in a room writing songs and playing them. It wasn't just a matter of deciding that and going into the studio. He had to unlearn a lot of the lessons of the previous ten years and

free himself of expectations. He talked with me about how he did it and about where he drew his inspirations from, and also about the song he Rode in a Castle in the South of France, which turned out to be a lot less glamorous than it sounds. Here's what else he had to say at Lambert Welcome to inside the studio. Thank you so velvet velvet side a. Let's get right into it. Two questions. Why velvet? Why side a? Velvet? Um? I mean it's a feeling, it's soft, smooth, it's vintage classic.

It made me think of fabulous suits from the seventies. It made me think of a curtain to a stage, made me think of Velvet gold Mine, which is my favorite film, and also The Velvet Rage, which is an incredible book. It means a lot of different things, I guess. Let's dig into two of the things you just mentioned. First is Velvet gold Mine, which, for those who don't know, is a film directed by Todd Haynes. Yes, you are like a walking wiki. I love it. I am a

walking wiki. And this is Todd Haynes. Of course, went on to direct Far from Heaven Carol, and also that Bob Dylan movie that is loosely based on the legends of Bob Dylan. I'm not there, but Velvet gold Mine was his glam rock movie. God, it's so pretty. It's so fun to watch just visually nuts and all the actors in it are like bananas. They're all amazing actors. Jonathan Rees Meyers and you and McGregor in parts loosely based on Bowie and Iggy Am I remembering, that's that's

what it looks like. Yeah, Um, what was it like when you saw that? Um? I saw it a couple of I don't think I saw it right when it came out. I saw it a few years later, and I think I was in my early twenties living in l A and really kind of in this moment of falling in love with classic rock in a way that I hadn't before. Um. You know, it was like around

the house and I was growing up. But then I like really dove into it on my own, you know, with with the help of the Internet and like really discovering. Did you have the feeling that glam rock was kind of an almost buried history, that that that we knew some of the music but didn't know everything. Yeah, it's like very of the time. Yeah, it was like a moment um and I think I think it resonated with me just because everybody was so dressed up and I love,

you know. They we had bands in the eighties that were really you know, they've tarted up, as they like to say. But I was never really that into hair metal. I was. I think the seventies stuff is just more me um and Yeah, I don't know. I think I was just drawn to it visually first and then kind of fell in love with the sound of it. Yeah, Like it just felt like a fit. I like the camp nature of it. I like the theatricality. It felt like something that, like, I don't know, resonated with me.

It's so interesting that you brought up hair metal, which is derived musically stylistically from glam rock. No glam rock, you don't really get what happens in the hair metal days, but the music and certainly the personas are you not as gender fluid as glam rock was? Right, I mean it sort of takes the look without necessarily the politics

of it. Yeah, I feel you're totally right. Like, if you look at most of those eighties bands, like, yeah, they were dressed like Sunset Bulevard hookers, but they were sort of all like, weren't they kind of all like womanizers basically? I mean probably that was sort of like what they were hinting at it was that frat boy kind of mentality. I think it was more than a hint. Yeah yeah, um, but yeah, you're right, Like in the seventies you had artists that were sort of like easy

or isn't he you know? You had Bowie for example, who like famously was sort of like quote unquote bisexual. I don't know if he ever really actually said the word. I think he did. Um. And that was like trailblazing at the time. And then you also mentioned The Velvet Rage. It's a book by a Los Angeles therapist. Do I have that right? Yeah. It's like a focus group study

of a group of men. It's an older book, so it's it's slightly you know, slightly out of date now if you read it today, but some of the psychological ideas and it, you know, are timeless. I think it breaks down why gay men are the way they are, um, sort of the patterns, the types. And I read it when I was young, and I was sort of like just coming into my own in l A. And it's sort of like filled in a lot of my question marks.

And I think with gay culture, especially twenty years ago, we had lost so many of our elders with the AIDS crisis in the eighties, so the gay community didn't have a lot of like wisdom left. We had lost a lot of our wise ones. And the rage in question, if I remember this right, is about internalizing lessons from the world around you that who you are, what you're feeling isn't acceptable. I think the tagline is growing up gain a straight man's world, So it's it's yeah, it's

about just being different and how that affects people. Sort of the common effects of it. People that are overachievers, people that are um you know, that have a Peter Pan complex, people that have daddy issues, people like it's these kind of quintessential therapy issues. Because you had mentioned this book previously in reference to Velvet Side A and we should be clear Side B is coming. It's coming.

And then I was listening to the EP and that first song Superpower, where you're saying, try to put me in a box, make me some thing I'm not there's something missing on piston. I got something to say. Oh yeah, allllo, witch, just send the thing. It's better get on my way back up. When all the pain from the law put me in box, miss something I'm not, don't give a I'm take back. And I thought, well, first off, who puts Adam Lambert in a box? At this point? Who

who dares? Yeah? But is some of that older feelings or is that lyric referring to things that you've been going through recently. I think it's kind of always going to be around. It's always sort of there, just being at somebody that's different, that's daring to be different. You're always going to encounter opposition of that. You're always gonna encounter people that don't get it, that are scared of it.

And also, you know, yes, I wrote it from a first person and I and it is about my experience, but I also really intended it to be something that could be an anthem for a lot of different people, because I think everyone's had that moment where somebody's told them what they can or can't do, or what they should be or shouldn't be. And yeah, it's frustrating. And the superpower in question, of course, he's drawing really on your own strength, right, Yeah, exactly like my superpower is

staring to be exactly who I want to be. That's, you know, my superhuman thing that I can draw upon and it's it's it's not ever present. Sometimes it gets snuffed out, sometimes it gets overshadowed by other things. But you gotta keep fighting the good fight. I think two points your first, that maybe your superpower, but also you can sing like a motherfucker. Well that's in the song too. It's there's some there's some wailing in second. You just said.

Not always there. Sometimes it gets snuffed out people, you know, sometimes it's a struggle. Yeah, when recently, can you think of a time when well, I mean right when I was starting the process on this album and I was starting writing it, I had just finished touring my my last album, the Original High. I had also done some touring with Queen, and I was just a bit fried.

I got home and I was like, who, so this takes us about or so yeah, and I was just like wiped out, and I felt like a little disillusionment within the industry. Um, you know, I love music, I love performing, I love that interaction with fans. All that stuff is the good stuff. But the business side of it can get toxic and it can get draining, and it can make you just sort of feel inadequate or affect your confidence and I think I was at a point where it had I felt like, oh my gosh,

am I getting enough return on my investment? Because I'm working real hard and I don't know if I'm seeing the results that are making me feel content. So i'd really kind of sit down and like journal and talk to friends and kind of get back down to like, Okay, why do I do this? What is the real reason? Is that a good enough reason? How do I insulate my creativity so that I feel like that's a little

more sacred and that's something that's mine. And there's a handful of different ways where I had to things that I did to sort of make that happen at that point. And I think it's important that we stop here for a second and just linger on this. This wasn't a moment when you've been brought down to your lowest. Necessarily you had just been touring with Queen. You've got to be a certain dream come true element to that. If we go back and look ten plus years ago, you're

auditioning for American Idol singing Bohemian lacity. Now you're on stage right and these are big crowds, and still you're coming away from that thinking, am I getting what I want? Am I getting what I need? I think that was selected more in my my solo stuff that was sort of where that feeling was being generated from. And I think in a perfect world, in my fantasy is like having a balance between the two is actually really great. I like being able to do both and feeling a

sense of accomplishment from both. And they're very different. With Queen, obviously, you have these hits that are iconic, audiences all around the world are like singing along with us. It's like I'm getting to be on stage with legends. I mean, it's a big honor, it's a big thrill. But the sense of ownership is different. You know, I didn't create that music. I didn't originate that music, and so I always feel like I'm I'm being more of service when I'm with Queen. I'm I'm a catalyst to let Brian

and Roger do their shows. I'm there to help the audience celebrate Freddie Mercury, and it is a great gig for that. But with my stuff, if it's satisfies a different part of my artistry. You know, these are songs that I've created that I put out that have my name on them. So let's dig into that side for a little bit. You're saying you're coming off the original high. This was a record. You'd gone from our c A to Warner Brothers, You'd gone to Stockholm to work with

Max Martin and his crew. Yeah, and that there was a group called the Wolf Cousins, which is like a writer's collective, and they were great. I spent like two months there the dead of winter. It's nice and cold. I've spent a lot of time in Sweden and you went at the wrong time of year, I think so. Uh. And and for those who don't know, when you go to Sweden and the dead of winter, you could get up at nine ten o'clock in the morning and it's pitch black and the sun comes up and then it

sets it three. Yeah, it's weird. Yeah, I had to take those vitamin D pills, you know. But one thing that's really interesting about working with this crew is there's something right about that match because these are people who like they're interested in pop, they're interested in dance, but they're also really interested and capable when it comes to guitar rock and roll. Yeah, so it should be a good catalyst good collection of songwriters and interests for you,

and it produced a strong record. Yeah. I mean I'm a huge fan of that whole group. Um, Max is he's genius, you know, He's an amazing hit writer, and they're so good and they're so polished, and they have they have it sort of dialed into almost like a science, like they really know what works. They know it sounds great. Um, And so being a part of that was was great. Like I felt like, Okay, I'm in really good hands. They know what they're doing. They know how to craft

great pop records. And was it a different process going there and working with this collective than albums passed? Yeah, it was a bit different. I mean I think that the original I had a little more of a cohesion to it because I was working with all of their people, you know, Max executive produced it, so sort of like he had his crew all over it. And I love those songs. They were really good, but I wasn't as

involved in the process. I wrote with them for two months, but to be honest with you, the majority of the songs sort of started as other people's songs. You know. I'm have added a couple of things here and there, but I was less in the driver's seat on that, and I was really happy to get in the passenger seat with all these amazing guys because I know what they do. But again, that's sort of like an exercise in trying to be a competitor in the business. It

felt like a business move to me. It felt like I was playing the game and I'm and I'm like, Okay, cool, let's play the game. Let's do it. You know, I get it. That's top forty. But yeah, at the end of it, I've there was a sense of Okay, I did that. I played the game. I worked with like the best of the best in pop and ghost Town turned into a hit, which was awesome. I was really

excited about that. I love that song. Um and then it was like then it kind of tapered off, So I was like, okay, And when I got down to like, what do I want to do next, I thought to myself, Okay, no shade to them, because that was a great experience. I loved working with them. They were really sweet too.

But I want to just do something different. I want to go Not only do I want to create different sounding music than I've created, but I want to go about it diff Really, I don't need to go to the best of the best of the best because of the name check value. I want to I want to

start more like grassroots approach on this one. I want to like sit in a studio with musicians who play instruments and songwriters that I've met and just do this sort of my way and kind of start slowly and not rush and not be answering to a room like a boardroom. I want to just do this from like an artist place, a little more organic, right kind of the These are the stories that we grow up with if you're a Fleetwood Mac fan or if you're a

led Zeppelin fan. We we went into the room, we traded some ideas, nothing really worked, and then somebody started playing a guitar riff and that man's name was Slash, and Axel heard it and he thought, oh, there's a child who's sweet and she's mine. There are lots of stories of great songs that come about more accidentally than that scientific way that you were talking about. It's also the you know, the songs that were created in the

Swedish camp. It's like really intended for radio. It's like, how do we win at radio, and it's look, it's like a great business model. It's awesome. Who knows, Maybe I'll go back and do more of that kind of

music at some point. But I guess in a way, it's like I wanted to be a part of the organic experience that like what you're saying, like that rock legends are made out of, like the way you hear, what you read, what you you hear about, like from an artist's place, Like how does it come just from the heart. So let me ask you a question, because the other thing that you were talking about being of service in Queen, you're being of service with rock legends, right.

Did that have any effect on your desire to to do something a little differently, maybe a little more organic, like the way that some of that music was built. Yeah, exactly. I mean I think I'm so in love with that time period, and I'm so in love with the band, and I've heard all these stories and I thought, yeah, what if I try it that way? What if I try it like my heroes and my my co workers,

you know. And I I do think that I also had this feeling of, like, you know what, I'm in the driver's seat on this one, even if I don't land a top forty hit single, I will feel more content and a sense of accomplishment knowing that I did it my way. You had to nurture your soul. Yeah, you had to. Really, you were saying, guards your creativity. Yeah, this one was for me. So tell me about it. How did it start? What happened? Um? What do you want to know? Well, I mean literally, how did it start?

What were the first songs that came together? And and who did you want to work with. I heard a song called Electric Love by Burns and I fell in love with it. I thought it was amazing, and I was like, who wrote this song? I looked him up and his name was Tommy English and I found I don't know how I got in touch with him. I

might have written him on Instagram. I'm not sure. It's interesting that you mentioned this song because this is a song that really walks that line that that a lot of younger artists are walking in between pop or radio and something a little more organic or indie. Yeah, it's a super catchy song, but it does feel different. Yeah. I mean we sat down and there was like I

think ill C was the other writer. Um, and she got behind the drum kit, and Tommy and I started looking at like guitar riffs, and I was like, I want to think of like sort of daft punk meets Prince meets I don't know what. Like, we just started like listening to music and just kind of jamming, and that's how it was born. And I and I we came up with a melody first, and then we kind of looked at each other what was it about? And we were like, let's do something kind of empowering, something strong,

something you'd want to like strut too. And are we talking about the origins of Superpowers? Right? No? I mean you said strong and to And immediately I thought, either we're talking about the opening of Saturday Night, Pep or your song Superpower? Yeah, all one and the same. Yeah. And I'm not the only one who thinks this ship ain't okay, you keep it down there. We ain't going.

Let's stick with this song for a second, because I was really struck by the opening lines there's something missing, and I'm pissed and I've got something to say, Oh yeah, what's missing? I think it was that feeling, that feeling of like it's like, how do I articulate it. That feeling of like pride in my work in a way, you know, it's the thing, this is the thing. I don't want to like slag off anything I've done in the past, because that's not really what this is about.

It's it's it's just wanted a different sense of accomplishment, a different feeling, a different version of it. And let's make perfectly clear that that's okay. Because again, lots of the legends that we love, whether we're talking about the Beatles or Freddie Mercury or Madonna or David Bowie, thought Okay, I did what I did already. Now I'm ready to do something else, the reinvention thing, and I've always been in love with that. That's you know, my favorite artists

there that way, right. Yeah, So then let's go to uh, our second verse here. I know I'm not the only one who thinks that ship's not okay. I wanted to reflect sort of the state of the you know, the world a little bit, the country, my community, that feeling of like angst like this isn't right, this isn't sitting right with me, um, you know, and that could apply to a lot of different things right now. I mean, it's funny. No matter which way you lean politically, it

does feel like shi, it's not okay. Yeah, we're very good at making each other feel like it's not okay right now exactly. This is interesting And I want you to tell me just a little more about this, because this is a motivating factor for what you're doing now. Is having the mission to make people feel stronger, to give people pride, to give people confidence. I think that having that as like a baseline for this whole project

that felt important to me. Um, you know, not just again the intention of not just writing a hit, but writing something that will help people, will make people feel good um or cathartic or whatever the emotion is, you know. And I I think Superpower has the power to do that. And you were saying daft punk meets Prince meets I don't know what, um, But but you've you've mentioned before that the Prince was a guiding factor throughout the process.

Am I right about that? He's one of many? Yeah, I mean, obviously Prince is like Prince, but it's also sort of genre like it's just like falling into funk more and and and listening to a lot of that and falling into more soul music from the seventies, you know, seventies motown is this ship. It's great. I think as a whole, I think Velvet is more soulful than I've

ever gone. And maybe that just has to do with growing up a little bit and being a little more comfortable with my voice and in my own body, because again, we all know you can sing, as previously stated, like a motherfucker, but in a more unadorned setting, there's a little more room, there's a little more air for you and what you can do on this Yeah, it's less formulaic, I think, and vocally you don't have to go for the rafters for us to notice you. You can just sing.

I think that that has come with age. I think that I think if I look back on like my experience on American Idol, I was really screaming a lot.

You know, It's like I guess, um, I think that there was a youthful, you're showing off, show off, slash, trying too hard kind of thing in moments, and I think as I've gotten older, I just you trust the melody a little bit more, you know, you just kind of like you realize that that that that that doesn't always really draw in an audience, it can it can actually have the adverse effect of pushing them away a little bit. That's interesting. So I'm just, I'm just I'm

growing a little bit. I think that I wonder if you can tell us a little more about the side

talking about Vince. Yeah, I mean, I mean you're you're you're pointing to the classic inspiration, right, Yeah, I mean that the project is very vintage sounding, very vintage influenced, and I I knew I wanted to break up the release into two parts just as a way to sort of extend the whole experience, and so I thought I would name it SIDEA Side B. But you you didn't grow up in the vinyl era, right, not necessarily, But

I grew up with vinyl. I mean, my father had so much vinyl in the house, and my mother too. I mean I actually have some boxes of her old vinyl that she's given me. And that's what I grew up hearing. That was my first idea of what music was. So in a way that like those records that I heard around the house were like the building blocks of what music is to me. Do I remember this, right? Your dad was a college DJ and more than a

bit of a Deadhead. Yeah, more than a bit. I don't know how to compare him to other Deadheads, but he definitely would like dad's gone for the week. He's gone to a grateful Dead concert with his buddies. Even though the concerpt is probably one night. I'm like, he's gone for a week. Okay, So when you grow up, your dad would take off for a week as well, Yeah, a couple times a year. Maybe your dad was cool. He was cool, he still is. Yeah, So you grew

up with the idea that weren't your band. I never really got into the music now, but I recognize a couple of the songs here and there, and I'm like, oh, yeah, that reminds me of my father. But you grew up with the idea that fandom inspires you to go take a trip to see your favorite band. Yeah, that's true, and that's kind of cool. Yeah and tied. All right, let's talk about that for a second, because now you've opened the door for me to ask you about being

in hair. Yeah, when you were in your early twenties in Germany. In Germany, that was a very transformative experience. I was pretty green before going into that, I was kind of innocent. I definitely lost some innocence out there in Berlin. Wow, a place where a place where much innocence can be lost. Yeah, it's it's kind of made

for that. Yeah. So your first Rolling Stone cover story ten years ago in two thousand and nine, and I quote in Germany, he started smoke pot and tried ecstasy for the first time, he dyed his hair black, went to his first sex club. Quote. I was always obsessed with the sixties and the experience of living through that time. I wanted so badly to be the hippie in the show. We all yeah, and we were like we were living a version of the of the characters we were playing.

For sure. Skipped right over the first sex club. Well, free love, you know, it's all very hair um. Yes, the late sixties early seventies is just like that's I feel like we're actually living in a time now that reflects that so well. I mean, look at Nixon and how he was with all the bs that he pulled, and how he was hated and and impeached. And we have a very strong counterculture movement right now that's creating

a strong divide with the generation above them. I think we're looking at like people really like being very sensitive to civil rights issues right now, relations, gender, sexuality, all the stuff that's sort of the hippie movement was exploring. So it's there's a lot of parallels right now. I certainly see what you mean, because it was a time of people struggling for freedom and also a division in

the country as you as you come out. Yeah, a lot has changed in the ten years since for your entertainment um and and this is interesting because today, would there be any question if you're competing on a music competition show and your gender identity or your sexuality isn't down the straight and narrow, would you hide it for a second? I think, I think it is really different. I think the times have changed. I mean, I think we beyond just the queer community. It's like identity politics

are like we're steeped in it. We're in the social media age. That's like what everybody's about. They're like, well,

what are you? Who are you? But there's such a difference between say, what you went through in idea that you should think about your sexuality and your career and the someone like little Nossas who came out on Twitter by saying, wow, you know some of you know and some of you care, and some of you don't, and and it was such a simple like this is who I am and the times we're living in right now. I think, especially the young people are kind of like it's old news, Like they just don't it's not a

big taboo thing anymore, which is great. I'm so happy. It's the way it should have always been. You know. It's the way that I always tried to function. It's the way that I always kind of saw the world, to be honest with you. You know, I grew up in a household where they were really accepting, really liberal, and then I went into the musical theater world, which is you know, gay people everywhere. So it just really wasn't like ever a thing. It was never really a

roadblock for me. I didn't get bullied. I mean, you know, maybe in seventh grade a little bit of bullying, but kind of who doesn't get bullied in middle school? Um, I had a good Um. I'm actually one of the lucky ones. I never really had to sort of explain my sexuality. I never had to sort of deal with bigot's face to face or even you know, over the internet.

All of a sudden, when I was on American Idol, coming off of that show and being in the media, that's the first time I experienced a lot of this, like, oh, there's certainly are right, a lot of people that aren't into this, that don't get it, that have fears and biases and and and hate in their hearts towards anybody that's different. I was the first time I experienced a lot of that energy. And just to remind people, because it was ten years ago, it's not exactly something you

were hiding. I don't think any of us watched you on American Idol and said I'm not sure. I'm really confused. But you also weren't advertising your sexuality. I've remember thinking to myself, right when we did like the Top thirteen reveal, we had an event like on a carpet and there was media, and that was the first time I'd ever

done thing like that. The night before, some blog had found a bunch of photos of me and her next boyfriend from Burning Man from all these events that we've gone too, because we he you know, that was my first relationship. We were kind of into that whole like subculture hippie California hippie scene. So we would have dressed up like freaks and making out and having a great time. And the pictures went public and I was like, oh, well, okay,

you know, and I remember I wasn't freaking out. I was like, well, there there that is you know, Okay, the Internet, it's that's what it does. Um. And the publicist for Idol called me and she said, I just want you to know that this has happened. What do you want to do? And I'm like, what do you mean. She's like, well, it's up to you. I'm like, so you guys don't care, right, and she's like, no, we don't care. It's up to you, which was great and it was really good to hear that off the bat,

that there was no bias from them. And I said, okay, well yeah, I mean it's me. It's like, I'm not going to deny it. And so somebody asked me about another carpet iment. Yep, that's me in the pictures. Wow, game, I'm king, but I can't hit me out. I guess I didn't realize at the time that I needed to say I am gay because I thought, well, that's yeah. I mean, I'm making out with a guy. I'm gay. You know, I don't know. I just didn't. I didn't realize that the power and the need for the proclamation.

Do you think there was a need for the or was on hindsight, I'm like, oh, that would have been an interesting moved off. I didn't have my head wrapped around what being a celebrity was yet. And it's a whole other playbook. It's a whole other set of rules thinking about how you look to the public your I wasn't. I wasn't that. I wasn't thinking about that. I never

had to. I was a theater kid that would like go to rehearsal and learn material and then when the lights came on on stage, I put on a costume and I play a character like that was that was what I came from. Sure. And also this was something you've been looking for, this kind of attention, But when it arrives, it's like WHOA. And I don't think people like from the outside, I've just stood alongside it, right, it's stood alongside someone like you when a wall of

cameras just arrive out of nowhere, and that just happens, right, weird. Yeah, like the paparazzi thing is actually sort of died down because of social media. But I remember ten years ago it was intense. It's weird, just so all of a sudden, there's a scrum of people, what yeah, out of nowhere, and they all have cameras of different shapes and sizes, and they're loud, and they're rude. A lot of them

are anyways to try to get a reaction exactly. Yeah, they're doing their job right, right, Well, that's kind of you. It is their job. I don't like the job, but it's it's their job. But it's not really when you're when you're thinking about this, when you're craving success, we're craving stardom. And I don't know which one you were craving and you tell me, no, I don't think I thought to mess up. Oh I want to get famous. That wasn't really So what did you want? I wanted

a shot, I wanted new opportunities. I want to you know, I'd kind of like I've been in the theater world. I was doing a musical in l A and I remember my thing that kind of motivated me to feel dissatisfied with it was that I was in the chorus for work for them for over five years, and I was under studying the male lead and I couldn't seem to get promoted. Like one guy would leave the guy that's playing the part, and I'd be like, okay, so

am I up for it? Now? No another they brought another guy and happened twice, and I was like, well, funk this, What the funk am I doing? You know, like why am I not getting a break here? And so I kind of thought, I just need to go look for something else. And and I knew that that deep down my dream, my real dream was to make my own music and to be my own boss. And

I thought, how do I do that? And to me, you know, the Idole audition was announced, and I thought, I've been watching that show for a really long time. That would be cool. That would probably open some doors. Even within the theater world, it would probably open some doors. So hey, let's try it the theater world. It's not something you've gone back to, not yet, but maybe someday. What does that mean? I'm not ruling it out. I mean I love the theater. That's my That's what I

grew up doing that. I mean, these opportunities must come knocking every once in AI. Yeah, there's been a few, but it hasn't really been like the right thing at the right time, because it's two it's it's both the right thing and the right time that I'm just trying to think what the right thing would be. What's the ship? Come on? What's the show you want to do? I don't think it's written yet. I wanted to see you. I want to do. I want to originate something. I

want to create something. I want to I don't want to just be like the fourth guy that's played the role, because you know how it works on Broadway to they now they do like they open the show and then it's been running for a year and they want to keep selling tickets, so they put like, you know, so and so in, and then they put so and so, and then the line of of so and so particular particular people who have an audience that hasn't got into the show, and sometimes it gets a little desperate some

of the casting. So I just I don't want to be a part of that system. I kind of want to be something. I want. I'd rather create something with a director for the first time, and a choreographer and a musical director and a cast and be a part of a something new. I mean it's interesting. We are seeing more new shows, um, and we're seeing a success around original music, say from either Hamilton's or The Greatest Showman. Yeah,

like these are very successful albums, dud. They're very different, but one of them is close to that idea of it to a movie, The Greatest Showman. But it's close to that idea of hey, there could be an original Broadway show that might work for you. I could see you doing that. I it's something that I think might happen in the future. I mean it's I have so many friends that are in the theater, um, some of my dear dearest friends that I've had for years, or

like here in New York working. I think if it was the right thing at the right time, I would definitely be interested. So I just want to ask a little more about Velvet Side A. UM. And first we said Side B is coming, and is Side BE different than Side A? Is it a different mood, a different vibe. I think it's it's a little more arbitrary than that. I think the album is pretty cohesive, To be honest with you. The one thing it is not is it's not like, oh, these are B sides. They don't they're

not as good. It's not it's not that it's not a B side like that. It's just the other half. But it's not like side as the party side, and Side B is the mellow meditations. Not necessarily. No, it's varied like Side A is, and like a vinyl album would be. Yeah, right, yeah, Okay, are you still recording for Side B? Now? I think I have everything recorded. It's just not all quite totally finished. There's like two songs that are finished for maybe three that are finished

for that side. You said that with this project, you were the one in the driver's seat. You're the A and R for this project, yea, which has been a learning experience, and you told me about how Superpower came to be. But how did you go about finding the rest of the songs, the rest of the collaborators. For sure, I definitely had a lot of help from my publisher,

which is Warner Chapel. There's a woman named Katie Vinton who was very instrumental on this and set me up with a lot of amazing I basically had a meeting with her, played her some um ideas some other artists that I like somewhere, just to give her the idea of the direction I wanted to go in. And I had like a couple songs that I had kind of put together on my own, like with other writers that I had I had found, and she heard that, heard the references, and then put me in the room with

a lot of great people. So she definitely was instrumental on this whole thing and put you in the room for a lot of great people to sit down and work on. Yeah, yeah, producer, writer's sessions. Yeah. And so what was the moment where things really clicked for you? When did you know this is working? When we've had superpower? That that was sort of like, this is something I knew that. It was a four year process. So it's actually kind of fuzzy how at all the chronological order

of it all. But I met Steve Booker, who was really great and was paired up with a writer named Kess Cross and he comes from the R and B world, which I thought was really interesting. I said, how do we let's like lean into the soul a little bit. And he's a great writer, a great singer, So that was really an important collaboration. And Booker is like he did the Duffy album Rock Ferry and he so he's got this organic kind of sixties whole britt thing going on,

which is great. And when you say it was a four year process, was that a little more shall we say leisurely? Did you have more time to figure things out and experiment than Yeah? Yeah, I kind of made sure I had that. I took the time like I I didn't rush as a as a point, and I also, you know, I also in order to insulate my creativity and to do and to get what I wanted out

of this, I had to make some business changes. I had to I changed management, I changed labels, I changed like I had to move around a bit find where this would fit and where this would fly. And that was a bit of a process that take. That's not easy, that's not quick. No. I mean I think anybody who's anybody who's ever changed anything, would you change apartments or houses or jobs or anything. It can be a little traumatic. Yeah,

I mean I don't have trauma. I mean it's it's just more of like a upheaval, Yeah, and more of a sense of just it just slowed things down about I mean, it just was like an obstacle, Like it was like, Okay, we gotta I gotta figure this out, and I gotta figure this out. And you know, the other thing too, is that, um, it's really easy for people in the business to sort of I want to do the obvious, to take the lowest risk approach to things, um.

And usually that's because of money. And usually it's people that do that. It's like a lack of imagination. Um. And so a lot of people that I've encountered that I actually didn't end up working with wanted to do just the obvious thing, like the pop top forty formulaic. Oh, traps really big. Now you should put a trap beat on this song. I'm like, but I'm that's not me that that's not authentic. Yeah, I know that's trendy, but

it's I don't want to do that, you know. And so I had to sort of push back on a lot of people. And what happens when you start pushing back on a lot of people is they think, Oh, he doesn't get it, or oh he's difficult, or oh he's not gonna win because he's not doing what's trendy right now, and I'm like, well, so be it. It's funny that it brings us to track two Velvets Siday. The stranger you are, the stranger you are, the more they want to put you in a box. Yeah, that's

the stranger you are. They want to they want to keep you locked in the dark. The stranger you are, They're they're gonna try to tear you apart. It's funny. When I heard that again, I thought, he gets to be whoever he wants, right, He's Adam Lambert. He already fought this battle. But it sounds a little bit like this was the battle to make the music that you wanted to make. Ye in a way, yeah, And I mean, look, some of this is like me having to kind of

affirm it to myself. I went to a couple of different writing sessions with great, great talented people where what we ended up with at the end was something that sounded just sort of like everybody else's song. Right now, I would like walk away from that, lesten be like, how have I so easily lead? Why did I just

fall into that? And that's how, you know, has to do with a lot of you know, you're in a room with strangers you haven't met before, and you want to like to just like go with the flow, and you want to be positive, and you want to like walk away having finished something and not saying no at every turn. So some of it's just trying to be

a good team player. But yeah, it's just so it's so easy to fall into the same thing that everybody else is doing, and it takes a little bit of extra work and discipline and sort of clarity in order to fight against that and do your own thing. Let me ask you about two other songs Overclow I'm familiar with after Quo. One is overclo. One of the car writers on their Amy Cuney, came up with this word. Um. We actually wrote the lyrics of that song via text message.

We had worked together previously. We I did a writing camp in the south of France with a bunch of writers at a castle, which was really cool and it sounds like pretty tough work. Well, I mean it actually sounds on paper like a glamorous thing, but the castle actually was like there was no heat, it was freezing, was dusty as fuck. They only had like shitty boxed wine I'm sorry you only had boxed. He was not

as glamorous as it sounds. But I worked with some incredible writers and I met this woman named Amy Cuney, and she's very like she's like a poet with her lyrics, like sort of like throwback style, like bit cryptic, a bit interesting, and so we were I had gotten this track from Butch Walker because I had been working with him a bit, and he had this instrumental that he had started that I was obsessed with with that baseline, and I was like, Okay, I want to write to

this and just decide. Note most of these songs were songs that were like developed in the room, like composed on the spot. This is the only one tremendously talented. You have a band called the Marvelous Three. If I remember, he's brilliant, and he is such a catchy way with hooks and with that again that sweet spot in between pop and rock. Yeah, and he's also like the sweetest, loveliest guy. He had this track that he had already started, which um, and this is the only one of the

songs that kind of came about this way. It's very interesting. So I had the instrumental, I had a session book with Emminique, who's a British R and B pop guy, queer really fabulous, some hits under his belt. Got together with him and he and I wrote this incredible melody to the song, and we had some like words in place,

but I wasn't quite into them. And then I sent the song to Amy, having met her in France, knowing that she would come up with something really clever, and so we were texting back and forth and I was like, Yeah, I just want to I kind of want to write I just seem like a black mirror episode and I was like, I want to write a song about how technology can kind of creep its way into a relationship and how it can become like you're like in a

three way relationship with the person and the technology. And so we started kind of riffing back and forth. I was like, what about if it's like we're just like visually describing like the screen, and like how this you're at night next to your partner in bed and there's this screen and you can see the light of their screen. And she was like, we'll call it the over glow and I was like, oh, I like it. So he wrote the whole song ironically via text message. So you're

writing about the effective technology on our lives using technology. Yeah, and it's this really interesting lyric and we co wrote it back and forth on text and I went into Butch with the lyrics and he went, oh, I like it, and we recorded it and lover Boy. That's another one with Tommy English actually was that was written in Nashville. I went out there for a week, brought my dog. Was the first time my dog and I have traveled together, which was really sweet. Wait let's pause here, how how

long have you had this dog? I had just gotten the dog about four months beforehand. So at Pharaoh Egyptian Prince King Pharaoh UM. He's a Chihuahua Basni mix. He's about fifteen pounds and he sort of he's kind of bipolar. Like in one minute he'll be like super alpha guarding the guarding the castle. You know, he's very like barks at abody, making noise, very proud, and then the next minute he's like a like a lap dog pussycat. He's very funny. So the two of you travel to Nashville.

We went to Nashville UM and worked with Tommy for like a week in a studio that he had done there. He his buddy Angelo had a studio. Angelo is this guy that was like really instrumental in breaking Kings of Leon. Actually he had all these amazing guitars in his studio. And and this guy named Gabe, another co writer that was there that Tommy knew. We just we did a handful of songs that week, and that one just felt great. We loved that one. You played the oscars, Are you

in danger of running out of pinch me? This is real moments? I don't know. Um, I I loved that that was that was so surreal. Yeah, And I kind of had to downplay it to myself as it was happening because I knew the weight of it. So I sort of like I was like, yeah, whatever, you know my head, you know. I kind of just talked myself down. You tried to, Yeah, whatever the I had so I had to or else I would have been freaking out. I mean, walking the red carpet, I was like, Okay,

this is a moment. Okay, there's a phenomenon. And I wonder if this holds true for you, where actors can get star struck in front of musicians, The musicians can get star struck in front of actors. I buy it. I believe that, And I'm I love film and television. I love watching the art of actors and directors, and I love it. I'm a big movie film TV guy.

I don't really read anymore. I watch. So I'm a big fan of a lot of actors and to see them all out there in front of me was like, Okay, this is this is a big one who took your breath away. Well, seeing like Lady Gaga and Rommi next to each other in the front row was kind of like super iconic, you know. Um and obviously you know with Queen being there because of the film being nominated in all the amazing stuff that was going on around that,

and Rammy. I'd met Rammy a handful of times, did a scene with him in the movie, be so like there was this inside track to him. And then also like I worked with Lady Gaga years ago on my first album. You know, I'm not we're not like buddies, but like we've seen each other at a handful of

different things and it's always a lovely reunion. So I was like, I saw two people that I have like a point of reference with and I also saw Farrell out in the audience, who I also worked with years ago, and Queen Latifa was by him, and I remember meeting her at his studio, and there was just people that I've kind of like encountered along the way and into that how ground you in the moment because you could

look out and see folks you did not. I didn't look in the audience until the end because I didn't want to get star struck. I didn't want to wig out, So I just sort of focused on Brian and Roger because I've performed with them zillions of times and that's comfortable for me. And I just kind of looked at the lights, you know, just focus focus on the lights. I kind of looked at it like almost like an acting exercise, and that like, just tell the story, tell

the story. Love, I don't be well. Thank you, man, I mean, thank you for giving us that insight into your mind and Velvet side, Hey, thank you so much for being on Inside the Studio. Thanks for having me. Inside the Studio is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, check out the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts where wherever you get your podcasts,