Adam Lambert: Poptimist of the Year?

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Not really. But yeah, new Adam Lambert strikes me as a rare instance of a mainstream US artist taking on what I can only think of as "Eurovision style," a hodgepodge of hyper-glam, synth-pop, torch songs, and soarin' male falsetto. Somewhere between BWO and the Ark, or something?

Anyway, dramaqueenage abounds and the whole album is worth a listen -- as girlboymusic put it, "simultaneously mediocre and fabulous." Its mediocrity scans to me as workmanlike, but it's a different sort of work than I'm used to from American artists.

Do any other major American artists from the past few years sound anything at all like this? All I'm coming up with is Scissor Sisters -- but anyway they're way more popular in Europe.

Obvious echoes of Lady GaGa, who probably deserves some mention in this convo, in fuh-fuh-fuh-"Fever":

Synth-struttin':

No-that's-not-The-Feeling pop in "Pick U Up":

Etc. So what the heck is going on?

Comments

[koganbot]

"Fever": High notes sound more like Waxl and Crüe than like Darkness and Mika, though I'd be hard put to explain why. But it means he won't merely blink his eyelid til the tear runs down your ear, he'll squeeze whatever he has to squeeze 'til the tears run down your leg.

"Strut": Eurobeat or no, he's veering kinda Aerosmith, but the track is too static - or maybe that's just the fault of the YouTube rip - so let's say he ought to be veering Aerosmith but he needs a "Sweet Emotion" or "Back In The Saddle" or "Dream On," so here it sounds a bit like he's attempting rock as a foreign language.

"Pick U Up": Seems very emo late-'90s though without the wall of rock; this is the Rivers Cuomo track, right? Doesn't quite feel like he owns this one either, but he does deliver the thrills.

Hard to get a bead on.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I may have deleted something about how, unlike Scissor Sisters (and the Darkness) there's no hint of a "post-" in front of whatever it is Lambert is doing, which might be why the signifiers seem to come out of the 80's (among other places) without nostalgia goggles. It's a very strange album.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Yep, definitely deleted it -- couldn't formulate the thought at the time.