Photos by Brian Ziff
It’s New Music Friday, and Adam Lambert has just dropped Afters, a fever-dream of a party record packed with sick house beats. But instead of reveling, he’s actually sick at home, nursing a feverish flu. You wouldn’t know it, though, from his camera-ready face-beat, as he appears on Zoom in perfectly winged cobalt eyeliner (or “guyliner,” as Ryan Seacrest once described it) that perfectly matches his Gucci shirt.
“I just did a livestream with the fan club, so I had to paint,” he chuckles.
This is just more evidence that the forever-hustling, never-resting Grammy nominee and pop multi-hyphenate—a veteran of the stage and scene long before he made his screen debut on American Idol—is a true superstar, and one of the hardest-working men in showbiz. He’s also one of the greatest shapeshifters. Who else could segue from taking on the Meat Loaf role of Eddie in Fox’s Rocky Horror reboot to playing the even more iconic Emcee in Broadway’s Cabaret, or from coaching The Voice Australia to starring alongside Geena Davis and Cody Fern in the Sofia Coppola-produced AIDS drama Fairyland?
And certainly no one but Adam Lambert could swerve from voicing family-friendly cartoons like Fraggle Rock and Megamind to creating the adults-only Afters EP—a boldly queer bacchanal whose “ketamine flight” club tracks like “Wet Dream,” “Lube,” and “Cvnty,” and carnal come-ons (“gonna make you nut,” “gag on this tonight,” “slip in the room, slip right into you”) would have panicked TV censors lunging for the seven-second delay button.
Lambert readily, gratefully acknowledges that perhaps the boldest-font credit on his wide-ranging résumé—fronting Queen, who he first met on his Idol season’s fateful finale, since 2012—has afforded him such freedom in his solo career. But incredibly, 15 years have passed since Idol made him a star (and doubters wrongly assumed that such stardom would be fleeting), and now, as an independent artist no longer tethered to major-label obligations and expectations, he finally feels he has nothing to prove or lose.
“I ain't letting go anytime soon. That's my thing. I’m not giving up. I don't go away,” Lambert quips, as he opens up about his new era and sex-positive Afters EP. “I do feel I've come a long way. It’s about giving less of a fuck, not being concerned with not everyone liking what I do. And that comes with experience. Having been in the business this long, being on the road with Queen for 10-plus years, I feel I've earned the right to say, ‘Fuck it. I'm going to do what I want. Life's too short.’”
Below, Lambert discusses activism, acting, and his wild journey from Idol to Afters.
It seems Afters has been—no pun intended—a long time coming. Why did you release such a racy record now?
Because… why not? A lot of stuff I've been listening to is a bit more intense, and the artists I've always been drawn to are very sexual. The first song that sparked the idea for this body of work was “Wet Dream.” I was in the studio with my friends, [songwriters] Sarah Hudson, Ferras, and JHART, and when we get together, it's a lot of laughs; one person always tries to one-up the other’s ridiculous lyric. This time I was like, “Fuck it! Let's just put that in there!”
So, who came up with the line “Now you know how a homo take it home”?
Ha, I think that was me! The weirdest lines are usually me, most of the time. I don't think this project takes itself that seriously. It's not supposed to. It's sexy. It's fun. It's dance music.
Having come to fame via the G-rated American Idol, did you feel muzzled before? There were hints of this sexual vibe in your debut single, “For Your Entertainment.”
It's not quite like that. I just looked at the current landscape and realized the rules are out the window. When I started, you had to jump through more of a political obstacle course to find success. And I had a bit of imposter syndrome, like, “When's the other shoe going to drop? When’s all this going to vanish?” And there were some slaps on the wrist—definitely with the American Music Awards, and with the cover of my first album.
For Your Entertainment’s cover was brilliantly camp! It looked like a Merle Norman mall kiosk glamour shot.
I always felt it was a bit Lisa Frank—it had that gloss. But no one got it. And there was always that double-standard: If a female artist did that, no one would think twice, but I'm held to a different standard because I'm a gay man. That's just the world I was in. I tend to go for things and I'm a bit stubborn, but at some point I did go, “OK, I'll compromise, because I want to win and succeed and keep doing what I love. I’ll do what I gotta do.”
You mentioned the 2009 AMAs. When I saw you perform “Cvnty” and “Lube” at WeHo Pride’s OutLoud Festival this year, I thought, “Wow, remember when people clutched their pearls just because Adam kissed a boy on TV? Things have changed!”
Let’s go back to that notorious “For Your Entertainment” AMAs performance. Everyone was shocked.
Well, that's what that song is about! “For Your Entertainment” is literally saying, “Do you know what I'm about to do? I’m going to be sexually aggressive with you. I'm going to shock you.” Maybe because of my theater background, I was like, “Well, let's do what it says!” But again, it was that double-standard. Madonna, Janet, Prince, Britney, Christina, Rihanna, Gaga—everybody else could be sexy onstage then. What I did wasn’t even that shocking. It’s just that I was a gay boy doing it.
The AMAs was your first big post-Idol TV performance, and unlike anything you’d done on Idol. You must’ve known it was a risk.
Yeah, I was really nervous. It was very overwhelming staging. I was everywhere, having to count my steps. We had some weird sound issues—the track the band was supposed to play to either wasn't loud enough or was off. I was struggling to find notes. It was not my best technical performance. And I knew that 40 seconds in.
And you fell! But you recovered well.
Maybe my grandma in heaven above fucking saved me and had me recover without it looking too shitty! That's a theater thing: If you fall, just keep going. Years of training definitely helped me with that fall. But I was very shaken up at that point. My adrenaline was through the roof. So, I quickly thought, “I have to do something, now, to distract from all the things that just happened…”
Well, it worked! So, that kiss really wasn't planned?
It was not planned! But the band member I chose to kiss [Tommy Ratliff] was somebody I’d kissed before, so there was a kissing connection there. It wasn't like, “Hey, you, random person—kiss me!” It’d been a joke we’d said would be funny to do, so it was in the back of our minds. And then… I went for it.
And you almost got canceled for it.
It was a soft cancel. It definitely burned some opportunities and bridges. I realized right afterwards, in the press room, the way an interviewer was talking to me… I went, “Ohhhh, this is going to be a whole thing.” And, it was a thing.
Did the outrage surprise you?
I knew what I was doing was provocative. I knew some members of the public would be offended. But I didn’t think the industry would have such an issue with it. That was the surprise. But there were probably a lot of people that were skeptical if my career would work in the first place—a gay man who wears makeup, coming off of Idol, a show that didn't always have much credibility in the industry.
The odds were against me, and for some people, this is what they were waiting for, so they could go, “See? It's not going to work!” Luckily my record label [19/RCA] had put a lot of money into my project, so they weren't going to pull the plug. They just pivoted real quick off that song.
The chorus of the next single, “Whataya Want From Me,” co-written by P!nk, was originally “he messed me up,” not “it messed me up.” Why was that changed? Obviously, everyone knew you were gay.
Sure, but it was like, “OK, you can identify as gay, but please don't talk about it or show it to us!” That was the unspoken consensus: “You can label yourself, but that's enough.” So, if I wanted to sing a certain song or do something in a video, unfortunately, until you've made a record company a gazillion dollars, you don't have much pull.
Did the AMAs backlash make you more wary about taking risks?
Yes and no. Deep down I was a bit freaked out, but outwardly I puffed up my chest and did a bit of, “Well, then, I’ll be more in-your-face!” Part of me was charged by it; it pissed me off, so it made me want to prove a point. The tour for that album, where I could do whatever I wanted, was pretty wild. But there were definitely frustrations with the label, because they went, “OK, we don't want to go in that direction now.
We want to go super-safe”—which is what they usually did with American Idol people. I'm actually grateful the label indulged me and I did sexy pop music, but there were also safe bets on For Your Entertainment. “Whataya Want From Me” was definitely not sexual. It was more angsty pop-rock. But it was a great record, and thankfully we had it ready to go.
Your next album, Trespassing, was a masterpiece, but too ahead of its time. It had roller-disco jams, Pharrell Williams, Nile Rodgers… and then Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories dropped a year later…
I know! When I look back at that album, I’m always like, “Justice for Trespassing!” Because that was another situation: The label didn't feel comfortable taking certain risks, as far as singles went.
The first Trespassing single was a ballad similar to “Whataya.”
Yeah, it was all right. The album had stuff that was more progressive and experimental, with more flair and fire, but those weren't the songs they felt they could get off the ground at radio. Radio was a beast in that era, very political and tricky. Sometimes controversy works well for artists, but for me, being who I was, controversy was something they didn't know how to manage.
It definitely caused people to go a little cold on supporting me. And at radio they thought, “We don't want people to change the channel,” so they went with safe. But yeah, I’d worked with Pharrell in Miami, and we had all these really cool songs, and I don't know if anyone totally got it. Then “Get Lucky” comes out and it’s a huge worldwide hit, and I'm like, “Whaaaat?”
Was it your idea to frontload Trespassing’s electropop bangers on Side A, with the ballads in the second half?
Yeah, that was my sequencing. I was like, “Put those slow ones at the end. I don't care.”
It’s great radio isn’t the end-all-be-all anymore, because programmers wouldn't touch Afters without a drastic radio edit! But do you think you walked so some of today's out pop stars, like your EP’s collaborators Vincint and Parson James, could run?
I'm not going to take credit, but I was definitely part of a first wave. If anything, it was just getting the suits more comfortable with the idea [of a gay male pop star]. They hadn't really tried to do that in the States. They hadn't put much funding and interest into a project by someone like me. So, regardless of the result, that probably opened some doors.
Tell me about your docuseries for Britain’s ITV, Adam Lambert: Out, Loud and Proud. You interviewed people like Erasure’s Andy Bell, Skunk Anansie’s Skin, and MNEK, and The Guardian said you really got your subjects to open up.
The show focused on U.K. artists that are LGBTQ+, talking about their history in the mainstream music space and the changing tides. We started in the ‘70s, and speaking with Brian May and Roger Taylor about Freddie Mercury was really cool, because they don't usually go too much into Freddie’s personal life. It's not like we sat down and talked about Freddie’s secrets; we talked more about what it was like for him, being who he was, in that time period.
One thing I discovered is the press was brutal—if they got any glimmer that a person was gay or bi, they’d use it as a character assassination to sell papers. So, Freddie kept his life intensely private because he was like, “I don't want to be brutalized by the media.” He was also really protective of the band, because he didn't want to ruin what they had created together.
It's super-meta that in Bohemian Rhapsody when the still-closeted Freddie, played by Rami Malek, enters a men's room for a tryst with a trucker, you played the trucker! You were out from the beginning, and Freddie blazed a trail for you, so for you to portray the person he’s on the DL with, there's some kind of symbolism there…
I had a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo! They put a beard and trucker hat and wig on me, and I was like, “Sure, I'll do a bit.” I wanted to keep going and film an inside-the-bathroom scene and really nail it home, but that wasn't part of the filming plot that day. But, going back to this ITV documentary, it was interesting analyzing different decades. Obviously with the AIDS crisis in the ‘80s, that created a real issue for queer people.
We as a community became pariahs and there was a lot of fear and shame. Everyone was hiding and becoming very non-sexual because they were afraid. A lot of people locked that sexual part of themselves away. We’d come out of the ‘60s and ‘70s, where everything was liberated and free love, and then AIDS put a big damper on things—both in terms of life, obviously, and progress.
An out gay man could’ve never released a record like Afters then.
Yeah, look at George Michael, who was incredibly sexual when he went solo after Wham!, but it was all ambiguous. It was all essentially aimed at female fans. I have such a soft spot for George. He was a brilliant writer and vocalist, a hero of mine. And I understand if he’d been out, there’s no way he would've had the career he had. He also wanted to win. He wanted to be successful. He wanted to share his music with the world. So, again, he kept that part of himself private. But then when he was outed, which I thought was horrible because he was entrapped, he made art out of it—the “Outside” video. So cool.
When George was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, you should have performed at the ceremony. There was no queer representation in his segment.
Well, it’s interesting, because our community’s and the wider public's opinion on sexuality is always shifting. There's definitely a sentiment among young queer people right now that’s like, “Can we stop talking about it? We just are!” And sure, that was always the goal. It’d be great if we were all idealistically saying, “Whatever, I don't need to label myself.
We're all the same. It doesn't matter.” That actually is the truth. But to combat all the hate, all the limitations being put on us, all this right-wing legislation, you’ve got to speak up. You’ve got to push. The generation in the ‘90s, for example, when the movement was, “Come out! Be out and proud! Wave the banner!”—in some respects, that's seen as over-the-top now. But it was necessary at the time, to move the needle. Even in 2010, when gay marriage was on the docket and there was a lot of progress, if we’d been all “it doesn't matter” about it, it wouldn't have happened.
I oftentimes hear from random straight fans or colleagues who go, “Why are we making such a big deal out of it? Everyone's the same!” And I'm like, “Because we have to make a big deal out of it.” We have to stand for what we are and our rights and equality and freedoms, or we'll get blown over.
I know you’re a fan of another ‘80s pop trailblazer, Madonna. Is Afters your Erotica?
Sure, I'll take it! Let's say it! I love that. I mean, I love that album. Madonna pushed so many boundaries. She really went for it, as a woman, as a sexual being. She repped for the gay community when no one else was, in a major way. Truth or Dare is groundbreaking. Her reinventions over the years have been bananas. Her visuals were next-level. Like I said before, my favorite artists push buttons.
That's what rock ‘n’ roll is. What did Elvis do in the ‘50s? What did Little Richard do before Elvis? Being a provocateur is part of pop music. It is built into it. I mean, Prince had a song called “Jack U Off,” and he was a straight man tarted up like a ho. Hair metal in the ‘80s was overtly sexual. There've been hip-hop artists that’ve been really wild, and we love them for it. “My neck, my back, my pussy and my crack”? People love that song!
And now you have an Afters track called “Neck”! It must feel amazing to be so sexually liberated in your art now.
Yes, the artistic freedom of this project, from the sound to the lyrics to the visuals, feels like I'm more in the driver's seat than ever. I didn't have anybody telling me no. Some might say artists need that, and yes, you do need a team where you can say, “If I'm being a dick, tell me no. If I'm burning a bridge, tell me no. If I’m spending too much money, tell me no.”
But don't tell me no for my ideas. It's always been my artistic impulse to be this way, but it just took me a while to figure out who to surround myself with who’d support that; that's been a little touch-and-go. The team I'm working with now is very positive and very much wants to facilitate my vision.
As you enter this new era, you’re also returning your theater roots—making your Broadway debut.
Yes, I’m doing Cabaret on Broadway as the Emcee, replacing Eddie Redmayne [starting in September], who's been doing it brilliantly. I'm so excited. I've had a couple offers over the years for Broadway gigs, but it never felt like the right show or right time. This felt right.
You’re always busy. Are you clearing your schedule for Cabaret?
Well, one has to, to do eight shows a week for six months! That’s something I'm excited to return to. Theater will be good for my spirit. It'll be good to be in a routine again. It'll be amazing to work in a cast again, because sometimes pop music can be a little lonely. And this is what I grew up doing, so it'll feel like riding a bike. We’ll see how my body feels about it after the first few months, though!
You’ve done so much talent show judging— The X Factor and The Voice in Australia, ITV’s Starstruck, Clash of the Cover Bands, Project Runway, RuPaul’s Drag Race, Legendary— that fans had hoped replacing Katy Perry on Idol might be on your schedule.
I've had fun doing the reality talent judging thing, but I'm much more interested in the acting side at this point in my career. That’s one reason why I'm excited about Cabaret. I consider the Emcee to be more of an acting role. It’s not the type of singing I do with Queen; it's more character singing. I'm really excited to play the character, to tell the story. I've been dipping more into that lately. I had that arc on Glee years ago. I did an independent film, Fairyland. I've been doing voiceover work, which I'm really loving—Playmobil, Fraggle Rock, Megamind. I'm just really enjoying acting.
What is your dream role? I know who I’d like to see you play…
Oh? Who?
George Michael, in his biopic.
Oh, that would be cool. A new version of Rocky Horror could be fun, but I’d want to play Frank N Furter this time. But really, I don't think my dream role has been written yet. I think it's going to be something new.
QUICK FACTS
Lambert got his big theater break starring alongside Val Kilmer in 2004’s The Ten Commandments at the Kodak Theatre. “Right before that, I was working at Aveda at the same mall at Hollywood & Highland, selling hand cream,” he laughs. The musical flopped, but Lambert’s positive reviews led to a gig in the national touring production of Wicked.
Lambert made history as the first openly gay male artist to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with his 2012 sophomore album, Trespassing.
Lambert turned down the titular role in Broadway’s Hedwig & the Angry Inch because was too busy at the time making his third album, 2015’s The Original High.
In 2019, Lambert launched his non-profit the Feel Something Foundation to support LGBTQ+ human rights.
After Lambert participated in the Eurovision-style Chinese TV competition Singer 2024, “Whataya Want From Me” skyrocketed to No. 1 in China, 15 years after its original release.
Lambert is working with Tony nominee Taylor Mac (Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil) on his own original stage musical and hopes to “get some movement on it next year.”
