Adam Lambert’s new album reflects his 'guilt' over 'having fun'

Adam Lambert’s new album reflects his “guilt” over “having fun or laughing”.

The 44-year-old singer – who shot to fame in 2009 after finishing as runner-up on the eighth season of American Idol – admitted that due to the “state of the world right now”, he often feels guilty for enjoying himself and his new record Adam explores this.

He told Variety: “I think thematically, lyrically, the thing that I wanted to explore was this razor-thin edge in-between something that’s a positive, healthy experience and something that might be challenging or negative. That’s life, you know? You wake up, you might have a really great experience or be just enjoying a relationship, and then sometimes it’s the complete opposite. If it’s romance or attraction, it can be really beautiful, and then ever so quickly it can tip into obsession or possession or frustration.

“Or the same thing with going out and having a good time with your friends and having a few drinks. That can be an escape that we all love and need, and then it can ever so quickly go into ‘OK, now I’m overdoing it,’ or, ‘Now I’m sad because of my habits.’ I tried to lay the album out sequence-wise where it goes back and forth between those two sides of the same coin. What do they say? It’s cognitive dissonance. Two things can be true at once.

“Especially with the state of the world right now, it’s tricky. It can be very overwhelming, all the stuff that’s going on, and I’ve had conversations with friends that are like, ‘Sometimes I feel guilty that I’m even going out or having fun or laughing.’ We need that; as humans, we need to balance it all out. But it’s not always easy to do. So I think the album reflects that state a little bit, of trying to find the good despite the bad, and also just accepting what’s not great."