Life Uncut - The King of Queen - Uncut with Adam Lambert

Episode Date: March 9, 2023

Fancy seeing you here on a Friday!  Today we have a special bonus episode for you with someone we could talk to all week! Boy did we covered some ground in this chat. Everything from childhood theatre school, to the new drag show laws enforced in some states of the US, from anxiety, being a Queer icon, to filling the shoes of Freddie Mercury as the front man of Queen.  Adam is exceptional. He is so warm. He is so humble considering all of his achievements. We were so lucky to have sat down in his hotel room and had this chat in person. His brand new album is called 'High Drama' and you can listen to it now!Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because we love love! xxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Life Uncut acknowledges the traditional custodians of country whose lands were never ceded. We pay our respects to their elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. This episode is recorded on Gadigal land of the Aurora Nation. Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Laura. And I'm Brittany, and we have a very special little bonus episode for you this lovely Friday because we interviewed somebody truly incredible. We did.

We interviewed Adam Lambert. Now, we got to speak to him at Oxford House in Paddington the other day, and we honestly just could not wait to share this interview with you. If you don't know who Adam Lambert is, he rose to fame in 2009 on American Idol, but since then he has truly gone from strength to strength. He had a wildly successful solo career where he sold over 3 million albums and 5 million singles worldwide. But then he toured the world with arguably the world's biggest rock band, Queen.

Adam is a queer icon. He is warm and authentic and sitting down with him felt like chatting to an old friend. He was honestly such an open book and he spoke about his sexuality. He spoke about his identity. And then he also spoke about his meteoric rise to fame. what surprised me the most though was just how funny and i want to say normal i just expected him to be like this amazing rock star that had all these expectations and was like i only talk to people between two and three and i want sparkling water from iceland but he truly is just

an incredibly funny down-to-earth humble intelligent man and i thoroughly enjoy this episode and i hope you guys do too so adam we start every episode with an accidentally unfiltered your most embarrassing story we love to throw you under the bus do you have one I have a recent embarrassing story oh is this like from like last week yeah yeah pretty much I mean the whole audience saw it so but it's the first time I've really reflected upon it I was on stage last week in London at a place called Coco we had this big event to sing all the songs from high drama and during my performance midway through the set of I Can't Stand the Rain I was feeling it and I had these lambskin trousers on

that were super wide leg, right? Elastic waistband. No part of the pant was hugging or tight or anything. I did one little like kind of like dip. What, like a booty shake? Kind of like a drop it like it's hot kind of thing. But even like a half of one. It wasn't like to the floor.

And I felt the entire backside of the right leg ripped all the way up to the waistband and my butt was out. i mean i had underwear on i was gonna say what was out i mean i could have been free ball i'm free balling in those pants would probably be really comfortable i think you're free balling right now and you've got no no no i'm all supported i'm sitting opposite adam and he's got like one of those i guess and i'm like sharon stone right now for you like you're gonna sharon stone me yeah but we did you're the one in the white suit how do you proceed when your pants

are split open on stage you just power through or do you take a moment where you're like oh check everything it's the right place good question i mean it was the middle of the song and i kind of thought it had happened but i wasn't sure i was also wearing a long coat that went down to my knees like over it so i was like kind of at the end of the song kind of like okay what's going on and then i like put my hand back there and i'm like oh yeah definitely but i realized that most likely they couldn't see it because of the jacket but because i found it so funny i still wanted to talk about it and show them oh so you of course you did of course i did has there ever been another moment in all your touring or performing that you have had to stop for some reason maybe it's a

crowd involvement maybe something's happened to you on stage maybe it's been a big mix-up you've tripped over have you ever in other any moments where you feel like i have to stop oh yeah i was on stage with queen on tour this last summer and we got to radio gaga and i just i don't know sometimes every once in a while you just kind of brain fart you know and forgot the words and i just literally just forgot the words you know what it happens because queen like radio gaga is not a huge song so most people don't know the lyrics so like they know the the big part the chorus like I mean it's understandable that you forgot you know well I mean but I've been doing it for 10 years so I don't know how understandable it is and instead of this is the thing what I should

have done was gone oh I forgot the words and then like thought about it and got back into the song when I could remember them but I just kept making noise full gibberish full nonsense like I don't even know if I was consciously doing I was like well it'll eventually come right if I just keep i'll just make the it'll just come can you give us an example love and time i like dogs and like it was so weird and i'm like looking at the guy because i'm literally like help me like i'm looking at the other members of the band like the piano player who's like you know the guy that gives us our cues and stuff and i'm looking i'm like i'm clearly messed up right now and he was like so that was embarrassing i feel like this is the

moment where when you're on stage you just hold a microphone you hold it out to the audience eventually I did that I was like oh but I literally like as it was happening I just figured it would just come out because it always does I think that's the thing when you're doing something for so long and you know the song so well you do stop like actively thinking you just like do like it goes into rote memory yeah it's like muscle memory yeah and it just didn't click that day there's so much that I want to get to in terms of where you're at now but what was Adam Lambert when you know you were a little boy when you were growing up what was your childhood like I was a really hyper kid like I talked a lot and I had a lot of energy and my parents tried to like

put me you know like when you're a kid your parents try to find like your activity that you're gonna do and I tried t-ball didn't really take I tried indoor soccer which I wanted to do because I liked the socks I thought the socks were really cool I wanted the big puffy socks but it didn't take I mean I made one goal and then I quit the soccer team were you like I've reached my high I'm leaving on a high percent yeah my dad was like what do you mean you're gonna quit you just made a goal I'm like exactly exactly that's all I wanted I just wanted to show that I could do it when was it that you got into doing theater well I was yeah so like we went through a couple different activities and then my parents had heard about this theater group for kids

that met on the weekends and you would like rehearse a musical for two months or something and then they would do like a week of performances for all the kids and it was a really cool theater group too because you didn't audition in the beginning and get a part and then rehearse it to do the show it was that the entire time you were in the rehearsal everyone was still competing for the part and so what would happen but they did give everybody a chance like there'd be like maybe six kids that would be cast as this part and then during the rehearsal process based on how you did how good you were and how much you knew you would get to the end and you would get like the premiere evening which was like you know the friday night that's the show that's the

number one spot it's like first second third fourth fifth place so it definitely gave me a competitive edge and I think that came into I think that's good so you got the lead part in this theater production where you're all competing against me I was part of this company for years I mean we would I've did a hand like tons of different shows and yeah I would usually get a lead part slowly but surely like when I was a little kid I was like in the smaller parts and then I kind of you know grew up with them and and then as a teenager I even became like a director with them so I was teaching the younger kids all the material and the choreography kind of like a camp counselor so that was really fun anyone in your family were they kind of musically inclined

or theater inclined or was it just something that you really took to and then your parents around you were very supportive of that i definitely think that my family had something to do with i mean my dad loved drama in high school and he was a dj in college so i grew up with like his vinyl collection was major there was a ton of music and playing being played all the time my mom loved music they were both very social so that was helpful and then my mom's brother my uncle david he's very funny he's very colorful and clever and and silly and and we had this tradition that every year at thanksgiving which was my family's big holiday we would all get together with my mom's side of the family and we would make a family movie which would be which

would be like a parody of something that was out that year or some other movie and it was stupid and silly but we would like sit around and come up with characters and a story and it was all improv'd but it was really cute and we would film this movie do you still have these movies yes but he was always like the director like the you know the producer and it was really cute i like i think that kind of gave me the the showbiz bug well growing up in like that very musical theater environment do you find in terms of now so like you are a phenomenal queer icon but do you feel like you grew up in a community where sexuality was very welcomed and open because i think like in terms of people that we've interviewed in the past people who have been within the musical

theater industry have kind of had their own little community around them of a queer community within that did you find that you had your people from a young age or were you kind of like still trying to search for you know where you sat in the world i guess i didn't have a real queer experience as a kid or as a teenager at all it was you know i grew up in southern california so that's it's It's, you know, naturally a little more liberal than some other places in the country. But there's also a lot of conservative values in Southern California. It's a lot of suburbs. I grew up in the suburbs.

Lots of religion. Lots of, you know, judgment. Yeah. You know, and I'm lucky that my parents were very, very left. I mean, they're very cool. They're not the typical in that neighborhood. But there were a lot of people that I grew up with that were, you know, from very religious homes. And, you know, it was the 90s.

it was still kind of taboo you know I'm sure looking back on it there were definitely other queer kids but no one was talking about being queer no one was admitting it I was very sheltered I was very innocent I didn't have any sexual experiences until I was like 18 so I was you know and in high school you know I was doing this theater group still on the side but then in in high school I was also really involved in the arts and I went to high school with like a lot of Mormon kids so they were you know very well behaved yeah except for like the one or two bad ones it was somewhat conservative and I think I kind of figured that I was gay probably around sixth grade which is what your six would be that's like 12 years old yeah like puberty basically when you

start to feel attracted to people you're like you start the hormones start going and you're starting to feel sexual as in your body but at 12 did you have an understanding of what those feelings actually were because I feel like if you haven't grown up with people around you and people that you look up to in that situation did you know how to categorize what was happening or was it a confusing time it was confusing i didn't really get it yeah i knew that i felt attraction but i didn't really understand it or know what to call i think i knew what to call it i think at some point i was like oh that's gay okay got it but no there weren't few little examples like yes pedro from the real world in the 90s on mtv he was gay and he was hiv positive so you're thinking

about the 90s and the whole experience of homosexuality in the 90s everything was about aids scary so being it had this extra sort of fear around it and i think i saw truth or dare at some point the madonna film with you know and she had gay dancers but then the real moment with media and something that i could look at and being like okay here's a gay person that people think is funny and great was will and grace the tv show and that to me was just i thought it was so funny I loved it and my family would sit around and watch it together and laugh our butts off and that for me was the first time where I was like oh okay they don't think it's wrong or bad or whatever they think it's funny and humor was like the way in it was all about being funny and if you

could be funny it was like that was your weapon I was a silly like teenager and I like to make people laugh and that was sort of my like defense mechanism and I like you just said it was a different time back then when you did come out I mean how old were you when you came out and what was the reception like from the people around you so i like had kind of admitted it to myself but i still was like in the closet because i think in my mind being it was the 90s and i didn't know anybody else in my school that was gay i'm sure there were a few yeah but i didn't know who but i mean because everybody else is being given the same narrative that you've received they're dealing with the same thing yeah i remember being a teenager and still being in the closet and like

going on chat rooms and just desperately hoping that i could find somebody in my town that was on this chat room so i could just connect one i was there was so much longing i was so like oh i just want to have an experience but i didn't ever find anybody imagine all the people now who grew up in your small town who were like fuck adam lambert was on i could have a missed opportunity i just kind of waited it out i was like i don't want to deal with this until after school i don't want to get bullied i don't want to deal with you know but that being said it's not like i was like pretending to be straight either it was like people kind of got it i grew up in a family that was also like we're pretty funny and chatty but like we're the kind of family that avoids awkward

topics do you know what i mean so like i didn't know i brought it up i'm the one that brings up awkward topics now like in the family like i'm the one that'll be like well you know but the thing that's so funny is that i came out at 18 so i finished high school i came out to like three of my best friends and then to my mom like six months later and then you know got on the phone right after coming out to my mom and talked to my dad and and my mom was like well we knew and i was like okay well that's good to know and i'm like why didn't you ever say anything she's like well because you know you were about 14 and i just you know your father saw that you were looking at porn on the computer and i knew you were playing in my closet and playing with my makeup and we kind of

just knew and i went to the gay and lesbian center of san diego and asked for advice and they said let him come out to you don't out him and so she that's what she did that is the sweet and i was like well damn it i wish you would just out of me we would save so much time years of anxiety god you're the grown-up i'm not so yeah we hear a lot in hollywood people in the public eye singers any artists that have over time had advice that it's probably not best for your career to come out it's probably best for you to stay in the closet a little bit you have that sex appeal for the opposite sex as well did you ever face that in your career did you ever have advice because i feel like i read something about when there were some pictures of you taken making out with someone and maybe

mexico and the advice was like shut that down yeah there's some truth i'll tell you what this actual story that you heard was it was the daily mail it was probably obviously accurate so accurate definitely yeah they had done the research so 18 i wasn't on idol until i was 27 so there's 10 years of being openly gay and out in hollywood and living my life and discovering who i was and discovering my sexuality and my individuality and all of it right and i had a lot of fun i lived you know i went to amazing parties and events and dressed up and and had lots of amazing lovers and i had a great time yes i had a couple long-term relationships during that time my first boyfriend i was 24 and we went to burning man together not mexico burning man yeah i mean it's hot

yeah it's hot yeah sand yeah there's sand yeah and you know we would dress up and there were and i had some pictures of us like kissing that were posted on a social media platform it was like myspace but it was this thing called tribe so like it was like alternative hippie culture and when i went on idol someone found those pictures because i had totally forgotten about my profile on that site that I had opened like four years before yeah and you also don't realize when you're thrust into the public eye like that you don't even think they're gonna go through everything they're gonna find everything about my life think about it no you don't and it's what they do they pull it all up they bring it all out and almost parade it around like something you

should be either ashamed of or you need to admit to how did you deal with that because yeah you know in 2009 it was that you're on idol yeah what was that period like for you well the thing that was so weird about it was the advantage i had on idol was the fact that i had been in la for 10 years in the entertainment industry i had an agent at one point i was auditioning for things i was auditioning for musicals and doing musicals i had any i was auditioning for film and tv stuff too for a while but i didn't book anything i was not quite comfortable in my own skin but from the get-go from having an agent from having a manager and doing auditions it was like you they thought you were too gay they thought you were too femme you thought you were this and like in all the

parts that i was going in for were like high school job you know it was like very like limited like the parts like hairspray and yeah that kind of yeah and the musicals i was going out for because i was in my 20s and tall and i could sing pretty i was always getting put up for like the romantic lead you know or the or the ingenue like young man lead and it was like it was hard because they uh he seems too gay you know so i dealt with that a lot professionally and it was funny to me because i always thought oh i'm in theater this is like there's a ton of gay people in theater in the ensemble that point in time it was it was hard to like be taken seriously to play roles and stuff so i dealt with a lot of that for a while and it was frustrating and it was annoying i even

got cast in a musical a professional show where the character had it wasn't a romantic character he didn't have any like involvement with anybody he was a you know just a hebrew slave that was what i was playing in the ten commandments and i well you were definitely i was joshua joshua ends up taking the bible joshua ends up leading the army of the israelites so i got cast as this role because i sing the shit out of the song in the audition it was like a pop rock musical and then like two months into rehearsal the producers who were definitely straight and very like kind of traditional and they were like european and they felt like why is this boy coming into rehearsal with eyeliner on a nail polish he's not right this isn't the

character and the director came up to me and said can you when you come into rehearsal can you like can you not wear the makeup and the nail polish i was like what we're not in dress rehearsal yet i'm not gonna wear it for the show this is just i'm just in this is just me it was such a weird moment it was such a i was like what it's so interesting isn't it because like they would probably not see that as being homophobic they would be like oh you're just not the right person for the role but like you're literally acting as someone in that role and we're not in costume yet that's what i mean you can present as anyone in your day-to-day because when you are in costume you'll assume that character and it's almost so self-limiting it's saying well because you're

this person in your real life you probably don't know how to act really straight on stage it was like they got worried it's come a long way but there's still a lot of issues i mean i think it's come a long way because there are plenty of examples of people that do live out and they're out of the closet and they are expressing and all that but there's still a lot of people in the entertainment industry that are closeted there's still a lot of people that aren't open about their sexuality because of whatever reason they have it's the same in sports there are so many athletes i think more male athletes that people know are gay people i know are queer but they won't come out because of what they think is going to happen is it even going to drop them

other supporters going to start well and i think that's what a lot of actors are worried about is they're like am i marketable am i going to get this role if everyone knows i'm gay is it believable Can I be a sex symbol if people think I'm gay? I think it sucks, but I understand what the fear is. And I think it's sort of like, you can't hate the player, you have to hate the game. It's not their fault, it's the system. It's like the way people are. It's the society that we live in.

Well, I mean, we say it's come such a long way. And I'm jumping forward, but this is something that I read that you had tweeted. It's also something that's been in the news so much in the last couple of days. And I think the general consensus is how incredibly infuriating this is. But this is a tweet from you. You wrote, you want to protect the children. how about do better as a parent and teach your kid acceptance compassion and respect that's all they need to safely interact with the queer gender identities instead you are teaching hate

discrimination judgment wake up now this is in response to what's happening currently in texas in terms of banning and drag shows yeah the whole south is going through it right now and i think we can say you know things have come a long way but then you you see this and it's like one step forward two steps back and that's what it feels like watching it from afar but you know australia is not innocent in this either we have amazing gay pride and then at the same time there's protest down the street to be against it i feel like it still permeates throughout society and actually the whole world right now is going through this whole like kind of right-wing extremist rise it's weird how do you react to that i mean obviously this tweet is very angry like oh yeah

you have feelings well i just i just watched a clip about what's going on and it's just like they're missing the point i'm kind of borrowing this idea from john stewart who had some commentary the other day with like a very conservative extreme right senator from oklahoma and he you know he was challenging him on a number of different issues and then at the end he's like so listen you want to take away the freedom of speech from a drag performer and he's like well yeah but in the presence of children and he goes okay to protect them to protect the same one yeah but yet the leading cause of death for children in our country is gun violence and he ain't doing shit to control the guns and it's just the hypocrisy is is crazy and this is like a direct

kind of lift from that but it's it's so true it's like you guys are missing the point this is like an age-old thing in like history this is like what we've been through a zillion times in different civilizations or whatever if you look at like 1930s germany it's a great example a group comes into power with extreme ideas they blame another group they scapegoat them in order to displace everyone's fear and frustration with their own lives and to give them a sense of control and power and superiority in order to control them and that's what i think a lot of these issues i don't even think these are real issues they're doing it to get votes it's all divisive so that they can appeal to a certain group of people so that they get votes well let's get into how wildly

talented you are okay we're back in 2009 you are auditioning for american idol okay now no but i sip of water okay off the soapbox close your eyes i'm gonna cover my knees they're very white i'm so embarrassed that they've been on camera no so correct me if i'm wrong with this timeline you had already been cast in wicked the theater production in la when you were auditioning for idol but i heard that they said you couldn't sort of do both and you had to quit your theater production wicked in order to audition for idol now how does one make a decision when in entertainment we all know it's like the one percent that actually get jobs so here you are fighting the good fight you've managed to secure

a good position and someone has said give that up give what everyone is out there thriving and hoping and wishing and dreaming for give it up for a small glimmer of hope on a reality tv show yeah how do you make that well to give you some context i had done the first national tour of Wicked a few years before. I was in it for about six months. And then I quit because I wanted to go be a rock star. And then I ran out of money real quick. And a year later, they opened an LA production. And I thought, I need that gig because I am broke. And so I begged for the right to come back into the company. And we'd been open for two years before I auditioned for Idol. And I've been in the show for two years, every day, you know, eight shows a week at the Pantages Theater down

the road from where i lived and i was an understudy for one of the leads in the show and i was in the ensemble and every week i did my understudy rehearsal and i knew my part and i went and a few times that the guy was sick i went on everyone loved what i did with the role they wouldn't promote me they wouldn't the one guy left his contract was up and they were trying to recast the role and they brought someone from new york they wouldn't give it i was like these mother they wanted to keep you as the understudy so you just knew there was nowhere for some reason they thought we don't want them in this part but they're kicking themselves now and a lot of it was political like it was because i wasn't like the goody two shoes you had your nail polish on i

probably has a nail polish on so i was a little frustrated anyway i was like and i thought to myself you know i bet if i got on tv they would have a different tune that i would be taken more seriously i should just get on tv and so i had been also working towards music i had this dream of being a recording artist but I knew it was like a long shot like I didn't think it was actually gonna happen I was just fantasizing about it yeah of course I didn't think it was gonna happen because I was the gay theater kid I was like there's no way I'm gonna get signed to a record that would never happen and then someone was like you know you should audition for American Idol I was like you know what I'm gonna why not and it was literally on a whim just to kind of like say

I'd done it to maybe get on TV for five minutes to like thought if I can get on TV for a couple weeks i'll move to new york and it'll shift my appeal this is also during a time like 2009 american idol i'm guessing it's similar to what it was like in australia this is peak reality tv time as well like the numbers were high unbelievably high there was no streaming services there was no other options it's like everyone sat down on their couch at a certain time every every week tuned in and it was water cooler conversation you know it was like it was like pop culture for sure totally and then it's like overnight you're thrust into from relative obscurity to who is this Adam Lambert guy literally overnight how do you even deal with that catapult from being

you know yeah I mean I'm not gonna say you weren't are you unknown but like having being generally unknown to being a household name it was weird it was so it was so weird and and just back it up really quick with the thing about the thing so when I auditioned for like the producers two different rounds of producer callbacks and then another round of producer callbacks and then before i went in for the tv judges they were like okay listen the deal is this is our rules you can't have any professional anything you can't have representation you can't have any contracts in play right now because basically the idea was they didn't want to deal with any legal they needed they needed to own the rights to you at that point that was how the show was built so that's why i

had to make the choice to quit with wicked was it still a pretty easy decision yeah because i felt like they were genuinely interested and i was like this could be my shot and i was kind of frustrated over at that job and was kind of ready to move on anyway so i was like okay but you know definitely i remember calling my father i'm like i need to borrow some money and he was like what do you mean and i'm like well i'm gonna be on american idol and he was like you are and i'm like yeah he's like how much does that pay and i was like it don't pay it doesn't pay it doesn't pay anything so i mean i think they gave us like i don't know they might have given us like a little but i didn't really like pay the bill so i was like i think this is like an investment dad i

think if we i think this could end up being lucrative but you just we gotta like leap of faith and you didn't nail it did you what well i heard that you didn't nail your first audition oh i didn't no no no i i sang a michael jackson song and the judges looked at me like sideways like so you went in like aiming low well i thought that was a cool song i was i sang rock with you by michael jack i was like this will be cool they'll like this they didn't get it and i was like oh and you know at this point i quit my job like if i get turned down after quitting the fucking show that i've been working like my job this is about to piss me off yeah but also i guess then there's the fear that you're like fuck i've just left this job if i get turned down after one

what am i gonna do what does that look like i know did you i mean we a lot of people talk about like intuition did you go into this at all feeling like this is gonna happen for me i've got this i was in a really good place spiritually at that point I was in a really empowered sort of positive mindset I had kind of had some experiences that allowed me to sort of like kick away my fear for the first time in my life and I did feel very like confident and so when they gave me that look after singing rock you by Michael Jackson I was like listen let me sing something else what else can I sing for you you know let me do something else and they were like okay well what do you have and I'm like uh Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen and that's the one

they went oh like that worked that that they could understand they could understand the the guy with the emo haircut singing a rock song makes sense to them I was like oh got it okay because you were in a bit of an emo phase then weren't you oh yeah the flat iron was was seriously tattered there's been a big evolution yeah do you think now I'm jumping ahead for a hot second because now you are incredibly like you are the front man for queen do you think they picked you because i saw that audition maybe i think that the audition planted the seed you know i think the audition made people go oh that guy and then apparently they saw the episode that i did for classic rock week where i sang led zeppelin and that's what both brian and

roger got sent someone sent them like a youtube clip of it and they were like oh we like this guy and then serendipitously they were invited to perform on the finale and that's because i sang bohemian rhapsody for the audition and so they came on to the finale of american idol and we met and we we did we're the champions and it just clicked it was a vibe like they i was looking at brian while i was singing and he was playing guitar and he was like oh we could do this yeah it was like a moment the thought of filling the shoes of freddie mercury like what enormous shoes to even try and step into in that role how do you in that moment when you had those initial conversations and you're excited about going and doing a tour how do you deal with the pressure

of feeling those shoes you bring a lot of high heels I mean I my shoe bag is full I'm like I got footwear like a motherfucker totally intimidating I was freaked out but I also knew what an opportunity it was and there was no way I wasn't going to take the opportunity because I just knew it was a big honor. It was very flattering that they were asking me to do it. But it was scary because obviously the fans are really protective of Freddie. I mean, I get it. There's no really replacing Freddie Mercury.

You can't replace him. Yeah, I think that's what you're doing though. I don't think you are replacing him. You're standing in his spot, but you've put your own flavor on it. The world knows that no one can ever be Freddie Mercury. There's never been anyone like him. And there only will be one. But there's only one Adam Lambert too.

Aw, thanks. but it's also a way I guess it just means that these songs live on and continue to live on and take on a new life one I know it's such an incredible privilege that you get to do but also exactly as you said like bringing your own flavor being able to reinvent this and doing it in a way that has a bit of your signature to it as well I feel like that must have been a not challenging but it must have been something that you had to consider like how am I going to do this role justice without trying to be him yeah it took a minute to sort of crack you know the formula there it was interesting because they said right away don't imitate him we don't want that that's

not what we're looking for and I was like good okay because I don't know where to start with that I learned very quickly like making it my own was really important but also it was really important to sort of like maintain the spirit that the songs were originally intended to have and it came down to me I stopped listening to the records and I just started looking at the words and kind of going with an accompaniment because I didn't want to accidentally mimic him you know I wanted to sort of make sure I was approaching it it actually you know it has a lot to do with the theater training I wanted to approach it from a place of emotion of intention and I would look at the lyrics and be like okay so what is this song supposed to communicate and why is it written

this way and why did Freddie sing it that way what was his goal what was he trying to get the audience to feel or to or to go through and when I started asking myself those questions when I approached the songs that's when I was like well now I can find my path with the song and it was great to have Brian and Roger there because I was able to go what's this about what did he write this lyric about you know or what did you write this look you know they wrote some of them too in all of your incredible moments of being up on stage of performing of doing your own music of being able to front queen what has been or what is like one of the moments where you go like fuck forever I will remember that forever that has kind of made an impact on my life we've gotten to do

some like really cool gigs I mean we opened the academy awards a couple years ago that was a trip for me yeah you've heard of them the Oscars yeah yeah I mean that was on my home turf that was in la that's like my home turf and i'm a big movie tv i love watching film i really love it i love watching actors i'm like a big fan and so i'm sitting there like it's gonna be like a whole room of a-list talent and i gotta get up on stage and like oh we have to start the show you're like this is the pressure's high like i need to impress all of you and you're all the best at what you do yeah on that when was the moment is there a moment you can put your finger that's like i've made it was it a moment as big as that was it idol was it what was the time where

you're like holy moly i never have to go back and make pizzas again i had that moment on yeah towards the end of idol i was like oh wow okay well i think my mom said she's like honey it's it's all different now and i was like yeah i guess it is she's like it's never gonna be the same i was like i guess you're right and it was there was a entertainment weekly article that came out it was the cover it was the you know which was a magazine you know a popular kind of like weekly magazine that everyone had in the grocery stores back when people read physical magazines and they put me on the cover before the show was over and they were like we love this guy and it may or may not be because he's gay which is a whole other thing which i was like oh my god they said that

yeah no that was the heading cover of the magazine he may or may not be gay and it may or not be this is the most exciting idol contestant in years and it may or may not be because he's gay you're like oh what about the fact that i'm an amazing performer we laugh in disbelief it's so wild 2009 but that's just it because when you're on the show you weren't I mean it wasn't something that was part of like your show reel at the time like you were out in your personal life but it wasn't part of what you brought onto your stage well I mean that was the thing that made no sense that I couldn't wrap my head around because I wasn't closeted it wasn't a secret I was open with everybody in the show but no Ryan Seacrest wasn't asking me who I was sleeping with it wasn't

part of anything that I was doing on the show but I think that that kind of lends itself to what media was like back then that it was like if you are gay you had to make a statement you know it was like we as the viewers we deserve to know and why haven't you told us yet made a public admission of your sexuality in inverted commas yeah which is like it's the weirdest i feel like it's less and less now like people are able to just present us who they are and i think that the media is slightly more accepting but then we see it with people like rebel wilson who when the media think that they've got a gotcha moment they're like hey we know you're holding a secret why don't you tell everyone that you're actually gay well it's complicated too because

it's generational i mean the older generation of queer people especially like gay men and women that had to fight so hard for the freedoms that we have now and the equality that we have and just the acceptance that we've managed to get they had to fight really hard for that and they had to be really visible and really loud and coming out was really important to set an example the younger generation that's coming up now is like it's so normalized it's not the same time it's a different situation you know they don't need to proclaim the same way well it's weird too because i think we've become so used to the celebrity thing being like people feel like they own you they feel like they they're entitled to like whatever they want from you if you're a public figure and it's must

be hard you know it's it is hard i mean i know it it's that what do you get to keep to yourself isn't that up to you how do you find that line how do you decide between what is yours that's personal that you're going to keep and then what you feel comfortable sharing like how do you differentiate that because especially as well for yourself because you are your brand you are Adam Lambert behind closed doors but then Adam Lambert is a brand as well it's confusing how do you kind of figure out and I guess like decide what stuff you share and what stuff you keep for your sacred for yourself I think I just use my instincts really I don't I don't really have like a rule it's not a strategy plan no it's a marketing meeting well there might be some there might

be some happening but I you know I kind of go more off instinct but I'm a pretty open book you know i'm pretty open and i think i've gotten more and more open because i think when everything happened right after idol i was pretty overwhelmed by it all and i didn't really know how to navigate that and there were some things that came up where it was like oh i don't know if i wanted to talk about that or i don't know if i want i had to kind of trial and error it you know and feel it out but now i'm in a place where i'm like okay well this is who i am and this is what i'm about and no that's none of your business and because it still comes down to me it's like well if it impacts what i'm putting out that's my brand my brand is my art you know my creativity

my creations my things that i mean you know songs albums video anything that i'm performing in that's public that's for you guys have you found it more difficult to navigate relationships with the bigger your profile gets it's interesting it's definitely i've had like different versions of what it feels like or what it could be i've definitely early on after i'd dated somebody for a minute and it was like weird because we weren't even dating each other it was like it wasn't on purpose but it felt all of a sudden like are we just doing this for the cameras like do we like each do we even like each other it was so strange it was so strange i think also that's a reflection of being so new to the world you know i was like baby like a brand new newborn to that it was so weird

it was so weird out of the womb yeah speaking what's personal and what you've shared you've spoken a lot about anxiety in the past and sharing your own struggles with anxiety. Why is that something that you felt you wanted to kind of, I guess, share your experiences with? Well, yeah, that's a good example. I mean, I think for the longest time, I didn't realize that what I was dealing with was anxiety. It was kind of, you know, I think mental health has become more and more of an open topic. It's less taboo than it used to be. And I'm learning right along with everybody else. I think when I realized that what I had been dealing with for so long was plain old anxiety I was like oh it's like a penny drop moment you're like oh that's what

that feeling is what that is like I didn't know what it was you know and I had been to a little bit of therapy but we hadn't really gotten that far into it yet it was more like background stuff family stuff and I I went to two different therapists over the years and I was kind of like after like a handful of sessions I was like yeah I don't need you I'm bored I'm fixed now I'm not really getting anything out of this but I started recognizing a pattern in which I was really hard on myself I was beating myself up because of my own like self-criticisms and stuff and that that voice in your head that negative voice I wasn't having fun with things that I should be having fun with I didn't really know what it was the more I started like reading about

it and kind of thinking about it I was like I think it's probably anxiety do you get it all around like the want continuing to be successful like the expectations that you put on yourself in terms of like keep achieving keep striving keep the momentum going does that cause anxiety for you or is that where you manifest in terms of like oh like the the fucking train keeps on having to go you know it's both that's what's so hard about it is it's both it's a double-edged sword i mean being driven and motivated and never satisfied and overachieving that can create great results but it can also stress you the fuck out i mean it can really wreak havoc on your nervous system especially when so much of it is out of your control you can try and try and try and make

this and then but like you can't control how it's received or how other people feel about it or if people want to help or not help I mean it's hard it is really hard and it's hard when you care well I guess that's why you're so good at what you do though as well because you care so much and it's easy to sit back and say we get upset when we hear or see a negative comment written about us or a performance that might not have gone as well and we really hold on to that negativity and then we really care that the person said that and people say don't worry about it but i also think it's sort of important to a level to worry about it because you do care about your performances yeah you should care about it yeah it's what you do you know pride you know totally definitely a

double-edged sword i want to say what's next for you but when it's somebody that is continuously striving like you are but you're already like the front man for queen like where do you go from there what are you gonna do next well the point is you don't want the momentum to stop that's kind of the thing it's like you want to keep moving forward you want more opportunities to keep presenting themselves to you or else it will stop you know what I mean and I think all of that stuff that we were talking about is it's really interesting because I when I realized that I was in my own way the one thing that I started realizing is as I get older and older you get more perspective you know every year that goes by you kind of learn something new about yourself and

one of the things that I love about being in my 40s now is that I'm like I don't care as much about what people think and that's also a double-edged sword because being a public figure an artist or whatever it's like kind of what you're doing is for the audience so you do have to care what they think because you want them to like what you're doing but if they don't like it it's also sort of a liberation to be like I don't give a I actually don't I actually don't care and I don't need to care anymore yeah and it's like a balancing act because I in some moments I'm really feeling really good about being like, I don't really care. It's interesting because it's about managing your expectations and managing sort of like your priorities. And I think at the end of

the day, the thing that I'm resting on right now is all you can do is your best. All you can do is try. If it doesn't go exactly as you wanted it to, you tried, you know, it's like, it's all you can do. It's too hard to hold yourself to a standard of perfection where you always have to win. You always have to get an A plus. It can drive you crazy. It really can. And I think, you know, when I started finally dealing with and recognizing that anxiety was something that was sort of a handicap for me, I got some help. I got, you know, it was diagnosed. Yes, it is anxiety. And I went on medication for anxiety and it really helped level me out. And it gave me a lot of perspective because all of a sudden not having that voice in the back of your head,

that's criticizing and really hard you know awful having that voice quiet down a little bit gives you the space to sort of understand that it was just a symptom of anxiety and also like when you're in the throes of it you can't be productive anyway because you're so self-critical you're so like stressed about what needs to be done and the want to do it but then everything's overwhelming so the more work you have the harder it is to actually do anything yeah the thing that's so tricky is that there's this fine line too is that yes caring is important when you care too much you can smother something when you care too much you're taking it so seriously that you're not that you're eliminating room for fun and spontaneity because you're trying to control it so much

when you find that balance of being able to like go okay yeah i care but like it's not that deep all of a sudden you let it breathe you allow it to just be what it's going to be and i think in the arts in performance or in creative things whenever you're like shaping something and you're able to let it have some air to breathe and to grow on its own or whatever it's a better thing it's more organic it feels lighter it's something that people will naturally gravitate towards more than something that you're like overly you know obsessed over and controlling it smothers ideas it can be such a hard thing to do though because when the stakes are high you want to control it more yes because you care so much you want it to go well totally and then and then you fuck it up

because it's the thing that you care so much you just i yeah i'm thinking about things i've done that i fucked up it's all about balance it's like an audition that you wanted that so bad and then you just were so nervous or you were so whatever that you just were in your head you didn't do a good versus the audition you are going to really care and that's the job you get totally every time speaking about caring so much you did start a foundation it's called the feel something foundation yeah what was the reasoning behind wanting to start this and what are the things that you're most proud of i wanted to feel something um no i'm dead inside yeah really lucky because coming out onto the scene and proclaiming my sexuality right at the top even

right after american idol when i could talk to the press all of a sudden there was like all this attention on my identity and at first it was overwhelming like we've been talking about and then i realized pretty quickly into it i was like you know what this is really cool because there isn't a lot of that's why the media is so obsessed with this because they don't really have anybody else to talk to about it there's not a lot of us i should be proud of it i should be vocal as hell about this i should you know because i'm good with it i feel confident about my sexuality and comfortable with it i want to lead by example i want to make a change and that kind of led into certain amounts of activism and charity work and representation in certain causes or symposiums or

chats or whatever. There's been so many things that I've gotten involved with. And it just seemed to me like it finally came time to start my own foundation, is to take it a step further and to be able to raise funds for certain charities and initiatives, to be able to create visibility for those causes, call certain things to light. And the Feel Something Foundation was founded to support LGBTQ plus causes and issues, which there are many of. And we've partnered with a handful of different organizations over the past couple of years. We've raised money for them. One that I really love is the Rady Center in San Diego at the San Diego Children's Hospital. It's the Rady Center for Gender Affirming Care. And gender affirming care is kind of under attack in the

states and in many of the states right now. Basically what it is, is for trans non-binary people, young people looking for some guidance or some support for themselves and their families. The thing that's so interesting is you have to have parental consent in order to receive treatment or counsel from a gender-affirming care center. When you're under 18. When you're under 18. People come in there with their families and these professionals, doctors, psychologists, and everything in between, they help the family understand what's going on. They give the family language and tools and examples. They de-stigmatize it for the family.

they help these young people in a healthy way figure out their identity and what their journey is going to be it's actually incredible what these centers can do i sat down with a handful of parents and their kids at the brady center and just asked them about their experience and their story and it's just like if it weren't for the center they'd be like lost right now i mean they really really felt strongly that gender firm and care center was like the answer and it helped them so much you must feel so proud I mean thinking about where and how much things have changed in the past 10 years not even just how much has changed but what an impact you have been able to have yourself in the community in being the icon that people who maybe don't have somebody

in their family or in their friendship group or whatever it is to be able to say like okay that's an example of it you must feel so proud how far things have come even in just the last decade I really am I mean the music industry for example has changed so much in the last decade I mean i have had people and it's funny because it's it seems like more and more the last few years i meet young people who are like i was a kid when you were on american idol i'm queer and you were the first queer person i saw on my television and it sparked a conversation and it allowed me to go well adam lambert's gay and you like him i've had like more and more it's probably because now i'm at the age where the people that were kids are now young adults it's real sobering isn't it

Yeah, it makes me feel really old. I'm sorry, what? That was two decades ago? Yeah, fuck. But that's really encouraging. The one other thing about the foundation that I'm really proud of is that we've worked with a bunch of different groups.

We also have been pairing up with Music Cares, which is the nonprofit that's associated with the Grammy Awards. They've been amazing for musicians over the years. They do a lot for people in music. And what I realized is that being a queer person in music, there's not really like an official sort of group or you know award presentation or celebration of queer people in music there's no like official

thing yeah you know they have women in music which is an incredible incredible program and I just thought you know what now that it's become such a viable thing you see like queer artists as big pop stars getting awards getting number one songs and albums there's more queer people in the writing process and in the producing process more queer people in the labels it was really important for me to start that conversation so i had a brunch at my house where we invited a bunch of queer people in music and we just as like a communal experience just to talk and talk about our victories about our struggles about everything in between about being queer in the music industry and it's been it's been really nice and it's something that we're going to keep working toward

i think that could be a really important thing well we could literally talk to you for hours but i know you you're an important man you got places to be but we need to talk about your album high drama high drama hi oh sorry drama what can we expect from it it's a covers album yeah and the mission on this covers album was to take songs some were like really well known some are more obscure and completely reinvent them completely flip them on the side that was the creative challenge to make them my own to bring them into my world and the world of high drama is rock star energy it's larger than life it's over the top it's a bit camp do you have a fave no i love them all like all the kids like you actually i'm bad favorites no i really don't it changes i mean

there were some surprises where like we're like we finished the song i'm like wow i didn't expect it to turn out like this this good yeah but i love them all i mean that's why they i put i put them on the album they were all songs that i loved the criteria was also songs that i felt like could have been written about my own experiences you know stuff that i could relate to um did you reimagine them or have you done them have you tried to kind of keep it honest to the original or you reimagine them for oh I tried to make I tried to blend them into something completely different amazing which is really fun and it's you know even though I didn't write these songs the creative part of it is going into the studio taking a song and reimagining it and everything

from the way I sing it to like instrumentation and the production tempo mood you know the whole vibe we changed and i think it's really exciting because i think if you're a fan or even if you're a casual fan that hasn't followed me if you know a song to see what i thought of for the song and where i took it is it's like a fun journey to come on with me as i think it's really interesting well i've had a very fun journey here with you today thank you thank you thanks for your time today thank you for the great chat you are exceptional i want to stay here all day i'll be here i'm not leaving you guys can drag me out no but thank you at the bar thank you so much actually the margarita's here right oh good to know yeah good to know enjoy that do you love a

margarita We'll be right back.