For Your Entertainment

全米年間視聴率No.1を誇る超人気TV番組『アメリカン・アイドル』が生んだ最大の衝撃！驚異的な歌唱力と最強の高音ファルセットで“神の声域を持つ世紀のヴォーカリスト”と絶賛される規格外大型新人アダム・ランバート。本作はデビュー・アルバムのEU盤仕様で、ボーナス・トラック4曲を追加収録（「Can't Let You Go」は国内盤未収録。他3曲は国内盤ボーナス・トラックと同様）、ジャケット写真のアートワークを変えてのリリースとなる。

With Adam Lambert, American Idol finally got a finalist who was completely, utterly contemporary, aware of what's hip in music and culture and aware of how music is made and consumed in 2009, never seeming to try to follow fads or set trends, just embodying the time. Mercifully, he came in second to Kris Allen, for if he came in first he may have had to tame his self-styled glamazon ways. A second place finish allowed Lambert to come out of the closet and indulge in his penchant for theater on his debut, For Your Entertainment -- which isn't quite the same thing as camp, for if Adam Lambert is anything, he's earnest about his dress-up, never winking at the audience because he doesn't think there's much funny about his glitter and mascara: that's just what pop stars are supposed to do. He's learned that by listening to his stacks of Queen and Bowie records, from watching old MTV videos on YouTube, from living in a present that always competes with the ever-present past, so he takes it all at face value, mixing up arena rock guitars, new wave, disco, operatic overdubs with a constant electro pulse, glassy modern R&B, and the vague Euro strains of new millennium teen pop. All this makes For Your Entertainment very, very modern in a way few mainstream pop albums are in 2009, whether they're products of the American Idol/19 machine or not: Max Martin, Dr. Luke, Rivers Cuomo, P!nk, Lady GaGa, Linda Perry, Ryan Tedder, Muse's Matthew Bellamy, and Justin Hawkins of the Darkness all elbow each other for space here, creating cheerful genre-bending where Sweet gives way to the Scissor Sisters, and it's never, ever necessary for a listener to recognize the allusions, either the intentional or accidental. All the heavy-hitters here write to Adam's image -- GaGa wisely goes so far as to keep the object of his affection male -- and they give him some truly terrific pop tunes: Hawkins' glorious, goofy opener "Music Again," a strange dead ringer for Aldo Nova; Dr. Luke's cool strutting title track; Bellamy's shimmering smoothed-out Radiohead "Soaked"; P!nk's pained "Whataya Want from Me"; Cuomo's surging "Pick U Up," which could have fit on Raditude; Tedder's typically icy alienation "Sleepwalker"; and Lady GaGa's terrific disco "Fever." Lambert sounds larger than life on these, just like he wants to be, and if there's no sense of danger here -- whenever he dons his leather and his girlfriends put on their stripper heels, it's playacting drama club kids getting a kick out of their adopted roles -- at least there's a lot of pure pop pleasure here, more than any immediate post-Idol album has ever delivered.|

まず、日本に蔓延中の〈女性に人気のもっともセクシーな男〉という誤解を訂正しておかなければ。というのも、彼が人気を博している理由のひとつは大胆不敵にもゲイ・オーラを出しまくっているから。同性の恋人がいると公言し、ステージでは男性ダンサーとキスまでやらかす暴走ぶりで、いわば男性版レディ・ガガのような存在なのだ。ご存知〈アメリカン・アイドル〉出身の彼だが、このデビュー作はもはやそんなスタート地点を超えた存在感で押しまくる。しかも驚くべき布陣──そのガガにピンクにロブ・カヴァロにライアン・テダーにリヴァース・クオモ（ウィーザー）にマシュー・ベラミー（ミューズ）などを引き連れて。全編で煌びやかなロック&ポップ&シアトリカルな楽曲を、中性的な自分色に染め上げている。
bounce (C)村上ひさし