“I’m trying to be a singer, not a civil rights leader,” says Adam Lambert — remember him? — as he comes out in the new Rolling Stone. Quelle, quelle surprise, but congratulations nonetheless.
Yet comments like that are as boilerplate as the mag itself.
Dear Adam: Popular culcha has long ago rendered any such division into schmaltz.
In case you have or anyone has any doubts about that, check out the quite subversive 1952 Disney cartoon short called Lambert the Sheepish Lion. See any parallels, sweetie? The gay-positive metaphors?
Oh, yes, the charming, witty voiceover is immediately familiar as that of the sterling Sterling Holloway — who, by the way, introduced the Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart standard “I’ll Take Manhattan” in their very first tandem outing, a series of ’20s romps called Garrick Gaieties. Holloway’s raspy light tenor, what some have termed a near falsetto, was his calling card. Later, he collected modern art. His admiring bios include the boilerplate “Never married.”
For an automatic alert when there is a new Out There post, email