Adam Lambert has grown in confidence and is no longer searching for approval. Photo / Supplied
Adam Lambert has grown in confidence and is no longer searching for approval. Photo / Supplied
Adam Lambert’s confidence comes out for a bold look around in his latest album, writes Paula Yeoman.
The year is 2009 and a nervous Adam Lambert sits in an LA high-rise talking directly to camera.
"I'm 26 years old. I've been singing since I was about 10 years old. I started doing musical theatre; my parents put me in there because I was hyperactive ... I decided to come out and audition for American Idol now, after watching for the past eight years. This is like a big chance for me."
With that, he opens the door into the lion's den. He barely gets through 25 seconds of Bohemian Rhapsody before he is stopped and met with a lukewarm response from the judges.
"I think you're a really good singer," says Paula Abdul.
"I think you are theatrical," chimes in Simon Cowell.
There's nothing out of the ordinary about those remarks. Except, watching six years later, you realise that, in that moment, the "theatrical" mould for Adam Lambert was set.
Fast-forward to 2015 and Lambert's in London promoting his new album, The Original High. It's his third offering and, significantly, the first since he was released from the clutches of the RCA deal he signed when he bowed out of Idol as runner-up to the now barely-heard-of Kris Allen.
Today, Lambert is a household name; a global success in his own right and also the singer deemed worthy of tackling the hits of vocally incomparable Freddie Mercury on a world tour with Queen.
He's made no secret of what a privilege that tour was, but it's only now as he returns to life as a solo artist that he is revealing what he gained from the experience.
Lambert's journey started before the Queen tour, on the day he stood up to RCA and realised he no longer needed to be the guy from Idol. He says the catalyst for change came after his second album, when he sat down with label bosses to nut out his next project.
"I was really proud of Trespassing. It was an album I worked hard on, that I executive produced and one on which I did a lot of left-field music. It debuted at number one on the Billboard charts and the reviews were really good but, unfortunately, it didn't have as much of a commercial life as I thought it was going to have."
So, it was put to Lambert that his next album should be one of 80s covers. "I said to them, 'Huh, what kind of 80s music?' and they said, 'You know, New Wave kind of stuff. You did Mad World on Idol and it was a big moment for you'."
He thought about it for a couple of weeks and even researched the genre and era, but just couldn't get excited.
"The more I thought about it, the more I realised that it wasn't what I wanted to do. It felt like a step backwards and not a step forwards, so I politely declined. Then they said, 'Well that's really all we're wanting to do'. I was like, 'All right I'm going to peace-out here and try something different'."
Watch the music video for Adam Lambert's Ghost Town:
It was an incredibly risky move. "I was terrified," he says.
But needlessly so, because the next day he took a call from Warner Music, which he's now signed to. His first move was a trip to the pop music capital of the world, Sweden, where he worked with producers Max Martin and Shellback, the hit-makers behind his song Whataya Want From Me and Taylor Swift's Shake It Off and Blank Space.
He says it was two months of trial and error, in which he worked through new styles and sounds.
"It was good for me to be away from home for a while, just to shift my focus and my perception of everything. It was a place that I hadn't spent much time in before and getting out of my comfort zone for a little bit was really interesting."
The album was placed on hold when Lambert joined the Queen tour and by the time he returned to the studio to finish it, he knew what direction he needed to take.
"I knew that I didn't want to change who I was. I had a really strong connection with my fans, and I'd established who I was in the world, but it was about trying on a different colour," he says.
Ultimately, that meant toning down the flamboyance and finding new ways to capture the power of his voice.
"It's not as theatrical as some of the stuff I've done in the past. I felt like I got my fill of that doing the Queen catalogue - and no better band than Queen to go full-out theatrical glam-rock. But I felt, for my own creativity and my own spirit, that I needed to go a different way."
That said, there is still a boldness to The Original High that will please fans who loved Lambert's over the top touches on 2009's For Your Entertainment and 2011's Trespassing. But he plays with pop sensibilities in a way that he hasn't before, and even delves into house music territory. What's remarkably different is the self-control he shows - knowing when and, perhaps more importantly, when not to give it his all.
Discovering restraint was something of a revelation for Lambert, who says he always felt he needed to be bigger and bolder just to be heard.
"A show like Idol is an amazing opportunity and an amazing platform, but it is a bit of a pageant. You have to be really competitive and you have to have a really strong identity to stand out.
"I just feel more grounded in my art now. I'm not searching so much for approval and I'm not searching so much for the need to show everything that I can do in one song," he chuckles.
"Again, coming off a talent show like Idol, you had to be showy. But these songs on this album go in the opposite direction. They go inside. I kind of try and dig more from the heart. I tried to not be so aggressive with everything I have."
Next year American Idol will end. So it's apt that Lambert should also have reached a point in his career where he can finally break out of the mould set for him at that first audition.
He's come a long way from being that nervous 26-year-old whose hopes and dreams were pinned on a talent show.
