Speaker 1: Welcome to Inside the Studio presented by I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm your host Joe Leading, Fire up the Pyro, turned
Speaker 1: the amps up to eleven, and don't skimp on the glitter.
Speaker 1: My guest this episode is Adam Lambert, a man who
Speaker 1: seems to have been born wearing fingerless leather gloves and
Speaker 1: platform shoes. Were certainly born to wear such things. We
Speaker 1: talked about the four years it took him to make
Speaker 1: his new album Velvet, about what it would take to
Speaker 1: bring him to Broadway, and about his experience opening the
Speaker 1: nineteen Oscars singing we Will Rock You and We Are
Speaker 1: the Champions with Queen Now. A few performers appear to
Speaker 1: have been quite as preordained to be a rock star
Speaker 1: as Adam Lambert, whose origin story is equal parts Jim
Speaker 1: Morrison in the Desert in a CinemaScope movie musical. It's
Speaker 1: the sort of collision of accident, preparation and lifelong dream
Speaker 1: that feels like it was cooked up in a writer's
Speaker 1: room rather than being something real. But it was sometime
Speaker 1: around two thousand and eight Lambert, who had started out
Speaker 1: singing on cruise ships at age nineteen and had worked
Speaker 1: hard to land a spot in a Los Angeles production
Speaker 1: of the Broadway musical Wicked was in the Nevada Desert.
Speaker 1: He was there for the party slash Pagan throw down,
Speaker 1: Burning Man, and he was tripping on mushrooms. He looked
Speaker 1: up at the sky and had a psychedelic epiphany. I
Speaker 1: realized that we all have our own power, and that
Speaker 1: whatever I wanted to do, I had to make it happen,
Speaker 1: he later said. And what he wanted to do was
Speaker 1: stop being a chorus boy and try out for American Idol.
Speaker 1: So he auditioned for American Idol's eighth season, singing Queen's
Speaker 1: Bohemian Rhapsody and nailing the drama and high notes well
Speaker 1: enough that he didn't just make the show, but people
Speaker 1: started sending Queen guitarist Brian May the video of Adam's
Speaker 1: audition because this just might be the singer you're looking for.
Speaker 1: Flash forward eighteen weeks and there's Adams singing We Are
Speaker 1: the Champions alongside Queen themselves in the American Idol finale.
Speaker 1: Flashed forward a few more years from there, and Adam's
Speaker 1: second album, Trespassing, has made him the first out and
Speaker 1: proud man to top the Billboard Album charts, and he's
Speaker 1: on tour with Queen as their front man. Adam and
Speaker 1: I spoke after his EP, Velvet Side A came out
Speaker 1: last year, and it's now been expanded into a full album.
Speaker 1: In a couple of ways, this is music about liberation.
Speaker 1: It's Lambert's first release on an independent label, and he
Speaker 1: oversaw the A and R in production, so it's his
Speaker 1: first time calling all the shots himself. But in some
Speaker 1: ways lamb Its whole career revolves around liberation. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and nine, shortly after he finished Idle Is runner
Speaker 1: up to Chris Allen, Lambert was on the cover of
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone. He took the opportunity to make clear something
Speaker 1: that he'd never really kept a secret, but he also
Speaker 1: hadn't talked about directly during the competition. I don't think
Speaker 1: it should come as a surprise for anyone to hear
Speaker 1: that I'm gay, he explained. He also told Rolling Stone
Speaker 1: that he had performed the Sam Cook song A Change
Speaker 1: is Going to Come on IDOL with the fight for
Speaker 1: marriage equality in mind. Lambert's second album, Trespassing, found him
Speaker 1: still singing about freedom. It finished with a song called
Speaker 1: Outlaws of Love about that same fight for marriage equality.
Speaker 1: At the time of his third album, The Original High,
Speaker 1: and he was celebrating a different sort of freedom. This
Speaker 1: was his first album since he left the management company
Speaker 1: and record label he'd been with since Idol Now. Liberation
Speaker 1: is a core value of rock and roll from the
Speaker 1: start in the nineteen fifties, when the music was about
Speaker 1: freeing the body and letting the mind follow. One of
Speaker 1: the things about rock stars has always been that they
Speaker 1: live free. They move, sing, dress and act in a
Speaker 1: way that most of us just can't in our day
Speaker 1: to day lives. And you only have to take one
Speaker 1: look at Little Richard or Elvis, or Mick Jagger or
Speaker 1: Lady Gaga to know that Adam Lambert has always been
Speaker 1: really good at embodying this core value. From his eyeliner
Speaker 1: to his studded boots, he lives and performs free. So
Speaker 1: I was interested by the songs on Velvet Side A
Speaker 1: that we're about a kind of struggle for freedom, like
Speaker 1: the Stranger You Are, where Lambert sings about feeling the
Speaker 1: more different you are, the more they try to keep
Speaker 1: you locked in the dark. When I first heard that,
Speaker 1: I thought he gets to be whoever he wants. He's
Speaker 1: Adam Lambert, He's already fought this bad but even so
Speaker 1: he still had to struggle to find a way to
Speaker 1: make the music he wanted. Some of this is like
Speaker 1: me having to affirm it to myself. I went to
Speaker 1: a couple of different writing sessions with great, great talented people,
Speaker 1: where what we ended up with at the end was
Speaker 1: something that sounded just sort of like everybody else's song.
Speaker 1: Right now, I would like walk away from that lessen
Speaker 1: be like, how have I so easily lead? Why did
Speaker 1: I just fall into that? And that's how, you know,
Speaker 1: has to do with a lot of just trying to
Speaker 1: be a good team player. But it's so easy to
Speaker 1: fall into the same thing that everybody else is doing,
Speaker 1: and it takes a little bit of extra work and
Speaker 1: discipline and sort of clarity in order to fight against
Speaker 1: that and do your own thing. The fight to do
Speaker 1: your own thing. After ten years, Adam Lambert wanted to
Speaker 1: make his own music, his own way, something more geared
Speaker 1: to a funk strut than a pop bounce. He was
Speaker 1: a little tired of the Top forty Carnival. It's important
Speaker 1: to remember just how central and how good it he
Speaker 1: was at that carnival. His first album four year Entertainment
Speaker 1: in two thousand and nine drew on what was happening
Speaker 1: right then in pop music, but it also drew a
Speaker 1: blueprint for much of the next decade. It's packed with
Speaker 1: producers whose impact was already clear, like Max Martin and
Speaker 1: Dr Luke, but it also features producers whose impact was
Speaker 1: just then unfolding, like Ryan Tedter and Jeff Basker. The
Speaker 1: co writers include pop prose like Linda Perry, but also
Speaker 1: Pink and Lady Gaga and Rivers Cuomo from Weezer. And
Speaker 1: this is five or six years before all rock got
Speaker 1: sucked into the pop mainstream, with Caroline Policheck from Chairlift
Speaker 1: getting a co write on a Beyonce track, and rost
Speaker 1: Him from Vampire Weekend producing and writing with Carly ray
Speaker 1: Jepson on Lambert's second album, Trespassing In. He takes a
Speaker 1: bigger hand in the songwriting, co writing eight of the
Speaker 1: twelve tracks, but things are no less major league. The
Speaker 1: producers include Dr Luke again, along with Pharrell Williams and
Speaker 1: Bruno Mars's crew, The Smeezington's the original High and finds
Speaker 1: Lambert working in Sweden for the whole album with Max
Speaker 1: Martin Who's then riding high with huge hits for Taylor
Speaker 1: Swift in the Weekend. And this is probably Lambert's most
Speaker 1: coherent album from start to finish. But I see it's
Speaker 1: plain to me it presented its own set of challenges,
Speaker 1: and I don't just mean spending two months in Sweden
Speaker 1: during the dead of winter when it can be dark
Speaker 1: for almost eighteen hours a day. So when he made Velvet,
Speaker 1: he wanted to step outside the whole race to the
Speaker 1: top ermost of the poppermost, as the Beatles used to
Speaker 1: put it. He wanted to make something a little more organic,
Speaker 1: which is why last year's EP was called Velvet Side A.
Speaker 1: There's that sense of throwing back to the old school
Speaker 1: way of recording albums in the digital vinyl era, a
Speaker 1: bunch of people sitting in a room writing songs and
Speaker 1: playing them. It wasn't just a matter of deciding that
Speaker 1: and going into the studio. He had to unlearn a
Speaker 1: lot of the lessons of the previous ten years and
Speaker 1: free himself of expectations. He talked with me about how
Speaker 1: he did it and about where he drew his inspirations from,
Speaker 1: and also about the song he Rode in a Castle
Speaker 1: in the South of France, which turned out to be
Speaker 1: a lot less glamorous than it sounds. Here's what else
Speaker 1: he had to say at Lambert Welcome to inside the studio.
Speaker 1: Thank you so velvet velvet side a. Let's get right
Speaker 1: into it. Two questions. Why velvet? Why side a? Velvet? Um?
Speaker 1: I mean it's a feeling, it's soft, smooth, it's vintage classic.
Speaker 1: It made me think of fabulous suits from the seventies.
Speaker 1: It made me think of a curtain to a stage,
Speaker 1: made me think of Velvet gold Mine, which is my
Speaker 1: favorite film, and also The Velvet Rage, which is an
Speaker 1: incredible book. It means a lot of different things, I guess.
Speaker 1: Let's dig into two of the things you just mentioned.
Speaker 1: First is Velvet gold Mine, which, for those who don't know,
Speaker 1: is a film directed by Todd Haynes. Yes, you are
Speaker 1: like a walking wiki. I love it. I am a
Speaker 1: walking wiki. And this is Todd Haynes. Of course, went
Speaker 1: on to direct Far from Heaven Carol, and also that
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan movie that is loosely based on the legends
Speaker 1: of Bob Dylan. I'm not there, but Velvet gold Mine
Speaker 1: was his glam rock movie. God, it's so pretty. It's
Speaker 1: so fun to watch just visually nuts and all the
Speaker 1: actors in it are like bananas. They're all amazing actors.
Speaker 1: Jonathan Rees Meyers and you and McGregor in parts loosely
Speaker 1: based on Bowie and Iggy Am I remembering, that's that's
Speaker 1: what it looks like. Yeah, Um, what was it like
Speaker 1: when you saw that? Um? I saw it a couple
Speaker 1: of I don't think I saw it right when it
Speaker 1: came out. I saw it a few years later, and
Speaker 1: I think I was in my early twenties living in
Speaker 1: l A and really kind of in this moment of
Speaker 1: falling in love with classic rock in a way that
Speaker 1: I hadn't before. Um. You know, it was like around
Speaker 1: the house and I was growing up. But then I
Speaker 1: like really dove into it on my own, you know,
Speaker 1: with with the help of the Internet and like really discovering.
Speaker 1: Did you have the feeling that glam rock was kind
Speaker 1: of an almost buried history, that that that we knew
Speaker 1: some of the music but didn't know everything. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like very of the time. Yeah, it was like a
Speaker 1: moment um and I think I think it resonated with
Speaker 1: me just because everybody was so dressed up and I love,
Speaker 1: you know. They we had bands in the eighties that
Speaker 1: were really you know, they've tarted up, as they like
Speaker 1: to say. But I was never really that into hair metal.
Speaker 1: I was. I think the seventies stuff is just more
Speaker 1: me um and Yeah, I don't know. I think I
Speaker 1: was just drawn to it visually first and then kind
Speaker 1: of fell in love with the sound of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like it just felt like a fit. I like the
Speaker 1: camp nature of it. I like the theatricality. It felt
Speaker 1: like something that, like, I don't know, resonated with me.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting that you brought up hair metal, which
Speaker 1: is derived musically stylistically from glam rock. No glam rock,
Speaker 1: you don't really get what happens in the hair metal days,
Speaker 1: but the music and certainly the personas are you not
Speaker 1: as gender fluid as glam rock was? Right, I mean
Speaker 1: it sort of takes the look without necessarily the politics
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah, I feel you're totally right. Like, if
Speaker 1: you look at most of those eighties bands, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they were dressed like Sunset Bulevard hookers, but they were
Speaker 1: sort of all like, weren't they kind of all like
Speaker 1: womanizers basically? I mean probably that was sort of like
Speaker 1: what they were hinting at it was that frat boy
Speaker 1: kind of mentality. I think it was more than a hint.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, um, but yeah, you're right, Like in the
Speaker 1: seventies you had artists that were sort of like easy
Speaker 1: or isn't he you know? You had Bowie for example,
Speaker 1: who like famously was sort of like quote unquote bisexual.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he ever really actually said the word.
Speaker 1: I think he did. Um. And that was like trailblazing
Speaker 1: at the time. And then you also mentioned The Velvet Rage.
Speaker 1: It's a book by a Los Angeles therapist. Do I
Speaker 1: have that right? Yeah. It's like a focus group study
Speaker 1: of a group of men. It's an older book, so
Speaker 1: it's it's slightly you know, slightly out of date now
Speaker 1: if you read it today, but some of the psychological
Speaker 1: ideas and it, you know, are timeless. I think it
Speaker 1: breaks down why gay men are the way they are, um,
Speaker 1: sort of the patterns, the types. And I read it
Speaker 1: when I was young, and I was sort of like
Speaker 1: just coming into my own in l A. And it's
Speaker 1: sort of like filled in a lot of my question marks.
Speaker 1: And I think with gay culture, especially twenty years ago,
Speaker 1: we had lost so many of our elders with the
Speaker 1: AIDS crisis in the eighties, so the gay community didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of like wisdom left. We had lost
Speaker 1: a lot of our wise ones. And the rage in question,
Speaker 1: if I remember this right, is about internalizing lessons from
Speaker 1: the world around you that who you are, what you're
Speaker 1: feeling isn't acceptable. I think the tagline is growing up
Speaker 1: gain a straight man's world, So it's it's yeah, it's
Speaker 1: about just being different and how that affects people. Sort
Speaker 1: of the common effects of it. People that are overachievers,
Speaker 1: people that are um you know, that have a Peter
Speaker 1: Pan complex, people that have daddy issues, people like it's
Speaker 1: these kind of quintessential therapy issues. Because you had mentioned
Speaker 1: this book previously in reference to Velvet Side A and
Speaker 1: we should be clear Side B is coming. It's coming.
Speaker 1: And then I was listening to the EP and that
Speaker 1: first song Superpower, where you're saying, try to put me
Speaker 1: in a box, make me some thing I'm not there's
Speaker 1: something missing on piston. I got something to say. Oh yeah, allllo, witch,
Speaker 1: just send the thing. It's better get on my way
Speaker 1: back up. When all the pain from the law put
Speaker 1: me in box, miss something I'm not, don't give a
Speaker 1: I'm take back. And I thought, well, first off, who
Speaker 1: puts Adam Lambert in a box? At this point? Who
Speaker 1: who dares? Yeah? But is some of that older feelings
Speaker 1: or is that lyric referring to things that you've been
Speaker 1: going through recently. I think it's kind of always going
Speaker 1: to be around. It's always sort of there, just being
Speaker 1: at somebody that's different, that's daring to be different. You're
Speaker 1: always going to encounter opposition of that. You're always gonna
Speaker 1: encounter people that don't get it, that are scared of it.
Speaker 1: And also, you know, yes, I wrote it from a
Speaker 1: first person and I and it is about my experience,
Speaker 1: but I also really intended it to be something that
Speaker 1: could be an anthem for a lot of different people,
Speaker 1: because I think everyone's had that moment where somebody's told
Speaker 1: them what they can or can't do, or what they
Speaker 1: should be or shouldn't be. And yeah, it's frustrating. And
Speaker 1: the superpower in question, of course, he's drawing really on
Speaker 1: your own strength, right, Yeah, exactly like my superpower is
Speaker 1: staring to be exactly who I want to be. That's,
Speaker 1: you know, my superhuman thing that I can draw upon
Speaker 1: and it's it's it's not ever present. Sometimes it gets
Speaker 1: snuffed out, sometimes it gets overshadowed by other things. But
Speaker 1: you gotta keep fighting the good fight. I think two
Speaker 1: points your first, that maybe your superpower, but also you
Speaker 1: can sing like a motherfucker. Well that's in the song too.
Speaker 1: It's there's some there's some wailing in second. You just said.
Speaker 1: Not always there. Sometimes it gets snuffed out people, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes it's a struggle. Yeah, when recently, can you think
Speaker 1: of a time when well, I mean right when I
Speaker 1: was starting the process on this album and I was
Speaker 1: starting writing it, I had just finished touring my my
Speaker 1: last album, the Original High. I had also done some
Speaker 1: touring with Queen, and I was just a bit fried.
Speaker 1: I got home and I was like, who, so this
Speaker 1: takes us about or so yeah, and I was just
Speaker 1: like wiped out, and I felt like a little disillusionment
Speaker 1: within the industry. Um, you know, I love music, I
Speaker 1: love performing, I love that interaction with fans. All that
Speaker 1: stuff is the good stuff. But the business side of
Speaker 1: it can get toxic and it can get draining, and
Speaker 1: it can make you just sort of feel inadequate or
Speaker 1: affect your confidence and I think I was at a
Speaker 1: point where it had I felt like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: am I getting enough return on my investment? Because I'm
Speaker 1: working real hard and I don't know if I'm seeing
Speaker 1: the results that are making me feel content. So i'd
Speaker 1: really kind of sit down and like journal and talk
Speaker 1: to friends and kind of get back down to like, Okay,
Speaker 1: why do I do this? What is the real reason?
Speaker 1: Is that a good enough reason? How do I insulate
Speaker 1: my creativity so that I feel like that's a little
Speaker 1: more sacred and that's something that's mine. And there's a
Speaker 1: handful of different ways where I had to things that
Speaker 1: I did to sort of make that happen at that point.
Speaker 1: And I think it's important that we stop here for
Speaker 1: a second and just linger on this. This wasn't a
Speaker 1: moment when you've been brought down to your lowest. Necessarily
Speaker 1: you had just been touring with Queen. You've got to
Speaker 1: be a certain dream come true element to that. If
Speaker 1: we go back and look ten plus years ago, you're
Speaker 1: auditioning for American Idol singing Bohemian lacity. Now you're on
Speaker 1: stage right and these are big crowds, and still you're
Speaker 1: coming away from that thinking, am I getting what I want?
Speaker 1: Am I getting what I need? I think that was
Speaker 1: selected more in my my solo stuff that was sort
Speaker 1: of where that feeling was being generated from. And I
Speaker 1: think in a perfect world, in my fantasy is like
Speaker 1: having a balance between the two is actually really great.
Speaker 1: I like being able to do both and feeling a
Speaker 1: sense of accomplishment from both. And they're very different. With Queen, obviously,
Speaker 1: you have these hits that are iconic, audiences all around
Speaker 1: the world are like singing along with us. It's like
Speaker 1: I'm getting to be on stage with legends. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a big honor, it's a big thrill. But the
Speaker 1: sense of ownership is different. You know, I didn't create
Speaker 1: that music. I didn't originate that music, and so I
Speaker 1: always feel like I'm I'm being more of service when
Speaker 1: I'm with Queen. I'm I'm a catalyst to let Brian
Speaker 1: and Roger do their shows. I'm there to help the
Speaker 1: audience celebrate Freddie Mercury, and it is a great gig
Speaker 1: for that. But with my stuff, if it's satisfies a
Speaker 1: different part of my artistry. You know, these are songs
Speaker 1: that I've created that I put out that have my
Speaker 1: name on them. So let's dig into that side for
Speaker 1: a little bit. You're saying you're coming off the original high.
Speaker 1: This was a record. You'd gone from our c A
Speaker 1: to Warner Brothers, You'd gone to Stockholm to work with
Speaker 1: Max Martin and his crew. Yeah, and that there was
Speaker 1: a group called the Wolf Cousins, which is like a
Speaker 1: writer's collective, and they were great. I spent like two
Speaker 1: months there the dead of winter. It's nice and cold.
Speaker 1: I've spent a lot of time in Sweden and you
Speaker 1: went at the wrong time of year, I think so. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and for those who don't know, when you go
Speaker 1: to Sweden and the dead of winter, you could get
Speaker 1: up at nine ten o'clock in the morning and it's
Speaker 1: pitch black and the sun comes up and then it
Speaker 1: sets it three. Yeah, it's weird. Yeah, I had to
Speaker 1: take those vitamin D pills, you know. But one thing
Speaker 1: that's really interesting about working with this crew is there's
Speaker 1: something right about that match because these are people who
Speaker 1: like they're interested in pop, they're interested in dance, but
Speaker 1: they're also really interested and capable when it comes to
Speaker 1: guitar rock and roll. Yeah, so it should be a
Speaker 1: good catalyst good collection of songwriters and interests for you,
Speaker 1: and it produced a strong record. Yeah. I mean I'm
Speaker 1: a huge fan of that whole group. Um, Max is
Speaker 1: he's genius, you know, He's an amazing hit writer, and
Speaker 1: they're so good and they're so polished, and they have
Speaker 1: they have it sort of dialed into almost like a science,
Speaker 1: like they really know what works. They know it sounds great. Um,
Speaker 1: And so being a part of that was was great.
Speaker 1: Like I felt like, Okay, I'm in really good hands.
Speaker 1: They know what they're doing. They know how to craft
Speaker 1: great pop records. And was it a different process going
Speaker 1: there and working with this collective than albums passed? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a bit different. I mean I think that
Speaker 1: the original I had a little more of a cohesion
Speaker 1: to it because I was working with all of their people,
Speaker 1: you know, Max executive produced it, so sort of like
Speaker 1: he had his crew all over it. And I love
Speaker 1: those songs. They were really good, but I wasn't as
Speaker 1: involved in the process. I wrote with them for two months,
Speaker 1: but to be honest with you, the majority of the
Speaker 1: songs sort of started as other people's songs. You know.
Speaker 1: I'm have added a couple of things here and there,
Speaker 1: but I was less in the driver's seat on that,
Speaker 1: and I was really happy to get in the passenger
Speaker 1: seat with all these amazing guys because I know what
Speaker 1: they do. But again, that's sort of like an exercise
Speaker 1: in trying to be a competitor in the business. It
Speaker 1: felt like a business move to me. It felt like
Speaker 1: I was playing the game and I'm and I'm like, Okay, cool,
Speaker 1: let's play the game. Let's do it. You know, I
Speaker 1: get it. That's top forty. But yeah, at the end
Speaker 1: of it, I've there was a sense of Okay, I
Speaker 1: did that. I played the game. I worked with like
Speaker 1: the best of the best in pop and ghost Town
Speaker 1: turned into a hit, which was awesome. I was really
Speaker 1: excited about that. I love that song. Um and then
Speaker 1: it was like then it kind of tapered off, So
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, And when I got down to like,
Speaker 1: what do I want to do next, I thought to myself, Okay,
Speaker 1: no shade to them, because that was a great experience.
Speaker 1: I loved working with them. They were really sweet too.
Speaker 1: But I want to just do something different. I want
Speaker 1: to go Not only do I want to create different
Speaker 1: sounding music than I've created, but I want to go
Speaker 1: about it diff Really, I don't need to go to
Speaker 1: the best of the best of the best because of
Speaker 1: the name check value. I want to I want to
Speaker 1: start more like grassroots approach on this one. I want
Speaker 1: to like sit in a studio with musicians who play
Speaker 1: instruments and songwriters that I've met and just do this
Speaker 1: sort of my way and kind of start slowly and
Speaker 1: not rush and not be answering to a room like
Speaker 1: a boardroom. I want to just do this from like
Speaker 1: an artist place, a little more organic, right kind of
Speaker 1: the These are the stories that we grow up with
Speaker 1: if you're a Fleetwood Mac fan or if you're a
Speaker 1: led Zeppelin fan. We we went into the room, we
Speaker 1: traded some ideas, nothing really worked, and then somebody started
Speaker 1: playing a guitar riff and that man's name was Slash,
Speaker 1: and Axel heard it and he thought, oh, there's a
Speaker 1: child who's sweet and she's mine. There are lots of
Speaker 1: stories of great songs that come about more accidentally than
Speaker 1: that scientific way that you were talking about. It's also
Speaker 1: the you know, the songs that were created in the
Speaker 1: Swedish camp. It's like really intended for radio. It's like,
Speaker 1: how do we win at radio, and it's look, it's
Speaker 1: like a great business model. It's awesome. Who knows, Maybe
Speaker 1: I'll go back and do more of that kind of
Speaker 1: music at some point. But I guess in a way,
Speaker 1: it's like I wanted to be a part of the
Speaker 1: organic experience that like what you're saying, like that rock
Speaker 1: legends are made out of, like the way you hear,
Speaker 1: what you read, what you you hear about, like from
Speaker 1: an artist's place, Like how does it come just from
Speaker 1: the heart. So let me ask you a question, because
Speaker 1: the other thing that you were talking about being of
Speaker 1: service in Queen, you're being of service with rock legends, right.
Speaker 1: Did that have any effect on your desire to to
Speaker 1: do something a little differently, maybe a little more organic,
Speaker 1: like the way that some of that music was built. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean I think I'm so in love with that
Speaker 1: time period, and I'm so in love with the band,
Speaker 1: and I've heard all these stories and I thought, yeah,
Speaker 1: what if I try it that way? What if I
Speaker 1: try it like my heroes and my my co workers,
Speaker 1: you know. And I I do think that I also
Speaker 1: had this feeling of, like, you know what, I'm in
Speaker 1: the driver's seat on this one, even if I don't
Speaker 1: land a top forty hit single, I will feel more
Speaker 1: content and a sense of accomplishment knowing that I did
Speaker 1: it my way. You had to nurture your soul. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you had to. Really, you were saying, guards your creativity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one was for me. So tell me about it.
Speaker 1: How did it start? What happened? Um? What do you
Speaker 1: want to know? Well, I mean literally, how did it start?
Speaker 1: What were the first songs that came together? And and
Speaker 1: who did you want to work with. I heard a
Speaker 1: song called Electric Love by Burns and I fell in
Speaker 1: love with it. I thought it was amazing, and I
Speaker 1: was like, who wrote this song? I looked him up
Speaker 1: and his name was Tommy English and I found I
Speaker 1: don't know how I got in touch with him. I
Speaker 1: might have written him on Instagram. I'm not sure. It's
Speaker 1: interesting that you mentioned this song because this is a
Speaker 1: song that really walks that line that that a lot
Speaker 1: of younger artists are walking in between pop or radio
Speaker 1: and something a little more organic or indie. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a super catchy song, but it does feel different. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean we sat down and there was like I
Speaker 1: think ill C was the other writer. Um, and she
Speaker 1: got behind the drum kit, and Tommy and I started
Speaker 1: looking at like guitar riffs, and I was like, I
Speaker 1: want to think of like sort of daft punk meets
Speaker 1: Prince meets I don't know what. Like, we just started
Speaker 1: like listening to music and just kind of jamming, and
Speaker 1: that's how it was born. And I and I we
Speaker 1: came up with a melody first, and then we kind
Speaker 1: of looked at each other what was it about? And
Speaker 1: we were like, let's do something kind of empowering, something strong,
Speaker 1: something you'd want to like strut too. And are we
Speaker 1: talking about the origins of Superpowers? Right? No? I mean
Speaker 1: you said strong and to And immediately I thought, either
Speaker 1: we're talking about the opening of Saturday Night, Pep or
Speaker 1: your song Superpower? Yeah, all one and the same. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I'm not the only one who thinks this ship
Speaker 1: ain't okay, you keep it down there. We ain't going.
Speaker 1: Let's stick with this song for a second, because I
Speaker 1: was really struck by the opening lines there's something missing,
Speaker 1: and I'm pissed and I've got something to say, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: what's missing? I think it was that feeling, that feeling
Speaker 1: of like it's like, how do I articulate it. That
Speaker 1: feeling of like pride in my work in a way,
Speaker 1: you know, it's the thing, this is the thing. I
Speaker 1: don't want to like slag off anything I've done in
Speaker 1: the past, because that's not really what this is about.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's just wanted a different sense of accomplishment,
Speaker 1: a different feeling, a different version of it. And let's
Speaker 1: make perfectly clear that that's okay. Because again, lots of
Speaker 1: the legends that we love, whether we're talking about the
Speaker 1: Beatles or Freddie Mercury or Madonna or David Bowie, thought Okay,
Speaker 1: I did what I did already. Now I'm ready to
Speaker 1: do something else, the reinvention thing, and I've always been
Speaker 1: in love with that. That's you know, my favorite artists
Speaker 1: there that way, right. Yeah, So then let's go to uh,
Speaker 1: our second verse here. I know I'm not the only
Speaker 1: one who thinks that ship's not okay. I wanted to
Speaker 1: reflect sort of the state of the you know, the
Speaker 1: world a little bit, the country, my community, that feeling
Speaker 1: of like angst like this isn't right, this isn't sitting
Speaker 1: right with me, um, you know, and that could apply
Speaker 1: to a lot of different things right now. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's funny. No matter which way you lean politically, it
Speaker 1: does feel like shi, it's not okay. Yeah, we're very
Speaker 1: good at making each other feel like it's not okay
Speaker 1: right now exactly. This is interesting And I want you
Speaker 1: to tell me just a little more about this, because
Speaker 1: this is a motivating factor for what you're doing now.
Speaker 1: Is having the mission to make people feel stronger, to
Speaker 1: give people pride, to give people confidence. I think that
Speaker 1: having that as like a baseline for this whole project
Speaker 1: that felt important to me. Um, you know, not just
Speaker 1: again the intention of not just writing a hit, but
Speaker 1: writing something that will help people, will make people feel
Speaker 1: good um or cathartic or whatever the emotion is, you know.
Speaker 1: And I I think Superpower has the power to do that.
Speaker 1: And you were saying daft punk meets Prince meets I
Speaker 1: don't know what, um, But but you've you've mentioned before
Speaker 1: that the Prince was a guiding factor throughout the process.
Speaker 1: Am I right about that? He's one of many? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously Prince is like Prince, but it's also
Speaker 1: sort of genre like it's just like falling into funk
Speaker 1: more and and and listening to a lot of that
Speaker 1: and falling into more soul music from the seventies, you know,
Speaker 1: seventies motown is this ship. It's great. I think as
Speaker 1: a whole, I think Velvet is more soulful than I've
Speaker 1: ever gone. And maybe that just has to do with
Speaker 1: growing up a little bit and being a little more
Speaker 1: comfortable with my voice and in my own body, because again,
Speaker 1: we all know you can sing, as previously stated, like
Speaker 1: a motherfucker, but in a more unadorned setting, there's a
Speaker 1: little more room, there's a little more air for you
Speaker 1: and what you can do on this Yeah, it's less formulaic,
Speaker 1: I think, and vocally you don't have to go for
Speaker 1: the rafters for us to notice you. You can just sing.
Speaker 1: I think that that has come with age. I think
Speaker 1: that I think if I look back on like my
Speaker 1: experience on American Idol, I was really screaming a lot.
Speaker 1: You know, It's like I guess, um, I think that
Speaker 1: there was a youthful, you're showing off, show off, slash,
Speaker 1: trying too hard kind of thing in moments, and I
Speaker 1: think as I've gotten older, I just you trust the
Speaker 1: melody a little bit more, you know, you just kind
Speaker 1: of like you realize that that that that that doesn't
Speaker 1: always really draw in an audience, it can it can
Speaker 1: actually have the adverse effect of pushing them away a
Speaker 1: little bit. That's interesting. So I'm just, I'm just I'm
Speaker 1: growing a little bit. I think that I wonder if
Speaker 1: you can tell us a little more about the side
Speaker 1: talking about Vince. Yeah, I mean, I mean you're you're
Speaker 1: you're pointing to the classic inspiration, right, Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that the project is very vintage sounding, very vintage influenced,
Speaker 1: and I I knew I wanted to break up the
Speaker 1: release into two parts just as a way to sort
Speaker 1: of extend the whole experience, and so I thought I
Speaker 1: would name it SIDEA Side B. But you you didn't
Speaker 1: grow up in the vinyl era, right, not necessarily, But
Speaker 1: I grew up with vinyl. I mean, my father had
Speaker 1: so much vinyl in the house, and my mother too.
Speaker 1: I mean I actually have some boxes of her old
Speaker 1: vinyl that she's given me. And that's what I grew
Speaker 1: up hearing. That was my first idea of what music was.
Speaker 1: So in a way that like those records that I
Speaker 1: heard around the house were like the building blocks of
Speaker 1: what music is to me. Do I remember this, right?
Speaker 1: Your dad was a college DJ and more than a
Speaker 1: bit of a Deadhead. Yeah, more than a bit. I
Speaker 1: don't know how to compare him to other Deadheads, but
Speaker 1: he definitely would like dad's gone for the week. He's
Speaker 1: gone to a grateful Dead concert with his buddies. Even
Speaker 1: though the concerpt is probably one night. I'm like, he's
Speaker 1: gone for a week. Okay, So when you grow up,
Speaker 1: your dad would take off for a week as well, Yeah,
Speaker 1: a couple times a year. Maybe your dad was cool.
Speaker 1: He was cool, he still is. Yeah, So you grew
Speaker 1: up with the idea that weren't your band. I never
Speaker 1: really got into the music now, but I recognize a
Speaker 1: couple of the songs here and there, and I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that reminds me of my father. But you grew up
Speaker 1: with the idea that fandom inspires you to go take
Speaker 1: a trip to see your favorite band. Yeah, that's true,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of cool. Yeah and tied. All right,
Speaker 1: let's talk about that for a second, because now you've
Speaker 1: opened the door for me to ask you about being
Speaker 1: in hair. Yeah, when you were in your early twenties
Speaker 1: in Germany. In Germany, that was a very transformative experience.
Speaker 1: I was pretty green before going into that, I was
Speaker 1: kind of innocent. I definitely lost some innocence out there
Speaker 1: in Berlin. Wow, a place where a place where much
Speaker 1: innocence can be lost. Yeah, it's it's kind of made
Speaker 1: for that. Yeah. So your first Rolling Stone cover story
Speaker 1: ten years ago in two thousand and nine, and I
Speaker 1: quote in Germany, he started smoke pot and tried ecstasy
Speaker 1: for the first time, he dyed his hair black, went
Speaker 1: to his first sex club. Quote. I was always obsessed
Speaker 1: with the sixties and the experience of living through that time.
Speaker 1: I wanted so badly to be the hippie in the show.
Speaker 1: We all yeah, and we were like we were living
Speaker 1: a version of the of the characters we were playing.
Speaker 1: For sure. Skipped right over the first sex club. Well,
Speaker 1: free love, you know, it's all very hair um. Yes,
Speaker 1: the late sixties early seventies is just like that's I
Speaker 1: feel like we're actually living in a time now that
Speaker 1: reflects that so well. I mean, look at Nixon and
Speaker 1: how he was with all the bs that he pulled,
Speaker 1: and how he was hated and and impeached. And we
Speaker 1: have a very strong counterculture movement right now that's creating
Speaker 1: a strong divide with the generation above them. I think
Speaker 1: we're looking at like people really like being very sensitive
Speaker 1: to civil rights issues right now, relations, gender, sexuality, all
Speaker 1: the stuff that's sort of the hippie movement was exploring.
Speaker 1: So it's there's a lot of parallels right now. I
Speaker 1: certainly see what you mean, because it was a time
Speaker 1: of people struggling for freedom and also a division in
Speaker 1: the country as you as you come out. Yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot has changed in the ten years since for your
Speaker 1: entertainment um and and this is interesting because today, would
Speaker 1: there be any question if you're competing on a music
Speaker 1: competition show and your gender identity or your sexuality isn't
Speaker 1: down the straight and narrow, would you hide it for
Speaker 1: a second? I think, I think it is really different.
Speaker 1: I think the times have changed. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: we beyond just the queer community. It's like identity politics
Speaker 1: are like we're steeped in it. We're in the social
Speaker 1: media age. That's like what everybody's about. They're like, well,
Speaker 1: what are you? Who are you? But there's such a
Speaker 1: difference between say, what you went through in idea that
Speaker 1: you should think about your sexuality and your career and
Speaker 1: the someone like little Nossas who came out on Twitter
Speaker 1: by saying, wow, you know some of you know and
Speaker 1: some of you care, and some of you don't, and
Speaker 1: and it was such a simple like this is who
Speaker 1: I am and the times we're living in right now.
Speaker 1: I think, especially the young people are kind of like
Speaker 1: it's old news, Like they just don't it's not a
Speaker 1: big taboo thing anymore, which is great. I'm so happy.
Speaker 1: It's the way it should have always been. You know.
Speaker 1: It's the way that I always tried to function. It's
Speaker 1: the way that I always kind of saw the world,
Speaker 1: to be honest with you. You know, I grew up
Speaker 1: in a household where they were really accepting, really liberal,
Speaker 1: and then I went into the musical theater world, which
Speaker 1: is you know, gay people everywhere. So it just really
Speaker 1: wasn't like ever a thing. It was never really a
Speaker 1: roadblock for me. I didn't get bullied. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe in seventh grade a little bit of bullying, but
Speaker 1: kind of who doesn't get bullied in middle school? Um,
Speaker 1: I had a good Um. I'm actually one of the
Speaker 1: lucky ones. I never really had to sort of explain
Speaker 1: my sexuality. I never had to sort of deal with
Speaker 1: bigot's face to face or even you know, over the internet.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, when I was on American Idol,
Speaker 1: coming off of that show and being in the media,
Speaker 1: that's the first time I experienced a lot of this, like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's certainly are right, a lot of people that aren't
Speaker 1: into this, that don't get it, that have fears and
Speaker 1: biases and and and hate in their hearts towards anybody
Speaker 1: that's different. I was the first time I experienced a
Speaker 1: lot of that energy. And just to remind people, because
Speaker 1: it was ten years ago, it's not exactly something you
Speaker 1: were hiding. I don't think any of us watched you
Speaker 1: on American Idol and said I'm not sure. I'm really confused.
Speaker 1: But you also weren't advertising your sexuality. I've remember thinking
Speaker 1: to myself, right when we did like the Top thirteen reveal,
Speaker 1: we had an event like on a carpet and there
Speaker 1: was media, and that was the first time I'd ever
Speaker 1: done thing like that. The night before, some blog had
Speaker 1: found a bunch of photos of me and her next
Speaker 1: boyfriend from Burning Man from all these events that we've
Speaker 1: gone too, because we he you know, that was my
Speaker 1: first relationship. We were kind of into that whole like
Speaker 1: subculture hippie California hippie scene. So we would have dressed
Speaker 1: up like freaks and making out and having a great time.
Speaker 1: And the pictures went public and I was like, oh, well, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, and I remember I wasn't freaking out. I
Speaker 1: was like, well, there there that is you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: the Internet, it's that's what it does. Um. And the
Speaker 1: publicist for Idol called me and she said, I just
Speaker 1: want you to know that this has happened. What do
Speaker 1: you want to do? And I'm like, what do you mean.
Speaker 1: She's like, well, it's up to you. I'm like, so
Speaker 1: you guys don't care, right, and she's like, no, we
Speaker 1: don't care. It's up to you, which was great and
Speaker 1: it was really good to hear that off the bat,
Speaker 1: that there was no bias from them. And I said, okay,
Speaker 1: well yeah, I mean it's me. It's like, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to deny it. And so somebody asked me about
Speaker 1: another carpet iment. Yep, that's me in the pictures. Wow, game,
Speaker 1: I'm king, but I can't hit me out. I guess
Speaker 1: I didn't realize at the time that I needed to
Speaker 1: say I am gay because I thought, well, that's yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm making out with a guy. I'm gay.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know. I just didn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize that the power and the need for the proclamation.
Speaker 1: Do you think there was a need for the or
Speaker 1: was on hindsight, I'm like, oh, that would have been
Speaker 1: an interesting moved off. I didn't have my head wrapped
Speaker 1: around what being a celebrity was yet. And it's a
Speaker 1: whole other playbook. It's a whole other set of rules
Speaker 1: thinking about how you look to the public your I wasn't.
Speaker 1: I wasn't that. I wasn't thinking about that. I never
Speaker 1: had to. I was a theater kid that would like
Speaker 1: go to rehearsal and learn material and then when the
Speaker 1: lights came on on stage, I put on a costume
Speaker 1: and I play a character like that was that was
Speaker 1: what I came from. Sure. And also this was something
Speaker 1: you've been looking for, this kind of attention, But when
Speaker 1: it arrives, it's like WHOA. And I don't think people
Speaker 1: like from the outside, I've just stood alongside it, right,
Speaker 1: it's stood alongside someone like you when a wall of
Speaker 1: cameras just arrive out of nowhere, and that just happens, right, weird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the paparazzi thing is actually sort of died down
Speaker 1: because of social media. But I remember ten years ago
Speaker 1: it was intense. It's weird, just so all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there's a scrum of people, what yeah, out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: and they all have cameras of different shapes and sizes,
Speaker 1: and they're loud, and they're rude. A lot of them
Speaker 1: are anyways to try to get a reaction exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're doing their job right, right, Well, that's kind of you.
Speaker 1: It is their job. I don't like the job, but
Speaker 1: it's it's their job. But it's not really when you're
Speaker 1: when you're thinking about this, when you're craving success, we're
Speaker 1: craving stardom. And I don't know which one you were
Speaker 1: craving and you tell me, no, I don't think I
Speaker 1: thought to mess up. Oh I want to get famous.
Speaker 1: That wasn't really So what did you want? I wanted
Speaker 1: a shot, I wanted new opportunities. I want to you know,
Speaker 1: I'd kind of like I've been in the theater world.
Speaker 1: I was doing a musical in l A and I
Speaker 1: remember my thing that kind of motivated me to feel
Speaker 1: dissatisfied with it was that I was in the chorus
Speaker 1: for work for them for over five years, and I
Speaker 1: was under studying the male lead and I couldn't seem
Speaker 1: to get promoted. Like one guy would leave the guy
Speaker 1: that's playing the part, and I'd be like, okay, so
Speaker 1: am I up for it? Now? No another they brought
Speaker 1: another guy and happened twice, and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: funk this, What the funk am I doing? You know,
Speaker 1: like why am I not getting a break here? And
Speaker 1: so I kind of thought, I just need to go
Speaker 1: look for something else. And and I knew that that
Speaker 1: deep down my dream, my real dream was to make
Speaker 1: my own music and to be my own boss. And
Speaker 1: I thought, how do I do that? And to me,
Speaker 1: you know, the Idole audition was announced, and I thought,
Speaker 1: I've been watching that show for a really long time.
Speaker 1: That would be cool. That would probably open some doors.
Speaker 1: Even within the theater world, it would probably open some doors.
Speaker 1: So hey, let's try it the theater world. It's not
Speaker 1: something you've gone back to, not yet, but maybe someday.
Speaker 1: What does that mean? I'm not ruling it out. I
Speaker 1: mean I love the theater. That's my That's what I
Speaker 1: grew up doing that. I mean, these opportunities must come
Speaker 1: knocking every once in AI. Yeah, there's been a few,
Speaker 1: but it hasn't really been like the right thing at
Speaker 1: the right time, because it's two it's it's both the
Speaker 1: right thing and the right time that I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to think what the right thing would be. What's the ship?
Speaker 1: Come on? What's the show you want to do? I
Speaker 1: don't think it's written yet. I wanted to see you.
Speaker 1: I want to do. I want to originate something. I
Speaker 1: want to create something. I want to I don't want
Speaker 1: to just be like the fourth guy that's played the role,
Speaker 1: because you know how it works on Broadway to they
Speaker 1: now they do like they open the show and then
Speaker 1: it's been running for a year and they want to
Speaker 1: keep selling tickets, so they put like, you know, so
Speaker 1: and so in, and then they put so and so,
Speaker 1: and then the line of of so and so particular
Speaker 1: particular people who have an audience that hasn't got into
Speaker 1: the show, and sometimes it gets a little desperate some
Speaker 1: of the casting. So I just I don't want to
Speaker 1: be a part of that system. I kind of want
Speaker 1: to be something. I want. I'd rather create something with
Speaker 1: a director for the first time, and a choreographer and
Speaker 1: a musical director and a cast and be a part
Speaker 1: of a something new. I mean it's interesting. We are
Speaker 1: seeing more new shows, um, and we're seeing a success
Speaker 1: around original music, say from either Hamilton's or The Greatest Showman. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like these are very successful albums, dud. They're very different,
Speaker 1: but one of them is close to that idea of
Speaker 1: it to a movie, The Greatest Showman. But it's close
Speaker 1: to that idea of hey, there could be an original
Speaker 1: Broadway show that might work for you. I could see
Speaker 1: you doing that. I it's something that I think might
Speaker 1: happen in the future. I mean it's I have so
Speaker 1: many friends that are in the theater, um, some of
Speaker 1: my dear dearest friends that I've had for years, or
Speaker 1: like here in New York working. I think if it
Speaker 1: was the right thing at the right time, I would
Speaker 1: definitely be interested. So I just want to ask a
Speaker 1: little more about Velvet Side A. UM. And first we
Speaker 1: said Side B is coming, and is Side BE different
Speaker 1: than Side A? Is it a different mood, a different vibe.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's a little more arbitrary than that.
Speaker 1: I think the album is pretty cohesive, To be honest
Speaker 1: with you. The one thing it is not is it's
Speaker 1: not like, oh, these are B sides. They don't they're
Speaker 1: not as good. It's not it's not that it's not
Speaker 1: a B side like that. It's just the other half.
Speaker 1: But it's not like side as the party side, and
Speaker 1: Side B is the mellow meditations. Not necessarily. No, it's
Speaker 1: varied like Side A is, and like a vinyl album
Speaker 1: would be. Yeah, right, yeah, Okay, are you still recording
Speaker 1: for Side B? Now? I think I have everything recorded.
Speaker 1: It's just not all quite totally finished. There's like two
Speaker 1: songs that are finished for maybe three that are finished
Speaker 1: for that side. You said that with this project, you
Speaker 1: were the one in the driver's seat. You're the A
Speaker 1: and R for this project, yea, which has been a
Speaker 1: learning experience, and you told me about how Superpower came
Speaker 1: to be. But how did you go about finding the
Speaker 1: rest of the songs, the rest of the collaborators. For sure,
Speaker 1: I definitely had a lot of help from my publisher,
Speaker 1: which is Warner Chapel. There's a woman named Katie Vinton
Speaker 1: who was very instrumental on this and set me up
Speaker 1: with a lot of amazing I basically had a meeting
Speaker 1: with her, played her some um ideas some other artists
Speaker 1: that I like somewhere, just to give her the idea
Speaker 1: of the direction I wanted to go in. And I
Speaker 1: had like a couple songs that I had kind of
Speaker 1: put together on my own, like with other writers that
Speaker 1: I had I had found, and she heard that, heard
Speaker 1: the references, and then put me in the room with
Speaker 1: a lot of great people. So she definitely was instrumental
Speaker 1: on this whole thing and put you in the room
Speaker 1: for a lot of great people to sit down and
Speaker 1: work on. Yeah, yeah, producer, writer's sessions. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: what was the moment where things really clicked for you?
Speaker 1: When did you know this is working? When we've had superpower?
Speaker 1: That that was sort of like, this is something I
Speaker 1: knew that. It was a four year process. So it's
Speaker 1: actually kind of fuzzy how at all the chronological order
Speaker 1: of it all. But I met Steve Booker, who was
Speaker 1: really great and was paired up with a writer named
Speaker 1: Kess Cross and he comes from the R and B world,
Speaker 1: which I thought was really interesting. I said, how do
Speaker 1: we let's like lean into the soul a little bit.
Speaker 1: And he's a great writer, a great singer, So that
Speaker 1: was really an important collaboration. And Booker is like he
Speaker 1: did the Duffy album Rock Ferry and he so he's
Speaker 1: got this organic kind of sixties whole britt thing going on,
Speaker 1: which is great. And when you say it was a
Speaker 1: four year process, was that a little more shall we
Speaker 1: say leisurely? Did you have more time to figure things
Speaker 1: out and experiment than Yeah? Yeah, I kind of made
Speaker 1: sure I had that. I took the time like I
Speaker 1: I didn't rush as a as a point, and I also,
Speaker 1: you know, I also in order to insulate my creativity
Speaker 1: and to do and to get what I wanted out
Speaker 1: of this, I had to make some business changes. I
Speaker 1: had to I changed management, I changed labels, I changed
Speaker 1: like I had to move around a bit find where
Speaker 1: this would fit and where this would fly. And that
Speaker 1: was a bit of a process that take. That's not easy,
Speaker 1: that's not quick. No. I mean I think anybody who's
Speaker 1: anybody who's ever changed anything, would you change apartments or
Speaker 1: houses or jobs or anything. It can be a little traumatic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't have trauma. I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: just more of like a upheaval, Yeah, and more of
Speaker 1: a sense of just it just slowed things down about
Speaker 1: I mean, it just was like an obstacle, Like it
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, we gotta I gotta figure this out,
Speaker 1: and I gotta figure this out. And you know, the
Speaker 1: other thing too, is that, um, it's really easy for
Speaker 1: people in the business to sort of I want to
Speaker 1: do the obvious, to take the lowest risk approach to things, um.
Speaker 1: And usually that's because of money. And usually it's people
Speaker 1: that do that. It's like a lack of imagination. Um.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of people that I've encountered that
Speaker 1: I actually didn't end up working with wanted to do
Speaker 1: just the obvious thing, like the pop top forty formulaic. Oh,
Speaker 1: traps really big. Now you should put a trap beat
Speaker 1: on this song. I'm like, but I'm that's not me
Speaker 1: that that's not authentic. Yeah, I know that's trendy, but
Speaker 1: it's I don't want to do that, you know. And
Speaker 1: so I had to sort of push back on a
Speaker 1: lot of people. And what happens when you start pushing
Speaker 1: back on a lot of people is they think, Oh,
Speaker 1: he doesn't get it, or oh he's difficult, or oh
Speaker 1: he's not gonna win because he's not doing what's trendy
Speaker 1: right now, and I'm like, well, so be it. It's
Speaker 1: funny that it brings us to track two Velvets Siday.
Speaker 1: The stranger you are, the stranger you are, the more
Speaker 1: they want to put you in a box. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the stranger you are. They want to they want to
Speaker 1: keep you locked in the dark. The stranger you are,
Speaker 1: They're they're gonna try to tear you apart. It's funny.
Speaker 1: When I heard that again, I thought, he gets to
Speaker 1: be whoever he wants, right, He's Adam Lambert. He already
Speaker 1: fought this battle. But it sounds a little bit like
Speaker 1: this was the battle to make the music that you
Speaker 1: wanted to make. Ye in a way, yeah, And I mean, look,
Speaker 1: some of this is like me having to kind of
Speaker 1: affirm it to myself. I went to a couple of
Speaker 1: different writing sessions with great, great talented people where what
Speaker 1: we ended up with at the end was something that
Speaker 1: sounded just sort of like everybody else's song. Right now,
Speaker 1: I would like walk away from that, lesten be like,
Speaker 1: how have I so easily lead? Why did I just
Speaker 1: fall into that? And that's how, you know, has to
Speaker 1: do with a lot of you know, you're in a
Speaker 1: room with strangers you haven't met before, and you want
Speaker 1: to like to just like go with the flow, and
Speaker 1: you want to be positive, and you want to like
Speaker 1: walk away having finished something and not saying no at
Speaker 1: every turn. So some of it's just trying to be
Speaker 1: a good team player. But yeah, it's just so it's
Speaker 1: so easy to fall into the same thing that everybody
Speaker 1: else is doing, and it takes a little bit of
Speaker 1: extra work and discipline and sort of clarity in order
Speaker 1: to fight against that and do your own thing. Let
Speaker 1: me ask you about two other songs Overclow I'm familiar
Speaker 1: with after Quo. One is overclo. One of the car
Speaker 1: writers on their Amy Cuney, came up with this word. Um.
Speaker 1: We actually wrote the lyrics of that song via text message.
Speaker 1: We had worked together previously. We I did a writing
Speaker 1: camp in the south of France with a bunch of
Speaker 1: writers at a castle, which was really cool and it
Speaker 1: sounds like pretty tough work. Well, I mean it actually
Speaker 1: sounds on paper like a glamorous thing, but the castle
Speaker 1: actually was like there was no heat, it was freezing,
Speaker 1: was dusty as fuck. They only had like shitty boxed
Speaker 1: wine I'm sorry you only had boxed. He was not
Speaker 1: as glamorous as it sounds. But I worked with some
Speaker 1: incredible writers and I met this woman named Amy Cuney,
Speaker 1: and she's very like she's like a poet with her lyrics,
Speaker 1: like sort of like throwback style, like bit cryptic, a
Speaker 1: bit interesting, and so we were I had gotten this
Speaker 1: track from Butch Walker because I had been working with
Speaker 1: him a bit, and he had this instrumental that he
Speaker 1: had started that I was obsessed with with that baseline,
Speaker 1: and I was like, Okay, I want to write to
Speaker 1: this and just decide. Note most of these songs were
Speaker 1: songs that were like developed in the room, like composed
Speaker 1: on the spot. This is the only one tremendously talented.
Speaker 1: You have a band called the Marvelous Three. If I remember,
Speaker 1: he's brilliant, and he is such a catchy way with
Speaker 1: hooks and with that again that sweet spot in between
Speaker 1: pop and rock. Yeah, and he's also like the sweetest,
Speaker 1: loveliest guy. He had this track that he had already started,
Speaker 1: which um, and this is the only one of the
Speaker 1: songs that kind of came about this way. It's very interesting.
Speaker 1: So I had the instrumental, I had a session book
Speaker 1: with Emminique, who's a British R and B pop guy,
Speaker 1: queer really fabulous, some hits under his belt. Got together
Speaker 1: with him and he and I wrote this incredible melody
Speaker 1: to the song, and we had some like words in place,
Speaker 1: but I wasn't quite into them. And then I sent
Speaker 1: the song to Amy, having met her in France, knowing
Speaker 1: that she would come up with something really clever, and
Speaker 1: so we were texting back and forth and I was like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just want to I kind of want to write
Speaker 1: I just seem like a black mirror episode and I
Speaker 1: was like, I want to write a song about how
Speaker 1: technology can kind of creep its way into a relationship
Speaker 1: and how it can become like you're like in a
Speaker 1: three way relationship with the person and the technology. And
Speaker 1: so we started kind of riffing back and forth. I
Speaker 1: was like, what about if it's like we're just like
Speaker 1: visually describing like the screen, and like how this you're
Speaker 1: at night next to your partner in bed and there's
Speaker 1: this screen and you can see the light of their screen.
Speaker 1: And she was like, we'll call it the over glow
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, I like it. So he
Speaker 1: wrote the whole song ironically via text message. So you're
Speaker 1: writing about the effective technology on our lives using technology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's this really interesting lyric and we co wrote
Speaker 1: it back and forth on text and I went into
Speaker 1: Butch with the lyrics and he went, oh, I like it,
Speaker 1: and we recorded it and lover Boy. That's another one
Speaker 1: with Tommy English actually was that was written in Nashville.
Speaker 1: I went out there for a week, brought my dog.
Speaker 1: Was the first time my dog and I have traveled together,
Speaker 1: which was really sweet. Wait let's pause here, how how
Speaker 1: long have you had this dog? I had just gotten
Speaker 1: the dog about four months beforehand. So at Pharaoh Egyptian
Speaker 1: Prince King Pharaoh UM. He's a Chihuahua Basni mix. He's
Speaker 1: about fifteen pounds and he sort of he's kind of bipolar.
Speaker 1: Like in one minute he'll be like super alpha guarding
Speaker 1: the guarding the castle. You know, he's very like barks
Speaker 1: at abody, making noise, very proud, and then the next
Speaker 1: minute he's like a like a lap dog pussycat. He's
Speaker 1: very funny. So the two of you travel to Nashville.
Speaker 1: We went to Nashville UM and worked with Tommy for
Speaker 1: like a week in a studio that he had done there.
Speaker 1: He his buddy Angelo had a studio. Angelo is this
Speaker 1: guy that was like really instrumental in breaking Kings of Leon.
Speaker 1: Actually he had all these amazing guitars in his studio.
Speaker 1: And and this guy named Gabe, another co writer that
Speaker 1: was there that Tommy knew. We just we did a
Speaker 1: handful of songs that week, and that one just felt great.
Speaker 1: We loved that one. You played the oscars, Are you
Speaker 1: in danger of running out of pinch me? This is
Speaker 1: real moments? I don't know. Um, I I loved that
Speaker 1: that was that was so surreal. Yeah, And I kind
Speaker 1: of had to downplay it to myself as it was
Speaker 1: happening because I knew the weight of it. So I
Speaker 1: sort of like I was like, yeah, whatever, you know
Speaker 1: my head, you know. I kind of just talked myself down.
Speaker 1: You tried to, Yeah, whatever the I had so I
Speaker 1: had to or else I would have been freaking out.
Speaker 1: I mean, walking the red carpet, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is a moment. Okay, there's a phenomenon. And I
Speaker 1: wonder if this holds true for you, where actors can
Speaker 1: get star struck in front of musicians, The musicians can
Speaker 1: get star struck in front of actors. I buy it.
Speaker 1: I believe that, And I'm I love film and television.
Speaker 1: I love watching the art of actors and directors, and
Speaker 1: I love it. I'm a big movie film TV guy.
Speaker 1: I don't really read anymore. I watch. So I'm a
Speaker 1: big fan of a lot of actors and to see
Speaker 1: them all out there in front of me was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is this is a big one who took your
Speaker 1: breath away. Well, seeing like Lady Gaga and Rommi next
Speaker 1: to each other in the front row was kind of
Speaker 1: like super iconic, you know. Um and obviously you know
Speaker 1: with Queen being there because of the film being nominated
Speaker 1: in all the amazing stuff that was going on around that,
Speaker 1: and Rammy. I'd met Rammy a handful of times, did
Speaker 1: a scene with him in the movie, be so like
Speaker 1: there was this inside track to him. And then also
Speaker 1: like I worked with Lady Gaga years ago on my
Speaker 1: first album. You know, I'm not we're not like buddies,
Speaker 1: but like we've seen each other at a handful of
Speaker 1: different things and it's always a lovely reunion. So I
Speaker 1: was like, I saw two people that I have like
Speaker 1: a point of reference with and I also saw Farrell
Speaker 1: out in the audience, who I also worked with years ago,
Speaker 1: and Queen Latifa was by him, and I remember meeting
Speaker 1: her at his studio, and there was just people that
Speaker 1: I've kind of like encountered along the way and into
Speaker 1: that how ground you in the moment because you could
Speaker 1: look out and see folks you did not. I didn't
Speaker 1: look in the audience until the end because I didn't
Speaker 1: want to get star struck. I didn't want to wig out,
Speaker 1: So I just sort of focused on Brian and Roger
Speaker 1: because I've performed with them zillions of times and that's
Speaker 1: comfortable for me. And I just kind of looked at
Speaker 1: the lights, you know, just focus focus on the lights.
Speaker 1: I kind of looked at it like almost like an
Speaker 1: acting exercise, and that like, just tell the story, tell
Speaker 1: the story. Love, I don't be well. Thank you, man,
Speaker 1: I mean, thank you for giving us that insight into
Speaker 1: your mind and Velvet side, Hey, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for being on Inside the Studio. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Inside the Studio is a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, check out the
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Speaker 1: your podcasts,