I will admit that I wouldn’t recognize an Adam Lambert song if he was singing in my living room, but he’s hard to ignore on the Internet since everyone seems to be talking about him. The current attention is focused on his spat with Out magazine editor Aaron Hicklin that I wrote about at Mediaite.
In a nutshell, Hicklin said Lambert’s people insisted that Lambert not come off as “too gay” in an Out interview and cover for the Out 100 issue. His story is backed up by Shana Naomi Krochmal who says that Lambert’s people tried to micromanage the interview in a way that Krochmal says she’s never experienced.
Lambert agrees that he didn’t want to come off as “too gay” and takes the blame of his handlers, but shot back at Hicklin saying he had an agenda and that Lambert wasn’t interested in talking politics.
I didn’t want to jump onto a gay magazine as my first thing, because I feel like that’s putting myself in a box and limiting myself. It was my desire to stay away from talking about certain political and civil rights issues because I’m not a politician. I’m an entertainer.
The interesting question is what exactly did Lambert think he was going to be asked about in an interview with Out? While the magazine focuses on culture, by its very name, it has a political purpose. So why would Lambert agree to be on the cover and be interviewed if he didn’t want to be seen as a gay symbol?
In his defense, when you read the Entertainment Weekly interview, it becomes clear that Lambert isn’t all that remarkable when it comes to how he deals with his sexual orientation. He’s unsure about how political he wants to be, he’s not really sure what it means to be a gay role model and celebrity, and ultimately just wants to sing and perform. So he’s like a lot of 27-year old gay guys who is comfortable with being out, but not sure how much that is going to define him.