June 10, 2009

Adam Lambert Comes Out In Rolling Stone Cover Story

By Gil Kaufman (MTV.com)

After months of public speculation about his sexuality, American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert, 27, acknowledges that he is gay in the upcoming issue of Rolling Stone.

"I don't think it should be a surprise for anyone to hear that I'm gay," Lambert says in the issue, in which he also discusses how as a child he "started to realize I wasn't like every other boy."

The cover story includes Lambert talking about how he was inspired to audition for the reality singing competition after having a "psychedelic experience" at the Burning Man festival in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. "I realized that we all have our own power, and that whatever I wanted to do, I had to make it happen," he says.

Just a few weeks after he was spotted holding hands and reportedly canoodling with alleged boyfriend Drake LaBry at a Los Angeles nightclub, the musical-theater veteran with a penchant for glam-rock get-ups and black fingernail polish finally provides some straight answers to the nagging questions about his sexuality, and explains why he craftily waited to reveal it.

"I'm proud of my sexuality. I embrace it. It's just another part of me," Lambert says in the article. "Right after the finale, I almost started talking about it to the reporters, but I thought, 'I'm going to wait for Rolling Stone, that will be cooler.' ... I didn't want the Clay Aiken thing and the celebrity-magazine bullsh--. I need to be able to explain myself in context." He reveals that one of the other reasons he hasn't spoken about being gay before was that he was "trying to be a singer, not a civil-rights leader."

In the Rolling Stone story, titled Wild Idol: The Liberation of Adam Lambert, Lambert also says that he knew Idol was his "only shot to be taken seriously in the recording industry, because it's fast and broad." The cover image by famed photographer Matthew Rolston shows the singer lying down on an unmade military-style cot while wearing tight black designer jeans and a black, silk button-down shirt open almost to the navel as a green snake slithers up his leg.

It was also reported on Tuesday that, like Allen, Lambert had landed a recording contact with Jive Records and would begin working on his debut album soon.