Singer Adam Lambert has called David
Bowie a “key inspiration.”
Last week, Bowie released The
Next Day, his first studio album in 10 years.
In an essay published at gay
glossy Out's website, Lambert wrote that he was taken in
by Bowie's androgynous image.
“My father is a huge Bowie fan, and
about the time I first got interested in what he was listening to, he
pulled out the Diamond Dogs album. The cover was just so cool
and trippy and weird. At that point I was really into Halloween and
costumes, and when my dad played me the album, I thought, Oh, it's a
Halloween thing. I was maybe 8 or 9, but I didn't really start
appreciating Bowie for myself until my early twenties, when I was
getting into glam rock. A light bulb went off – I wasn't into
drag, I didn't want to dress like a woman, but I wanted to express my
gender and artistic identity differently than the mainstream. Bowie
was a key inspiration.”
“It was about the androgyny of mixing
it up, and that was what was so incredible about his concepts – he
was one of the first rock stars to really push the idea that
sexuality was not black and white but an exploration. Later, when he
finally made his big American breakthrough in the ’80s working with
Nile Rodgers on Let's Dance, his image shifted to a more
masculine sensibility. Considering how far he had pushed it the
decade previous, however, it gave his masculinity an edgy and
mysterious undercurrent. I actually love Young Americans so
much because it was the album where he jumped into Philly soul and it
got very funky and rhythmic; to hear someone with his sensibility
going to that place is really inspiring.”