Adam Lambert's loss in what could only be described as the biggest upset in modern entertainment history since Crash stole the Oscar for Best Motion Picture from Brokeback Mountain (quick! How many of you have trouble remembering what Crash was about, or who else was in it besides Ryan Philippe?) got me thinking, WHAT exactly do i want to do with my life?
The Adam Lambert story, and there is one very compelling one that was surprisingly not broadcast on TV, but you should know by now if you've been reading this blog, is all about finding that passion in life, the one thing you know in your guts that you're destined to do, and nurturing it no matter what anyone else thinks.
What the hell is mine?
Yesterday all i wanted to do was to be a writer, so that i could drill into my readers' skull the fact that it was a travesty that Lambert lost the crown in a singing competition to a dude who has a thin, weak and indistinctive voice, does trigonometry with his mouth and always looks like he just lost his puppy on stage. I would write an investigative piece on the 38 million votes (out of below 100) cast by the state of Arkansas, which makes up about 1% of the US' population, for their homeboy Rhombus Mouth alone, thereby making him the Arkansan Idol, the Heterosexual Idol, the Christian Idol, but NOT the American Idol. I would trash American Idol openly and strongly and do it on a newspaper or magazine - lend myself more credibility, no? But the problem with that plan is that I'm a spontaneous and emotional writer, which means my thoughts are all over the place and i rarely meet deadlines. I'd spend hours leaving comments on online news articles and in forums nobody reads, instead of writing those 500 words people actually pay me money to. So what do i see in my future? Nothing much, really. I'm going into college with a very faint idea of what i'm supposed to do in life. I'm just going to snoop around directionlessly, much like a blind kid.
This career talk is getting depressing, so let's talk about the big hoo-ha yesterday that was Adam Lambert's loss in the Idol finale to a dude whose name i won't remember in a month's time (but i probably will, only because he STOLE the Idol title from my baby).
On every level, Lambert was superior to Rhombus Mouth (RM). He's half a feet taller, has a much more beautifully crafted face, and can still sing circles around RM any day. RM sounds like a frat boy with a guitar performing at a college birthday party, going out of tune and hitting bum notes ever so often. He's a musician who happens to be able to sing a couple of notes, not a singer who can play musical instruments. RM is so boring on and off stage, i have trouble keeping awake whenever the camera is on him. During his interviews, he always looks like he's searching deep into his brain for vocabulary, and always ends up spewing out some 4-word sentences that would fit right into an elementary school kid's diary. I've watched several post-Idol interviews of him now (only because the articles promise Adam Lambert's appearance at the end, always
at the end), and the only thing that dude seems able saying is "I'm so surprised!", and "I don't know what to say". The number of pause-fillers he lets out during a ten minute interview can fill an A5 notebook. He's a nice, humble guy with crystal clear skin (Archuleta flashback!), but he's so bland and mediocre, he bores me to tears.
Lambert is anything but average. He's exciting and intriguing. He's smart and witty. But most importantly, he has a singing voice that, as Jia Hui put it, is "almost Godlike". I've never been excited by a male voice like that before, but when Lambert starts to sing soft-rock songs like Beth, or haunting ballads like Mad World, cats stop meowing, bees stop buzzing, birds stop chirping and you're swept into this magical place where you wonder, "Wow, is he for real?". It's so clear, so precise, and has a range like not many others in history. And then when he kills a very unsubtly sexual Rock anthem like "Whole Lotta Love" or MJ's most confrontational song like "Black or White", you want to set your room on fire or hurl yourself out the window. He inspires the kind of passion so intense, it's almost scary. Which, i think, is the whole point of live music, and it's been a long time since a performer is able to embody that promise. On the personality front, there's also no fault to be found with this guy. He's confident but at the same time, humble and gracious. He knows that he's good, because everyone who's that good does, but that one is superior in abilities and talents doesn't necessarily mean that one will be going around flaunting that fact in everyone's face. He speaks with conviction, and he always has a lot of ideas, about bridging differences, being true to yourself despite the cruel "weird kid" label in school, and more. On the other hand, we have a non-threatening guy, someone who never seems capable of saying or
being anything worth pondering over or arguing about. Rhombus Mouth is like plain water. He's just there, inconsequentially and matter-of-fact-ly. Lambert is like an expensive martini that your mother warns against, but you down it anyway and get inexplicably high on it.
Many have put the Lambert vs. Rhombus battle as "performer vs. artist", but they're missing the point. "Artistry" encompasses vocal prowess, musical arrangement, and stage presence, and Lambert hits a homerun on every count. What it is, is "Artist vs. Musician", and i don't want a musician, because there's a whole band to play music already (not to mention the fact that American Idol is about "singing", as the judges love to remind us every week). And quite frankly, can you imagine going to a concert where the only thing the artist does is sit in front of an instrument, and the only movement happening on stage is the alternation between guitar, piano, and back to guitar? It's like, we KNOW you can play instruments already! Watching Rhombus Mouth perform live, I can't help but wonder if he was replaced by a cardboard cut-out of himself, would anyone notice the difference?
So Idol is just as much a popularity contest as it is a singing one, but even in that aspect, Lambert wins RM by a landslide. Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and the Blog world all have him as the most searched for and discussed, leaving RM in the dust. Biz360, this research company, has him tying with RM in terms of negative posting - about 3% of the total mentions on the internet. He's been on the cover of Entertainment Weekly (as the most exciting Idol contestant in years), featured exclusively in the New York Times, TIME (which touted him as "Idol's first star"), Rolling Stone and many other magazines (FYI, Idol wannabes never had this kind of attention while still on the show). Lambert sells, and its not because of the cloud of secrecy that seems to surround his sexuality.
There's no conceivable reason why Lambert should have lost, especially after Rhombus Mouth reduced Marvin Gaye's protest anthem "What's Going On" to a sleeper mess, sapping it of its anguish and sucking the life out of it (while Lambert soared with an electrifying and original version of A Change Is Gonna Come - bittersweet in retrospect, isn't it?), and then proceeded to close the performance show with a horrendous rendition of the cheesy crapfest of a song that is the coronation single, "No Boundaries", to which the live audience reacted, as someone who was there described it, as if a stink bomb had just gone off in the auditorium. (I might add that at one point in the first chorus, he looked literally like he was having a spasm. My sister and i, mean bitches that we are, rewinded that part several times and cracked up all over the floor.) Did i mention he even blew a line? With a HUGE teleprompter in front of him. I'd fire the damn eye doctor.
Except there is one reason, one screaming unreasonable reason that's like the big fat pink glittery elephant in the room everyone noticed, but not many dared say it - Lambert is gay. Very, flamboyantly, and unabashedly gay. I'm not saying that everyone who cast a vote for Rhombus was a homophobe, but a good portion of his voters were. Even I got a couple of promotional slash inspirational "Join the circle of believers and endorse one of our own for the Idol crown" & "Don't let the homo win!!!! God doesn't approve!!!" twitter messages. Many votes cast for Rhombus were for-Rhombus, and a good number were, simply put, anti-Lambert. To be honest, I didn't expect Adam to go this far. When the photos of him, in drag, kissing boys surfaced a couple of months ago, i was sitting in front of the computer laughing uncontrollably, because i just couldn't wait to see America, the country of Bush and Prop 8, explode with outrage and kick the "flamin' queen" to his curb. But as he advanced in the competition, not once hitting the bottom 3 vote-getters until recently (and we all know how i feel about
that), I started to see a glimmer of hope at the end of the tunnel. I started to think, MAYBE, just maybe, in the year of Obama, another kind of change could materialize. (before you get all Obamaniac on me, let me just say that i love the idea of Change that the Obama victory embodies, i just hate the fact that HE is the one embodying it. Does that just make sense?) I saw all sorts of signs in my head: The day Obama was inaugurated, Adam's audition was screened. You can spell his name with "American Idol". You can spell "America" with his full name. There are his initials (AML) in "American Idol". I thought the stars were aligned and that, coupled with his stratospheric talents, would catapult him to the crown. Probably not by the landslide he deserves, but enough to edge out Rhombus, or any other cookie cutter sweet mediocre finalist he was going up against. Hopefully? Maybe? Please? I'm not one to believe in miracles. I did, this time, and look how well that turned out. I've clearly underestimated the power of hate.
There's no denying that Rhombus' style appeals to many people. White bread and water sell. So do Jason Mraz and the Plain White T's. But saying that Rhombus is a better singer, performer or artist than Lambert is like saying a vacation in Afghanistan in the middle of summer is better than one in Hawaii or France. Okay, no. Even that analogy doesn't apply, because its quite apparent (especially after that "We are the Champions" duet they did with Queen - QUEEN! - when Rhombus' mike was muted most of the time because he just can't do those notes without convulsing or going off key), that they belong in 2 different galaxies altogether.
One thing that i find funny though, is Rhombus' fans cheering thunderously every time Seacrest mentioned the word "underdog" to describe him, as if it's a compliment. Some of their pro-Rhombus arguments are even more hilarious, "Okay, so he sounds like every other bar singers out there, but those singers aren't on Idol! So he's unique." My thought, "Are you 12, or 6?". Most of them can't really spell or write much other than "OMGGG HES SO CUTE" with a million exclamation marks. Heck, most can't even spell his name right! Some have said that Rhombus is the tweens' favorite, and judging from the perceived maturity of a good portion of his fans, I have to agree.
The best singer (by light years) didn't win a freaking singing contest, and I'm royally pissed. And I'm going to stay pissed about this for as long as people continue to refer to Adam Lambert as "the AI runner-up" (gosh that hurt). Sorry, fans of underdogs. I don't see Rhombus winning as a victory for the people, of the people, by the people, as it's being touted. More like grade school mob mentality.
This Chinese fan summed it up best,
It’s a Mad World.
Adam, you’ve got a Whole Lotta Love and you can clearly see the Tracks of our Tears. We Can’t Get No Satisfaction! If We Can’t Have You, We Don’t Want Nobody, Baby. We’re not Feelin’ Good right this minute, we’re Cryin’. But things are never Black and White and we’re already deep in this Ring of Fire for you. You were Born to be Wild and believe One thing, A Change is Gonna Come.
FYI, those are all the songs he performed on American Idol this season. Except No Boundaries, which is shit in more ways than one (to quote Simon Cowell, "mountains and hurricanes.. It's probably the most cliched song i've ever heard in my life. It's literally like The Moon in June!"), but is still worth buying on iTunes! I was crying (and i'm not even a crying kid. At all.) and cursing and going through all the degrees of anger yesterday, while he kept his cool the whole time and during all the post-show interviews. But i'm sure he's sad and disappointed, to some extent. Nobody goes into a competition not wanting to win. Correction, nobody THIS good in a competition, which he should have won by any measure of talent, would be happy to lose. Its like the smartest, most hard working and nicest kid in school losing the valedictorian title because ....... Well there's just no reasonable way to finish that sentence.
To end on a happy note, how awesome is it that Queen, KISS, Slash (of Guns N' Roses) and the Black Eyed Peas have ALL overtly expressed interest in collaborating with Adam? Simon Cowell has been a convert for weeks now, and couldn't stop smiling like a buffoon every time Adam hit the stage, even when he was critiquing him. My guess is that his critiques and his jokes during American Idol (always exclusively directed at Adam, btw) were only meant to make Adam laugh in that very nice voice of his and flash those pearly white teeth for everyone to adore. That reminds me, I need his dentist's number!
Admire Adam in all his Idol glory for one last time:
Labels: People I love
