Mr. L

SDNN
by Valerie Scher
Adam Lambert and ‘For Your Entertainment’: Opera experts review debut album

Nicolas Reveles, Geisel Director of Education and Outreach at San Diego Opera

Overall impression: One of the joys (and heartaches) of watching “American Idol” is to sense the struggle, anxiety and hard-earned sweat that goes into the performances by young singers. Year after year, they hope and pray that the judges and the audience will give them a pass to instant celebrity, a recording contract and the assurance of a future in music.
This year, especially for those of us who live in Adam’s home town of San Diego, we hoped that those rewards would go to Adam, despite his second-place finish. He’s a good-looking, talented, stage savvy, risky performer. I still hope that he will be the one we’re talking about ten, twenty years from now.

Leon Natker, General Director of Lyric Opera San Diego

Overall impression: The album is clearly the biography of a relationship. The style is aimed at the club scene with the intention of being able to dance to many of the tracks. It is also very androgynous so that it can appeal to both the straight and gay club scene. For my taste it is overly engineered and does not give Adam the chance to really shine like he can. Many of the tracks are derivative of ’80s and ’90s MTV-style videos but are not clearly trying to be retro in their styling. Adam is still in my opinion a very talented singer with great range and possibility. I wanted to hear more Adam and less of the engineering.

Valerie Scher, SDNN Arts & Entertainment editor and a San Diego correspondent for London-based Opera magazine

Overall impression: “For Your Entertainment” is so loaded with recording studio effects that a more accurate title would be “That’s Synthertainment!” As enjoyable as the album often is, it made me yearn for more Adam and fewer add-ons. A singer this talented doesn’t need material to be gussied up to such an extreme. The focus should be on the singing, as in the best opera productions. The greatest challenge for San Diego’s homegrown musical hero is to find material that’s worthy of him. And though the album includes contributions from such big names as Pink, Lady Gaga and Muse, I hope his next album does even more to showcase his remarkable abilities.

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The Washington Post
Lambert and Boyle: Not just first runners up

They both lost, of course.
Adam Lambert, one of the most outsize, Technicolor contestants ever to appear on “American Idol,” lost Season 8 to wan, amiable Kris Allen. Skittish, angel-voiced Susan Boyle lost Season 3 of “Britain’s Got Talent” to dance troupe/future Trivial Pursuit question Diversity.
But as Chris Daughtry can tell you, winning isn’t everything. Boyle’s debut disc, “I Dreamed a Dream,” is Amazon.com’s highest preseller ever; Lambert’s debut, “For Your Entertainment,” is the best post-”Idol” debut ever made.
(…) “Entertainment” is a whirligig of pianos and strings, of vertiginous walls of vocals and monster choruses, with Lambert sometimes struggling to retain his personality in the midst of such a disparate group of overlords. He doesn’t always succeed: The riotous electro-meets-hair-metal track “Music Again,” written by former Darkness frontman Justin Hawkins, resembles a Darkness song after a run-in with a BeDazzler. On “Soaked,” written by Matthew Bellamy, frontman of the Radiohead-evoking Muse, Lambert sounds uncannily like Thom Yorke. “Fever,” co-written by Lady Gaga, suggests an unexceptional Gaga track, except for the part where Lambert sings about his fella.

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Chicago Tribune
by Greg Kot
‘Idol’ runner-up’s debut sticks to the formula

You may not have liked the guy at all, but he wasn’t a cipher. It felt as if he was drawing a line every time he strutted into view, as if to say, “Love or hate it, but there’s no in-between.”
For those reasons, there was hope that “For Your Entertainment” would be the first post-”Idol” debut to break the mold of industry-manicured pap. Instead, it’s a series of hedged bets. It stuffs Lambert into a box of formulas that keep his musical flamboyance in check.
Rob Cavallo, Dr. Luke, Ryan Tedder and Max Martin — among the most successful songwriters and producers of the decade, experts at manipulating the industry machine — keep him firmly in the middle of the road. The most exciting moments arrive when he veers off, offering little explosions of individuality that suggest Lambert has a lot more to give than this album and his small army of handlers will allow.
(…) Otherwise, this album feels anticlimactic after Lambert’s “Idol” run. Next time, the singer deserves a chance to fall flat on his face; I bet he would find that fate far more appealing than the ho-hum reaction much of “For Your Entertainment” inspires.

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Boston Globe
by Sarah Rodman
Adam Lambert: For Your Entertainment

The least famous names here contribute the album’s catchiest, cheekiest song, “Sure Fire Winners,’’ which sounds like Warrant’s raunch metal anthem “Cherry Pie’’ stripped naked and redressed by Gaga. “Fever,’’ actually co-written by the Lady, makes a convincing case for Lambert as a long-lost Scissor Sister with its eruptive synths. Matthew Bellamy of Muse contributes the high-drama ballad “Soaker,’’ on which the singer merges his love for Freddie Mercury, Thom Yorke, and overdoing it to gorgeously windswept results.
Lambert’s got the goods to sell a lot of styles, but the songs don’t always showcase those goods in the best light.

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Yahoo.com
by David DiMartino

Adam Lambert: For Your Entertainment (19 Recordings/RCA) Renowned for being the only talented guy to ever appear on American Idol, Lambert is a colorful singer with tremendous range and a penchant for breaking the rules, pushing the envelope, wearing eye make-up, and doling out kisses to objects animate and inanimate so long as a camera is present! Sort of like…all of us! There are more than a couple of good songs here–”Whataya Want From Me” and “Music Again,” the latter co-written with Justin Hawkins of the Darkness, are the immediate standouts for me after being forced to hear the damn thing 15 or 20 times already because of where I sit!–but my plan is to buy it and simply stare at the cover artwork! You too?

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Buffalo News
by David Hiltbrand

Adam Lambert “For Your Entertainment” (19/RCA). Each year brings the same ritual: waiting to see if the newest batch of “American Idol” singers will make distinctive statements with their debut albums. Surely if any of these kids has star potential it’s Adam Lambert, the glamtastic Season 8 runner-up. He’s certainly swinging from his high heels on songs like the title track, a jolting dance-floor imperative, and on the ABBA-accelerated “If I Had You.” The most intriguing song is also the most atypical: “Soaked,” a wall-of-sound power ballad on which Lambert sounds like a modern Roy Orbison. He’s trying on a lot of capes here: disco, glitter pop, hair metal, electronica and more. Ambitious and aurally rousing, “For Your Entertainment” is satisfying without being innovative. ★★½

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by UK blogger P.Viktor

Most of the album maintains the verve and energy of this first track; debut single For Your Entertainment apes the synth-syncopation of Sam Sparro’s superior Black and Gold courtesy of Dr Luke, but the relentlessness of the chorus and delivery mean it is a decent stab at electro-pop. Lyrically it is all sexual aggression bordering on date rape, but that seems to be completely admissible in pop these days (blame Madonna’s Justify My Love). Whatya Want From Me is one of those darkly passionate rock ballads P!nk manages to carve out for all of her albums, and it is a surprise that she would part with a song of this quality for someone else’s album (which goes to show what a generous songwriter she is). With its electric guitar licks and pleading vocals, it is an obvious future single and highlight of the album.

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Sunpeksnews.com
Lambert’s first album a carefully constructed hit

For Your Entertainment is exactly that, entertaining. The album, while not completely written by Lambert definitely displays his knack for performance based glam-rock—obvious influences include David Bowie and Duran Duran—with a compilation of edgy dance hits touched with a few simple ballads for balance.
However not everything that glitters is gold. And this could change over time as Lambert gets a little more say in what goes on—if that’s possible after American Idol. Songs such as “Soaked”, written by Muse’s Matthew Bellamy sounds like a Muse cover song. “Fever”, written by Lady Gaga also sounds like a Lady Gaga song with Lambert’s vocals dubbed in as an afterthought. One only hopes Lambert won’t end up along the lines of performance pop stars before him, getting caught lip-synching and lacking original material.

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blog Pride Source
Adam Lambert, ‘For Your Entertainment’

Judging the guylinered gay based solely on his sexually superfluous shot at being, uh, “spontaneously artistic” during the American Music Awards wouldn’t be fair. He needed none of the pseudo fellatio, because he can sing – and the “Idol” runner-up thankfully applies his rocketing range to these 14 tracks better than he does a man’s face to his clothed junk. He’s still making whoopee on “For Your Entertainment,” the hyper-sexual good-gay-gone-bad bit, and turning up the heat on Lady Gaga’s co-written contribution “Fever,” wringing a falsetto-laced chorus that’s so Scissor Sisters in its sound and unapologetic homoliciousness. His debut is easily the edgiest of all “Idol” firsts (and maybe it knows that just a little too well). Perhaps that’s because of Lambert’s versatility – retro glam-rock (like the crippled “Strut”), anthemic rock (“Time for Miracles”), musical-lit lifters (disc best “Pick U Up”) and vulnerable slowies are all here for our entertainment. Too much? Yeah. Sometimes the album’s like an 18-year-old running loose in a porn store. But, then again, you’re talking about a guy who boasts about being born with glitter on his face. This should be the least of our worries.

Grade: B

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