Adam Lambert

On the latest Inside the Studio, host Joe Levy is joined by Adam Lambert, whose new album, “Velvet” (More Is More/Empire), was four years in the making. Adam talks about his time on “American Idol,” how performing with Queen has helped drive his own recording, and how he’s found the freedom to make the music he wants.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Inside the Studio presented by I Heart Radio.
I'm your host Joe Leading, Fire up the Pyro, turned
the amps up to eleven, and don't skimp on the glitter.
My guest this episode is Adam Lambert, a man who

(00:23):
seems to have been born wearing fingerless leather gloves and
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

(00:45):
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

(01:07):
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

(01:29):
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,

(01:52):
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

(02:12):
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

(02:35):
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

(02:56):
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

(03:17):
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

(03:39):
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

(04:01):
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

(04:21):
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

(04:42):
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

(05:04):
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,

(05:25):
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

(05:49):
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

(06:10):
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

(06:35):
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

(06:56):
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

(07:19):
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,

(07:41):
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

(08:02):
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,

(08:23):
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.

(08:44):
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.

(09:05):
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

(09:29):
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

(09:50):
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

(10:10):
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,

(10:32):
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

(10:54):
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

(11:17):
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

(11:38):
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

(12:01):
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

(12:22):
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

(12:44):
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

(13:04):
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

(13:25):
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

(13:47):
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,

(14:11):
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

(14:35):
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

(14:55):
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,

(15:17):
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

(15:38):
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.

(16:02):
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

(16:25):
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

(16:46):
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?

(17:08):
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

(17:29):
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

(17:49):
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

(18:09):
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

(18:31):
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

(18:52):
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.

(19:14):
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

(19:36):
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

(19:57):
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,

(20:19):
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

(20:39):
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.

(20:59):
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,

(21:23):
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,

(21:45):
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

(22:07):
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

(22:27):
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

(22:48):
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

(23:10):
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

(23:32):
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,

(23:52):
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

(24:15):
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

(24:38):
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

(24:59):
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

(25:20):
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

(25:42):
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

(26:05):
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.

(26:32):
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

(26:53):
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

(27:15):
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

(27:38):
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

(28:00):
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

(28:21):
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

(28:44):
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,

(29:07):
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

(29:29):
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.

(29:49):
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

(30:09):
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

(30:45):
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

(31:06):
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

(31:27):
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

(31:47):
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

(32:09):
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.

(32:34):
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

(32:56):
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.

(33:17):
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

(33:38):
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

(34:02):
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

(34:24):
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

(34:46):
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

(35:08):
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.

(35:29):
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

(35:50):
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.

(36:12):
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

(36:34):
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,

(36:56):
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.

(37:18):
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

(37:39):
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,

(38:14):
I'm king, but I can't hit me out. I guess

(38:38):
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

(38:59):
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

(39:21):
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,

(39:42):
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,

(40:05):
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

(40:25):
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

(40:47):
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

(41:08):
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.

(41:29):
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

(41:50):
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

(42:11):
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

(42:32):
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,

(42:55):
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

(43:17):
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

(43:40):
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.

(44:01):
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

(44:25):
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

(44:45):
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

(45:07):
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

(45:29):
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

(45:49):
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

(46:11):
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

(46:31):
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

(46:54):
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.

(47:15):
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

(47:36):
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.

(48:00):
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

(48:22):
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

(48:44):
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

(49:05):
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

(49:37):
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

(49:58):
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,

(50:20):
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

(50:41):
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,

(51:01):
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,

(51:21):
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

(51:41):
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

(52:02):
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

(52:25):
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

(52:48):
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.

(53:09):
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

(53:30):
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

(53:52):
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

(54:15):
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

(54:37):
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

(54:59):
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,

(55:20):
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,

(55:40):
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,

(56:28):
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

(56:51):
I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts where wherever you get
your podcasts,