Media Reacts To Adam Lambert's American Music Awards Performance

Yesterday the ladies of The View discussed Adam Lambert's controversial performance on the American Music Awards. Unsurprisingly, it was Elisa Hasselbeck who went off of Lambert. (Transcription via Towleroad.)

"It seemed to be a sexual aggression that came across in the performance. Now, does anyone know what song he sang? Does anyone remember what he sounded like? Because, let me tell you this. This is the mistake Adam Lambert will make time and time again. We will not remember him as a performer or someone with a voice if he continues to do things like this. So smarten up, and sing."

ABC reports receiving over 1500 complaints so far.

Complaints poured in Monday about Adam Lambert's sexually charged performance at the American Music Awards, including criticism of his kiss with a male keyboard player that was left out of rehearsals for the show. ABC did not expect one of Lambert's dancers to stick his face in the singer's crotch during the S&M-themed performance of "For Your Entertainment," a moment that was cut out when the awards show was broadcast on a tape-delayed basis on the West Coast on Sunday.

During a rehearsal last week that an AP reporter attended, Lambert thrust a male dancer's face toward his crotch, though the dancer did not get as close to Lambert in the rehearsal as he did on Sunday night. At one point during rehearsals, Lambert also caressed a male dancer's upside-down face, but he kept his hands off the dancer's cheeks Sunday night. "A lot of what I do is kind of freestyle," the singer told The Associated Press last week about the routine's choreography. "That's how it was on 'Idol.' That's how I perform. I like to have a framework, and just do stuff. So that kind of came about because of the connection that I had with that dancer."

Rolling Stone loved it.

Adam Lambert aimed for the kind of controversy Britney Spears and Madonna are known for generating, completely stunning the audience at Los Angeles’ Nokia Theatre and the millions watching the American Music Awards live on ABC with a risqué rendition of “For Your Entertainment.” Rolling Stone didn’t label Lambert the Wild Idol for nothing, and Glambert definitely delivered on his promise of a “sexy” performance as he closed the live show with simulated oral sex from a male backup dancer, a brief make-out session with his male keyboardist and a giant mirrored prop so the audience could see the looks on their own shocked faces. Rolling Stone has learned that producers weren’t informed about the guy-on-guy kiss in advance, and after the show, Lambert told RS the musician he kissed is a straight man.

Adam Lambert thinks the controversy reflects a double-standard.

“It’s a shame because I think that there’s a double standard going on in the entertainment community right now,” Lambert tells RS backstage after the show at Los Angeles’ Nokia Theatre. “Female performers have been doing this for years — pushing the envelope about sexuality — and the minute a man does it, everybody freaks out. We’re in 2009; it’s time to take risks, be a little more brave, time to open people’s eyes and if it offends them, then maybe I’m not for them. My goal was not to piss people off, it was to promote freedom of expression and artistic freedom.” If ABC opts not to broadcast several of the more risqué moments of “For Your Entertainment” in a few moments, “In a roundabout way it’s a form of discrimination because it is a double standard,” Lambert says. “They didn’t censor Britney and Madonna macking onstage did they? But yet two men kissing they’ll censor?” The famous 2003 Video Music Awards moment Lambert is referring to went down on cable television — on MTV, of course — rather than network television.