If Britney, P!nk and Guns N' Roses Had a Gay Baby

I don't have cable, so I've never actually watched an episode of American Idol, but I read enough internet and sample enough pop music to have developed a passing interest in Adam Lambert.  The fact that he's pop culture's first legitimately "out from the get-go" rock star by default renders his entire existence an eyebrow-raising curiosity.  Not to mention he's been gifted with such a technically perfect voice, it seems to require no effort whatsoever for him to pull off any number of radio-friendly music styles.  

That doesn't prevent the producers of Trespassing from drenching his impressive Axl Rose meets P!nk sound in oodles of auto-tune and electronically altered special effects in a thinly-veiled effort to cover all the bases (while his albums still don't sell a lot, his videos get millions of hits on YouTube). Aside from the intensity of "Better Than I Know Myself," the album is clearly a young artist still finding his voice.  His versatility working almost against him, he tries on a smattering of various pop-star hats, but his personality feels buried underneath a heavily produced collection of what could be extended catchy commercial jingles designed to sell things like expensive cars and cologne.  Watching the video for "Never Close Our Eyes," his dead eyes and flat acting skills betray a possible truth:  perhaps there's not much there to be revealed.