Photo: Mazur/AMA 2009/WireImage
Oh, Adam — that was nutballs. If there was any worry Adam Lambert was going to tone down his wild glam-rock side, the American Idol star shattered it in his debut performance of “For Your Entertainment” at the American Music Awards. Glambert didn’t show any skin last night. He did, however, grab a leather dude’s head and grind it into his crotch, shortly after leading his gimp across the stage on a leash. (ABC cut the audio, maybe because Adam’s moans were too much for us to take?) It was a full-frontal Glambgasm, in the style of his slutty David Bowie medley on last summer’s Idol tour, moving his hips like six kinds of yeah and moaning “Can you handle what I’m ‘bout to do?” Now that’s Glambertainment!
See photos of the AMAs Glambglory plus more from the big show.
Adam strutted around the stage with a cane and a shoulder-padded black suit, looking uncannily like Bowie doing “Young Americans” on The Dick Cavett Show in 1974, except with a Heat Miser pompadour and buckets of eyeliner. And those severe-tire-damage spikes on the right shoulder were excellent. He spent the whole performance writhing and sucking face with his back-up dancers, some male, some female, none wearing all that much besides complicated underwear. Paula Abdul must have been proud to see the choreography pay homage to her “Cold Hearted” video from back in the day, except it was a wise move for Adam to keep walking up and down staircases, since his “Feelin’ Good” performance proved this man can handle some stairs.
Lambert’s best Idol performances: the glam-rock sex god in photos.
Glambskanks everywhere thrilled to hear him hit those falsetto eruptions at the end, especially since his voice was muffled for most of the song. We didn’t get to hear much of his vocal exuberance — but given the technical glitches that riddled the whole show, there was no way Adam was going to get his high notes heard in the detail they deserve. So he was smart to go for spectacle rather than subtlety on an occasion like this. And when he took an apparently unplanned tumble halfway through the performance, he just kept moving without missing a note, like the trooper he is. Good Lord, it was filthy, not to mention one of the most awesomely outrageous rock & roll moments to show up on prime-time network TV lately. It’s already hard to remember what the world was like before Adam Lambert showed up, less than a year ago — but we can be sure it was a colder, drearier, and less pervy place, and moments like this epitomize why we’re glad to have this lady-stardust guy in our lives. Don’t trip off his glitz, America!
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• How Adam Lambert Single-Handedly Saved American Idol
• Adam Lambert Breaks Down AMAs “Controversy”
• Adam Lambert Shocks American Music Awards With Racy “For Your Entertainment”
• Adam Lambert Says Censorship of American Music Awards Song Would Be “Discrimination”
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