For all the Danny Gokey fans out there, I have some information on his career decisions and hints that he is closer than ever to a record deal. Read this for the whole story!

http://www.buddytv.com/articles/american-idol/american-idol-danny-gokeys-clo-30858.aspx

It seems that by mid September he will have a record deal. I am so happy to hear that! I definitely think he wanted to wait until touring was over before he made a major commitment for his album. Also, it seems pretty much a sure thing that he will go the country route, and (though I wasn’t so sure initially) I have come to believe that is the best possible route for him. Country music is all about the message, and Danny Gokey certainly likes a good message! As Danny said, the country music genre is so varied nowadays that you often times don’t know you are listening to a country song! Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus are both examples of “country” artists whose songs still retain that pop sound and avoid the trademark country “twang”.

I also believe that the country music industry is very open to its singers expressing their faith. After contemporary Christian/Gospel music, I think the country genre is the most Christian-oriented genre out there. The wonderful thing about this is that Danny can sing about his faith, yet he is not restricted to ONLY those types of songs. I am SO looking forward to his album already! I wish he would team up with Rascal Flatts on something! That would be awesome!

I’m so excited! Next weekend I finally get to see him perform live in Indiana! Time seems to moving SO . . . SLOWWWW!!!!!! Anyway, have a good day everyone!

On a sadder note, I just saw in the news that Alexis Cohen was killed in a tragic car accident. You may remember her as the girl who continually flipped off the Idol cameras during auditions and screamed a lot. She was a wild woman that’s for sure, but I enjoyed her for a laugh and am very sad to hear of what happened to her. God bless her family in this awful time and I hope that she is at peace now.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32011060/ns/entertainment-5top/

For me, if Adam and Anoop had been on the Season 7 tour (minus two others there) it would have been a perfect concert. ;o)

http://nctimes.com/articles/2009/07/15/entertainment/music/ze7c43910daaad6a5882575eb00579d92.txt

Here is part of it:

Q: It was in the Rolling Stone article when Adam confirmed to the world that he’s gay and that he came out to you first.

A: When he was 17, I went to a gay and lesbian center in Hillcrest to talk to a counselor and find out how to approach the subject with Adam, and they told me not to do it. One man there said he was 27 and still hadn’t told his parents. I couldn’t imagine that because Adam and I talked about everything, so I decided that I had to broach the subject, and it turned out to be the right decision. I’ve read on blogs and have read his fan letters where mothers have said “I have a son like your son, I think he’s gay, and I’m so amazed at how close you are to Adam.” Maybe the Rolling Stone article will open doors for parents to talk to their kids about the subject.

Q: Do you think him talking about experimenting with drugs sends the wrong message to kids?

A: Yes, I was upset about that. I told him “You have these 13-year-old fans and their parents want you to be a role model. How is that going to look to them?” And he said: “I didn’t say I DO drugs, I said I DID drugs.” And maybe it’s a good avenue for parents to talk about drugs with their kids.

Alot of what I have been reading says that Anoop’s set is very good as well as Matt’s. Most are surprised at how much different Megan sounds live…she sounds better! Kris has gotten to give up the song “No Boundries” and replace it with something else. Most reviewers says that he is just plain adorable, but feel bad for him having to follow Adam. My thoughts…two different types of music…two different styles…I thought it was hard on all of them on the show to follow Adam, just because there was such a difference.

I am reading some really good reviews on most of the idols. However, most of the really positive stuff is coming from Adam’s set. From alot of people who weren’t fans of his to begin with, but after seeing him live has changed their minds about him, and became fans.

I want for all of them to do well after the tour…I would like to see them all get recording contracts…Has Danny came up with anything yet as far as a record deal?

Kariann 1, it was so good to see your post…I thought this site had been deserted!!!

I suppose it depends who you talk to and if the person had a favorite going into the concert. Also, most critics are really into Adam’s performances and duet. I don’t mean to offend anyone!

Last year, Ramielle was the only one getting negative reviews, but towards the end she was doing so much better. As much as I really like Adam, I am glad I went last year, given a choice. (I would have enjoyed Anoop too.)

Adam will come around on tour when his album is released and all can enjoy him in concert.

Mariah, no matter how it goes, I hope AI brings us 24 outstanding singers (performers?) for next season!

I hope everyone is enjoying the summer!

I hear tell that Adam is stealing the show on the idol tour…pretty much like putting Tiger Woods up against kindergartner’s…that’s just what I’m a readin’

Kariann- I agree, and I’ve also enjoyed watching some contestants grow on the show. Elliot is my favorite in this regard. He had such raw talent and potential and really seemed to be absorbing his critiques and learning from them. Clay actually had more training he (or maybe it was the producers) ever let on, though he didn’t have performance experience. I never considered him a raw talent, but a trained and talented singer. I think there’s a place for both kinds of contestants on the show. I apologize if I made it sound like people with raw talent shouldn’t be there. It’s not what I meant. I just meant, for me, I’ve never though of the show as a place only for raw talent, nor do I get the criticism of contestants like Adam for working very hard at honing their instrument. Even Kelly Clarkson had a decent amount of experience and a shelved record under her belt. And, Adam showed growth on the show, too. Compare MCL’s early critiques of him with the ones toward the end of the show. I just think Adam’s growth was more nuanced, and, thus, not as universally noticeable to the audience.

I do hope there’ll be a good mix of casting next season, and I suspect there will be. An entire season of Adam’s (in terms of vocal proweress), would not be too engaging.

As much as I adore Kris as a person (and as part of Kradam), I’ll take Adam’s instrument any day.

What started out as a show about relative unknown and unexperienced young talent getting a chance to learn the ropes and grow into a shot at becoming a professional in the entertainment business it has now become a showcase for contestants that are too old with too much professional experience and too much personal baggage.

Tickey Lee, I also had this impression for at least the first two years. I wish this was true now, but for the most part it is not. I have become very disillusioned with the show and the type casting it does. Season 8 had so many flaws.

So, I have decided to take the show for what it is. Now that I know about the texting and computer voting, I am not going to vote next season. The innocence I felt about the show ended in Season 2.

Mariah, there were several contestants that were relatively inexperienced. My joy was watching them develop and become more polished with their performances. Most will mention Clay, Anthony, Elliott, Jason, etc. They were favorites of mine.

How are you doing, Vonnie?

I honestly do not see how the RS article counters the person Adam was on the show or challenges his authenticity. We are all multi-faceted individuals. Adam said in the RS article that was his “best self” on the show, and I believe that to be true. That doesn’t mean he was inauthentic or faking it. Rather, that was what he considers the best part of him and that’s how he chose to present himself. That’s very different than acting or pretending like that’s his persona, which would mean the Adam we saw on tv doesn’t exist at all. His parents and numerous friends have said in many interviews that the Adam we saw on the show is really who Adam is. Certainly, there’s some bias there, but in all the press about him, I’ve never heard one person who actually knows him say anything negative about him as a person. Ricky lee, maybe it’s the activities he’s engaged in in his private life that you find incongruous with the way he presented himself on Idol. Personally, I don’t see it that way and tend to think of behavior and personality as mutually exclusive, meaning that you can be a nice, genuine person and still do things that are less than ideal or socially questionable (the same as one can behave in a perfectly socially acceptable or even exemplary way and still be a jerk).

I don’t think AI regrets anything in terms of Adam. 19E is promoting Adam at or above the same level it’s promoting Kris. The press rarely refers to him as the runner-up anymore; he’s simply Adam Lambert. TV commercials and print ads for the Idol tour feature Adam more prominently than any of the other Idols, including the winner. 19E knows Adam is a huge draw, and it seems they’re more than happy to have him. Reports from the auditions for next season are that Adam’s work on the show has raised the bar, and people who would have easily gotten through auditions in seasons’ past aren’t even getting tickets to see the judges this year. And, FWIW, AI producers at the very least knew about his sexuality with the leaking of the pictures, and they told Adam they’d support him publicly in whatever way he wanted to handle it. The RS article had to be cleared by 19E per the Idols’ contract before it could go to print. If they had wanted to quash it or were concerned about the “revelations,” they would have blocked its publication. So, yeah, I don’t think anyone associated with AI regrets anything to do with Adam Lambert.

Vonnie,
I agree that a huge part of Danny’s fan base comprise those who listen to CCM. In a recent interview (it might have been the Yahoo interview with Lyndsey Parker, but I’m not sure), he said he didn’t want to start off with CCM because he wanted the potential to reach everyone and didn’t want to exclude anyone, implying that the CCM market is too narrow and contained. He said he wasn’t ruling it out for the future, though. He continues to say he wants to insipre people with his music, so maybe he thinks singing CCM would be preaching to the choir, so to speak. It also might be more personally rewarding to create a fan base from people who aren’t drawn to him initially because of a similar faith. I have a friend who’s a huge Danny fan, but she’s not a Christian, so she would never listen to CCM becasue the messages of that genre don’t resonate with her own faith. So, by Danny going the CCM route, she’d be excluded as a fan. Maybe this is kind of what Danny is thinking about in saying he wants to reach everybody.

Adam Lambert’s admissions of his homosexuality and drug use in this week’s Rolling Stone may come as a shock to few, but his confessional attitude is publicity gold.

Everyone who watched American Idol this past season knew that Adam Lambert was gay—fans didn’t need to see the tabloid pictures of the Idol runner-up tonguing his boyfriend and dressed in drag to know. These days, even Middle America’s gaydar is pretty finely honed when it comes to that sort of thing.

So the current cover story of Rolling Stone, featuring a seductively posed Lambert—complete with his signature guyliner and a strategically placed garden snake licking at his crotch—wherein he comes clean and comes out, definitely isn’t a big shock. “I don’t think it should be a surprise for anyone to hear I’m gay,” he said in the piece. He’s right—it wasn’t.

What the story did do, though, was re-brand the 27-year-old star in a way that Idol contestants have rarely branded themselves—as an “other,” hence insuring him the kind of celebrity rarely heaped up the second-place finisher of the competition. The story all but guaranteed that Lambert wouldn’t be the punchline that 2003 Idol runner-up Clay Aiken had become since playing hide-and-seek with the press about his sexuality for five years.

“I didn’t want the Clay Aiken thing and the celebrity-magazine bullshit. I need to be able to explain myself in context,” Lambert told Rolling Stone. And explain he did, in what was the best public-relations stunt that Lambert could have pulled to maintain his relevance over other Idol also-rans like Justin Guarini, Diana DeGarmo and Sanjaya Malakar.

“He didn’t lie. He was transparent and honest,” explained brand futurist Martin Lindstrom, author of Buyology, and market-trend analyst. “The gay thing these days is a brand in itself and his appeal to the tween market that drives the sales for Idol products these days will be huge. The biggest trend for tweens isn’t to be in the crowd these days, it is to stand out in it. That is what Lambert has done by branding himself this way. And that is what is going to drive his record sales.”

And Lambert didn’t just raise the gay issue in his Rolling Stone interview. He dropped another bomb on America by openly discussing his former drug use, admitting he dropped mushrooms at Burning Man—the trip, he added, ultimately led to the revelation that he had to compete on American Idol.

“We’ve seen the gay issue with Idol contestants before here and in the British version, but we have never seen someone be so open about drugs. That is also going to give him points and gives him an edge that we haven’t seen with Idol,” said Lindstrom.

Lambert has proved himself adept at getting the tweens and the cougars on board. Writing on Newsweek’s PopVox blog, Joan Lambert gushed that she and her middle-aged friends “…love Adam, truly, madly, deeply, in a kind of weirdly Mrs. Robinson sexual way.” The fact that Lambert is homosexual helps to make him an even more “safe” sexual fantasy. Just as Clay Aiken inspired a creepy tribe of middle-age, Midwestern Claymates who waxed obsessively about the singer on blogs and message boards and viciously defended him against rumors of his homosexuality, Lambert appeals to an older female demographic hungry for young meat that doesn’t seem overtly intimidating.

It seems like Lambert’s publicist Roger Widynowski, who also works with Idol’s Katharine McPhee and the recent winner Kris Allen, is one smart cookie. Mere hours after Lambert’s admission hit the media maelstrom, on Wednesday morning, the singer signed a deal for his solo record debut with RCA Records to be released in the fall.

But Rolling Stone contributor Vanessa Grigoriadis, who interviewed Lambert for the piece, says she thinks it was Adam himself and not his publicity machine that decided how and when to spill the juice.

“Adam is really smart,” Grigoriadis told The Daily Beast. “It was clear to me that his people knew that this was a good strategy for Adam, but I’m not so sure Adam didn’t come up on with it on his own. No publicist would have said ‘Hey talk about your druggie experiences.’”

And his admission also came as a shock for the magazine, she notes, denying the rumor that Rolling Stone set this all up as a publicity stunt to sell copies in a market saturated with celebrity gossip.

“It was through no part of my own did I get this story.” Grigoriadis says. “I went to the finale and waited around forever. We knew he had the cover, but that was it. I went to the party and I went to his publicist’s offices and by that point I was like ‘He had better say something fucking good,’ and then he came out [of the room] and he actually came out. He said ‘Yeah so I am going to tell you everything and I want to say it all once, and this is the way it is going to be.’ And then he just completely re-branded himself.”

Who isn’t going to be jumping on the Lambert bandwagon now? Straight women like myself, tweens, cougars (maybe even a few Claymates), and straight guys who think Burning Man and mushrooms are the key to happiness all have a reason to get behind this guy.

Lambert’s star power will no doubt eclipse that of actual Idol winner Kris Allen. Despite his phenomenal singing voice and boyish good looks, Allen is a well-adjusted homebody, who is married and sweet-tempered. And who wants that in their celebrity when they can have someone with smart media knowhow, the swagger of a champion, and a desire to confess all his secrets to the world… and knows where to score the good drugs?