“I Still Don’t Feel Like I Fit In,” Adam Lambert Looks Back on What’s Changed Since ‘Idol’
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In an interview with Variety, Adam Lamber talks about what’s changed since he did American Idol in 2009, ten years ago.
Talk to me about being an openly gay artist in 2019 versus 2009. The last time we spoke you likened coming out to “being thrown into a pot of boiling water.”
It’s a totally different landscape. There is much more visibility so it doesn’t feel like a foreign or scary concept. When I first came on the scene almost everybody that I encountered in the music business was very supportive of me personally, but they were all a bit nervous about how it could work publicly. Now it’s been proven that there is a market and an audience. It’s allowing a lot more diversity to be pushed through.
Is it safe to assume that these days, you no longer experience any homophobia in the music industry?
Variety
It’s gotten better but I can’t make a blanket statement that it doesn’t happen anymore. There are always going to be shades of homophobia — sometimes internalized homophobia that I’ve encountered from other gay people in the industry. They might feel that [I am] ‘too gay.’
