Tuesday 21 April 2009

Top 7 - Born To Be Wild


Since I'd been sucked into my obsession, I'd spent all week thinking, reading articles and watching videos of Adam. The week's theme was songs from the movies, and I spent quite a lot of time trying to come up with a list of what Adam would sing. One of them that did go through my head was 'Born to be Wild', but I thought that perhaps he would go for a song from one of Tarantino's, since he was going to be the mentor. I decided that I would watch the performance streamed online as I couldn't wait another two days before seeing it on UK TV. I needed my Adam fix. The picture and sound weren't great, but I felt it was better than nothing.

In the intro clip, Adam told us straight away what he was going to sing and what his spin on it would be. I felt a slight tinge of disappointment that he didn't choose something completely insane. Tarantino showed himself to be fan of Adam's, which was quite amusing. Who can blame him? In the rehearsal with the piano, Adam sang a bar of the chorus with a rocker expression and snatched his head back when he was finished. I was stunned by the timbre of his voice, which sounded very rich. I felt a strong yearning to hear him sing a live acoustic set in order to fully appreciate the beauty of his voice. I look forward to hearing his rehearsal as well as the performance.

Adam started off shaking a leg whilst facing the background screen that was lit up with lightning. From the start, the song was fast and catchy, and Adam skipped forward to the front of the stage to sing. He wore thick eyeliner and trainers for the first time, which surprised me and hinted at Indie Kid rather than All-Out Rocker. He looked a little spooky and maintained a hard expression for much of the performance. The camera mainly had shots of him above the waist so I could only really guess what he was doing with his legs, but I'm guessin there was a fair amount of hip shaking going on. He did some stomping, jumped around and did some headbanging, getting the band and backing singers to do the same. I thought the performance would have been better without the backing vocals because they didn't seem quite in tune with Adam's unbelievable pitch-perfect vocals, some of which he dramatised and may have been the reason for Simon's 'Rocky Horror' comment. How the hell can he move about like that and manage to sing in tune? His voice control is just out if this world. It was a very exciting and energetic performance, building up to the most amazing finish. The last 'wild' was just jaw-dropping, leading up to the most amazing final note run. That last note was sung on his knees and completely blew me away. How can someone be that brilliant a live singer and performer? There were absolutely no shaky notes in the whole of that. He hit every single one with verve. The crowd was in a frenzy and I was in shock for a little while afterwards.

At the end of the performance, he gave us his signature beaming smile and blew a kiss to the crowd. Paula was jumping around and screaming like a groupie. Being the consummate professional that he is, Adam managed to calm down and detach from the performance, earnestly focussing all his attention to the judges. Paula's comments were rather garbled but Simon had a huge grin on his face. He did his best to talk down the performance in his duty to keep the competition going, despite the fact that he blatantly loved it. Ryan managed to get him to admit that he liked the performance in the end. I thought that Adam showed diplomacy when Simon was trying to justify his negativity through jeers. He told us all that he understood where Simon was coming from and in doing so, gave him respect.

My Adam obsession was reaching fever pitch and I was starting to think about what he would choose to do next. He's certainly the most talented, intriguing, inspiring and intoxicating artist I've heard in a long time. It seems there's nothing he can't do.

4 comments:

  1. WOW! What a performer he is! He acts according to the lyrics. He delivers every time 150%

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  2. This will always be a fave - the vocals are just terrific - those glory notes echo to the rafters!

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  3. RoRo, dont they just?! I think they might be my favourite glory notes of his throughout the AI season.

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  4. Hey Thanks for reminding us - now I know what you were doing yesterday! Love ya (D)

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