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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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Photo:Djansezian/Getty

Hours before Adam Lambert hit the American Music Awards stage for a wild spectacle of a finale, he was already the talk of the red carpet. It seemed of all the divas performing that night — Janet, Whitney, Rihanna, Gaga: the ones who need no last name (or first) — plenty considered the American Idol runner-up to be queen supreme. “Don’t you wanna see what his hair looks like?” singer and presenter Melissa Etheridge cooed with tween-like glee. “And just how much makeup he’s gonna wear? Finally — finally! — we’ve got a real diva. I can say it.”

Adam Lambert shocks, Taylor Swift soars: the 2009 AMAs in photos.

But as countless pop and rock stars both gay and straight have learned, with the pipes and popularity often comes responsibility — whether it be to your fans, the media, the public at large or an organized movement. Lambert learned that early on in Idol, and the lesson was reaffirmed more recently when the editor of Out magazine chose to call out the Idol imaging machine (and Lambert’s apparent complicity in a make-me-seem-less-gay plot) in a scathing letter to readers. It too was a big topic of conversation during the pre-show and a heated one at that.

“I think he’s just afraid and so is his management,” offered celebrity blogger Perez Hilton. “It’s difficult because he doesn’t have that many people to look up to. There are only a few openly gay successful pop stars.” Said Etheridge: “We in the gay community, we’re never happy. We want everyone to say we’re like everybody else, but then if someone doesn’t act like everybody else, we get mad. We kind of want it both ways. I know how it is in this industry and in the world. When you’re an out gay person, you take on a lot and you never ask for it.”

But any criticism of Lambert not being gay enough went out the window as soon as the Elvis-haired and glittered rocker belted the first words to “For Your Entertainment,” the title track off his debut album (conveniently out today), then proceeded to make out with his (male) keyboard player, ride two of his (male) dancers like dogs on a leash, and grab another (male) with a face-to-the-balls maneuver. At least some portion of that performance, presumably the latter, did not get approved beforehand, and after the East Coast broadcast, was deemed too racy to repeat.

“Due to the live nature of the show we did not expect the impromptu moment in question,” said ABC and Dick Clark productions in a joint statement following the edited West Coast version (Jennifer Lopez’s tumble was also omitted). Fellow Idol runner-up Blake Lewis, on the other hand, described it as “Epic! He sounded and looked amazing. Adam’s voice was meant for big stages like that.” Perez Hilton’s reaction: “Diva — in a good way!”

American Idol’s glam-rock sex god: Lambert in action.

So was it all an elaborate stunt to scandalize and maximize Adam Lambert’s record sales his first week out? Or did Lambert spontaneously decide to shove his tongue down his (straight) bandmate’s mouth completely of his own free will? To hear the man himself tell it, a little of both. “Adrenaline is crazy and sometimes things just happen,” said Lambert after the show. “We had this great dance number totally staged. It’s a sexy song about seduction and power and I was just doing the lyrics justice. My intention was not to try and create a controversy. But if a controversy ensues, then so be it.”

To that end, Lambert insisted he didn’t put all that much thought into the possible repercussions of such a risqué performance. “I think I did that early on Idol, where I was careful and thought about things a lot,” he explained. “But when it comes to being a live performer, thinking is the biggest enemy. It’s about trying to be in the moment as much as possible.” As for how bass player and keyboardist Tommy Joe Ratliff, who’s been playing with Lambert all of three weeks, got roped into a nationally televised lip-lock? Easy, he didn’t know it was coming. “He just believes in the spirit of rock & roll, as do I,” said Lambert. “He’s a really cool open guy. There’s a quote from the movie Velvet Goldmine that we both get a kick out of: ‘Rock & roll is a prostitute — it should be tarted up.’ He believes in that the same way I do.”

Still basking in post-show glow, Lambert didn’t have much time to chit-chat with a flight to catch and an album to promote. He’s due on Letterman tonight for what he promises will be a less fantastical, but just as dramatic number. “I’m doing ‘Whataya Want From Me?’ and it’s about vulnerability and hope, feeling scared and taking risks,” he said. “It’s a totally different energy.” Lambert is also starting to wrap his head around a tour next year (”maybe spring-ish”) and you can count on AMAs-like production for that trek. “Costumes, sets, fire, dancers, the energy tonight — I love all that,” he said.

But first things first, namely: his debut album and those high expectations. “Numbers are shmumbers, they don’t mean anything,” he insisted. “It’s about the music. I’m creating art, and if they like it, they’ll buy it, and if they don’t, they don’t. It really doesn’t matter to me.”

Related Stories:

• Adam Lambert Shocks American Music Awards With Racy “For Your Entertainment”
• Adam Lambert Says Censorship of American Music Awards Song Would Be “Discrimination”
• “Full-Frontal Glambgasm: Rob Sheffield on Adam Lambert’s AMAs
• American Music Awards 2009 Live Blog: The Swift Strikes Back

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