Lambert is not only surprised at being the first, he is also surprised at the fuss, having been out since his late teens. "I think for a long time the music industry has been scared of it, of out artists, it's been more of a niche thing," he says.
"But music doesn't have an orientation, a good song is a good song, so if you're getting hung up on the artist's sexuality in your enjoyment of the song, then maybe you need to examine your own comfort level a little bit."
One of the new tracks, Outlaws of Love, is about being ostracised for falling in love with the "wrong" person, and comes, he says, at a time when change is coming to attitudes in America.
"We're in the midst of this big civil rights movement. It's beautiful to see how people are powering through and I think the timing of that and my notoriety is a privilege. I feel I do have a certain amount of responsibility - because I have a visibility that not a lot of people have in the gay community, especially in the music industry - to be comfortable, to be open."
The other curiously straight creative industry in the US is Hollywood, with whose members Lambert, perhaps surprisingly, has more sympathy.
"I can understand that with actors, they want to get cast in different projects and so they have to be believable as this, that, or the other, in order to pull someone in emotionally."
The 30-year-old seems to have a lot more (of value) to say than the average reality-show-anointed pop star. He also points out that his recording process is more comprehensive than many of his peers. He worked on Trespassing for a year and a half, recording more than 50 songs. The ones that did make it on to the final record were played with until he felt satisfied.
"I'm my own worst critic. I nitpick details. And I know that I put every song through the wringer."
While he won't be drawn on comparisons to contemporary artists, he has a seemingly endless list of 1990s stars who influenced his latest work, from Missy Elliot to Gwen Stefani to 2 Unlimited. The album progresses from a positive first half to a darker second, and explores his life post-Idol, from the dark, exhausted days after a world tour to the realisation that he is lucky.
Despite this, he admits his relatively new arrival to fame wasn't quite the stream of parties, freebies and non-stop glamour that he had anticipated.
"I was wrong! I didn't get invited to any fabulous parties, not really," he says. "I thought it was going to be the free pass to some exclusive club. In actuality, it creates a lot more obstacles, socially."
His first major introduction to the appetite of the celebrity press came last year when he was involved in a fight with his Finnish boyfriend Sauli Koskinen in a bar in Finland.
Lambert blames it on a combination of jet-lag, lack of sunlight and just too much to drink. And despite some reports, he says that he wasn't technically arrested, just taken to a police station "to sleep it off".
"The next day, we were like, 'What just happened'" he says, still looking slightly embarrassed. "It was a very childish, silly, stupid thing."
Today he and Koskinen are happy and have been dating for more than 18 months.
The release of his latest work coincides with one of his biggest opportunities yet, touring with Queen. He performed with Roger Taylor and Brian May when they were guests on American Idol, and he then performed as frontman at this year's MTV European Music Awards and took Freddie Mercury's role again for three dates in London.
With their high ranges and power, Lambert and Mercury have some vocal similarities, even though their personalities (Lambert's openness and Mercury's shyness) and routes to fame seem quite different.
"I can't sing [the songs] as well as Freddie Mercury, of course I can't, he wrote them," he says.
"I don't want to mimic him, that would be disrespectful to his memory. My goal is to be myself, but to make sure that I'm singing the songs as they were intended."
- Independent
