Adam Lambert looks back on the moments that shaped his career and reflects on his journey to finding his voice in the music industry. From getting his start with 'Wicked' to dropping everything to take his chance with 'American Idol,' Adam breaks down some of the memorable highlights from his life.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 I think I was in an indoor soccer league at one point
00:02 and I made one goal and I was very proud of myself.
00:06 We were leaving the game that day and I said,
00:08 "Okay, I'm done."
00:09 And my dad was like, "But you made a goal."
00:11 I'm like, "That's all I needed to do."
00:12 I joined this for the shin guards, you know?
00:14 I don't really, it was for the costume, you know?
00:16 Hi everyone, I'm Adam Lambert and today we're gonna be
00:19 looking back on some key moments that have shaped
00:21 my identity and my career.
00:23 This is Becoming Adam Lambert.
00:28 So I grew up in San Diego, California.
00:30 It was sort of a ball of hyperactivity.
00:33 I started pretty early kind of understanding
00:36 that I was probably different than the other boys in school.
00:39 I don't think it really clicked for me
00:41 until I was in about sixth grade.
00:42 And I started going, "Oh, okay, got it.
00:45 "This is how I'm wired."
00:46 But I'm very lucky, my parents were super liberal
00:49 and super cool.
00:51 I came out at the end of high school.
00:54 So I was 18, I graduated, I came out to my three
00:57 best friends and then my mom kind of outed me.
01:01 She was like, "So what's the deal?"
01:03 And finally I was like, "Yeah, I am, yes, I'm gay."
01:07 And she was like, "Yeah, I knew that."
01:08 And I was like, "Why didn't you ask me sooner?"
01:10 And she said, "Well, I went to the gay and lesbian center
01:13 "in San Diego when you were like 14 and I asked them
01:15 "what to do and they said just let him come out to you."
01:18 So she, the whole time they were like, just waiting,
01:21 like just patiently, like he's gonna come out.
01:24 I went for the, one of the few schools that had a BFA
01:28 available in musical theater.
01:30 So Cal State Fullerton in Orange County is where
01:33 I got accepted and right around the same time
01:36 that classes started, I had been cast in a production
01:40 of Grease, the musical.
01:42 And by like week five of school, as I finished
01:45 the production that I was in down at San Diego,
01:47 I was like, "I don't wanna do this.
01:49 "I wanna do theater, I don't wanna sit in a classroom."
01:52 And I kept auditioning around LA, got a couple auditions
01:56 even for things in New York, got flown to New York
01:58 a couple times but never landed the part.
02:00 And there was an audition for Hair, the musical.
02:02 It was a German production.
02:03 I wanted it so bad, I got it.
02:05 It was an amazing experience.
02:07 I grew so much as a person doing that show
02:10 because I felt more comfortable in my skin.
02:13 And I was in Germany where it's like queerness
02:16 was so like, cool.
02:19 People looked individual and they were unashamed
02:24 of their queerness and just being around that,
02:26 I fell in love with Europe.
02:28 And then I got cast in Wicked.
02:29 But after about six months of it, I'm like,
02:31 "I don't like it."
02:32 I went home going, "I wanna be a rock star."
02:35 I ran out of money in five minutes.
02:38 And so I begged to get back in the company
02:41 and they put me in it.
02:42 And I did that for two years in LA
02:44 while I was working on music on the side.
02:46 And that brings us to American Idol.
02:49 And a lot of flat ironing.
02:51 ♪ Mama just killed a man ♪
02:57 ♪ Put a gun against his head ♪
03:00 ♪ Pulled my trigger now he's dead ♪
03:01 I never thought that it was a show
03:03 that I would be able to do.
03:05 A, I'm a theater kid.
03:06 Also, I'm gay, which never seemed to really land
03:09 very well on that show.
03:09 I mean, there definitely were a few,
03:10 but they all kind of got like not taken seriously, you know?
03:14 And I was just like, "I don't know if that's gonna,
03:16 "I would never, I never even thought about it."
03:18 I was 27.
03:19 I was in the last year that you're eligible for it.
03:22 And I was like, "Why not?"
03:25 Their whole rule was we want you in amateur status.
03:27 We can't have you, an agent attached to you
03:29 or a deal with this person or that.
03:31 I had to quit Wicked and cancel any sort
03:35 of entertainment contracts that I had in play.
03:37 So basically quitting my job, which was my pay,
03:40 my insurance, all that stuff,
03:41 I had to quit to take a chance
03:43 to sing in front of the TV judges.
03:46 So walking into the room, I was like, "I'm gonna get this."
03:48 And I sang a Michael Jackson song.
03:51 And the judges behind the table were like,
03:53 and I could see by their faces,
03:55 I'm like, "This isn't clicking for them.
03:56 "I'm gonna, they're gonna be like,
03:57 "thanks a lot and I'm gonna be done."
03:58 And I looked at them and I went,
04:00 "Do you want me to sing something else?"
04:03 And they were like, "What else do you have?"
04:05 And I'm like, "What about a Queen song?"
04:07 And so that's how that went down.
04:10 It was my second song that they used on TV.
04:12 And that sort of became my lane on the show.
04:15 And I picked "Mad World" because it spoke to me.
04:17 I mean, it was a song about being an outsider
04:21 and how emotional that can make you feel.
04:23 It reminded me of how I felt in middle school.
04:26 I think it was like movie week
04:27 and my brother had always loved this song.
04:29 And I basically just lifted the version from Donnie Darko.
04:33 And I think the producers started to really trust me.
04:36 And I remember when it came time
04:38 to like figure out what the staging was.
04:40 I'm like, "I wanna do something different.
04:41 "I wanna sit in a chair and dark light."
04:43 They were like, "Go do it.
04:44 "You're doing great."
04:45 And so the staging things theatrically kind of felt
04:48 like something that was up my alley.
04:50 And the whole experience was great.
04:52 [upbeat music]
04:55 Being gay on "American Idol" was like a trip.
04:58 I had been out since I was 18.
05:00 I was not shy about who I was.
05:02 It was never a secret after I came out.
05:04 I wasn't ashamed of it at all.
05:06 And I was really settled in my gayness.
05:08 And I knew going into the show,
05:10 I'm like, "Okay, this is a whole different ballgame."
05:12 And so people started to dig, you know?
05:15 And I had had like a social media profile
05:18 on a thing called Tribe,
05:20 which was like an alternative MySpace.
05:22 I had posted on there pictures of me and an ex-boyfriend
05:26 like making out in like drag.
05:28 And these people found these pictures
05:30 and they were like, "Look, he's kissing a boy."
05:32 Then the publicist for the show had called me before
05:34 to say, "Hey, I don't know if you saw this."
05:37 And I said, "Yeah, I saw it."
05:38 And she was so great.
05:39 She was like, "Well, how do you wanna deal with it?"
05:41 She's like, "What do you wanna say?"
05:43 And so I just said to the reporter,
05:45 I'm like, "Yeah, that's me."
05:46 (laughs)
05:48 That's all I said.
05:49 I'm like, "And?"
05:50 So I did the like media trick of kind of like
05:52 acknowledging but not giving anymore.
05:54 The publicist that I got assigned
05:56 coming off of the show was really great.
05:59 He was really savvy.
06:00 He was gay.
06:01 He's like, "I think we should work it."
06:03 And so they booked me the cover of Rolling Stone,
06:05 which was like, "Well, that's a good place
06:06 "to come out of the closet.
06:07 "That seems pretty cool."
06:08 So yeah, I think I lost some fans at that point.
06:11 But I always said to myself like,
06:12 "Well, those aren't the fans I want anyway.
06:14 "If they think I'm gay and they don't like that,
06:16 "then go away.
06:19 "That's who I am."
06:19 (upbeat music)
06:22 Yeah, I look back on that experience
06:24 and it's pretty amazing.
06:26 I mean, I felt approved of.
06:28 I felt like people were really excited
06:30 about what I was about to do.
06:32 You know, Lady Gaga had a song for me
06:33 that we recorded together.
06:35 Pink gave me a song.
06:37 Matt Bellamy from Muse.
06:39 Rivers Cuomo from Weezer.
06:41 Dustin Hawkins from The Darkness.
06:43 Linda Perry I worked with.
06:44 Like all these just like luminaries
06:46 that were heroes of mine, you know.
06:48 And you know, Pink's "What Do You Want From Me"
06:50 was my big hit.
06:52 Thanks Pink for kicking it off of your album.
06:55 Thank you.
06:56 (upbeat music)
06:59 When someone told me this, I didn't believe them.
07:00 But apparently in America, that was the first time
07:02 that an out gay person had a number one debut.
07:06 And it's a milestone I'm really proud of.
07:07 One of the songs I wrote on the album
07:09 is called "Outlaws of Love."
07:11 I was just writing about the experience
07:12 of being sort of persecuted for being who you are.
07:15 I think I was starting to become more and more interested
07:18 in being a leader in that space
07:21 and sort of having a positive effect on young people
07:25 who are also queer and trying to explain things
07:28 to the masses that might not understand them.
07:30 It was a moment, I felt like I could do some good.
07:35 (upbeat music)
07:39 So I met Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen
07:42 on the finale of "American Idol."
07:43 It felt like a click.
07:45 I remember looking at Brian as I was singing,
07:46 he was playing and he was kind of like,
07:47 "Oh."
07:48 After my first solo tour, something came up with them
07:51 and they were gonna do a medley and they needed a singer.
07:53 And of course I immediately said yes.
07:55 And as soon as I hung up the phone, I went,
07:56 "Oh my God, can I pull this off?"
07:58 I knew their fans would be really, really critical
08:02 and skeptical of this.
08:03 More or less, it was well-received,
08:04 but I definitely read some stuff online
08:06 that was not into it.
08:08 So these are all the things I think that
08:10 throughout my career, going and reading the comments
08:13 has been sort of a double-edged sword.
08:15 Sometimes it's the worst thing you can do,
08:17 but it's also kind of kept me humble
08:18 and it's kept me fighting to be better.
08:21 Well, I think after "Original High,"
08:24 I understood what anxiety and depression was
08:28 for the first time I'd been able to put a name on it.
08:29 I wanted to write something that sort of helped
08:32 pull me out of that time.
08:34 It gave me purpose again.
08:35 It gave me a feeling of hope.
08:37 It allowed me to do something different
08:39 and it became sort of the mantra of moving forward.
08:41 Like, I don't care anymore about people that don't get it.
08:45 One of the songs I created on the album
08:48 is called "Feel Something" and it's a ballad,
08:51 just an honest take on, "Hey, I've been sad."
08:53 And I had decided at that point that I was interested
08:56 in maybe starting my own foundation
08:58 and I had to come up with a name for it.
09:00 And I was like, "Feel Something."
09:02 I mean, that's what this is.
09:03 It's to connect.
09:04 It's to remind people of their heart
09:06 and what really matters.
09:08 So I named it the Feel Something Foundation.
09:09 It's LGBTQ+ focused.
09:12 We've definitely taken an interest
09:15 in a lot of specific things,
09:17 namely gender-affirming care centers.
09:20 'Cause I feel like what's missing
09:22 in so many of these fear-based attacks
09:26 on these types of programs is information.
09:29 I think people just don't understand.
09:31 I hope that in further moonlighting these organizations,
09:35 we can just educate people.
09:37 'Cause ignorance is literally the number one enemy
09:39 of change and of personal freedom and expression.
09:44 [upbeat music]
09:47 The idea of a covers album came up
09:49 and I thought, "You know what?
09:49 Now's the time to give people familiar songs,
09:53 things that they can wrap their head around right away,
09:55 almost kind of go back to sort of
09:57 why "American Idol" worked for me.
09:59 One of the key tracks that we added
10:01 sort of later to "High Drama" is
10:03 "You Make Me Feel Mighty Real" by Sylvester.
10:06 And to me, that was a super exciting thing to do,
10:09 to be able to cover a queer icon
10:11 who is sometimes a bit unsung,
10:13 but who was so ahead of his time.
10:15 I mean, he was basically fluid.
10:18 I mean, if we use the vernacular that we have today,
10:20 he was just queer as hell,
10:22 you know, in like caftans and fans and makeup,
10:25 like with a big disco hit in the '70s in America.
10:29 So he's somebody that I was excited to cover.
10:31 And it really inspired me
10:33 and it made me think,
10:34 I wanna dive into a new direction
10:37 where I get to connect more with that community
10:40 that I come from.
10:41 You know, we're at a time now in music
10:44 where it's been proven that being queer
10:47 and writing about queer topics
10:49 is not necessarily the career killer
10:52 that they used to think it was.
10:53 I mean, there's an audience for it.
10:54 And it's not just queer kids, it's everybody.
10:57 People, the young people that are listening to music
11:00 are more and more open-minded.
11:01 They understand that the emotions
11:03 in these songs are universal.
11:05 They're not stupid.
11:06 They know how to go,
11:06 "Oh, well, I've felt something like that."
11:08 So I'm really excited.
11:10 I feel like it's like a new chapter for me.
11:12 I feel clear, very clear.
11:15 I feel very sure of who I am more than I ever have,
11:20 more comfortable in my skin than I ever have.
11:21 And I wanna bring that to my music.
11:24 Well, thank you so much for letting me ramble on
11:26 about my life over the past 41 years.
11:31 And I'm thankful that you took the time
11:33 to learn more about me and what makes me tick.
11:37 This has been, what's it called again?
11:39 (laughing)
11:41 This has been Becoming Adam Lambert.
11:45 [BLANK_AUDIO]