One Year

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This blog is now a year old (plus a few days because I've been too busy flailing-celebrating winning tickets to see Adam in Heaven) and what a year it's been. For me it's bittersweet as it will always be tainted with sadness. I'd still choose complete ignorance of Adam over the circumstances in which I ended up discovering him. I would otherwise never have watched AI and would've been dismissive of anything that came out of it. Well, we all know how that turned out. The first thing that inspired me to want to write was RoF, and it was Googling him that pushed me over the edge into alien territory and I just had to describe this curious condition that many others seem to have shared.

It all started during Adam's stint on AI where we'd been hooked and stunned by performances like RoF and MW, then outraged and disappointed with the result. We were then relieved to have gotten the gay question out of the way, thrilled when his raunchier side came out playing with mic stands and whips while we listened intently through ear-bleeding static on the live streams for 'baby', 'woman' or 'honey'. Then we waited and waited for the faintest trace of new material as TfM was released, followed by the controversial album cover, the single, then and surprisingly eclectic album. We were shocked and hurt by the fall-out following the AMAs and showed solidarity as we made our support for Adam known during various campaigns while he went through a period of reflection. He gradually rebuilt his confidence as he went about damage control and FYE was scrapped for WWFM.

We started the decade on a high with Adam's first full set at Gridlock, followed by steady promo and performances and we cheered for every TV slot he landed. Then came that momentous WLL at Indio, wresting us from the comfort of fandom right back into the maelstrom of obsession. As he embarked on his promo tour, we stayed up until stupid o'clock glued to our computer screens following him and marvelling at his codpiece/no codpiece and his overwhelmingly positive reception from passionate fans all around the world. We whooped and celebrated Adam's majestic return to Idol as it became glaringly obvious how exceptional he is as he was awarded universal praise. Which brings us to now, where I'm looking forward to seeing him perform live for the first time, waiting for a miscreant volcano to start behaving.

Adam's list of achievements for the year is impressive and here I've listed only those I believe are most significant:

Magazine covers

• Entertainment Weekly
• Rolling Stone
• Details
• Out (shared)
• Rolling Stone Japan

Sales

• FYE Album: Gold - USA, Canada, Singapore, New Zealand
• WWFM Single: Double platinum - Canada; Gold - USA, New Zealand
• FYE Single: Platinum - Canada; Gold - New Zealand

Awards

• Winner - Young Hollywood Artist of the Year
• Winner - Teen Choice Male Reality/Variety TV Show Star
• #8 Time Magazine's People Who Mattered 2009
• Barbara Walters Most Fascinating People 2009
• #3 MTV Man of the Year
• #10 Time Magazine's Top 10 Songs 2009 for Mad World
• #1 Artist of 2009 Rolling Stone Readers' Poll
• #3 Top Twitter trend (people) 2009
• #5 OUT Most Influential

This year has also brought many firsts for me, and these include:

• Writing for an audience and maintaining a blog
• Experiencing fandom
• Voting for a reality show contestant
• Joining forums, live streams and twitter to cyberstalk
• Making videos

There is so much I have learned in the past year. Windows Movie Maker had sat on my computer unused and I just decided one day to see what I could do with it. If you look at my oldest video edits, they started off as simple replacements of audio tracks and then grew into something much more complicated as I learned how to make the most of the tools available to me. The learning hasn't only been confined to video editing but also audio and image editing, scripting and so much more about marketing and the online world which will equip me well for the future.

Much has been written about the Adam Lambert Effect by various people but right now, I think one of the things that resonates is this: In almost every one of us I believe there's a battle between who we are, who we want to be and how we want to be seen. It takes so much effort to constantly keep up every aspect of what we do in order to portray ourselves in a certain way. It may be something as simple as wanting to appear stronger than who we really are or it could be as severe as being so fearful of being disliked that we remain completely closed. Adam has reconciled the battle by making us believe we can be whoever we want by following our true selves, and that what others think is irrelevant. By laying his true self open to scrutiny to a vast audience knowing full well he'd be hated by some, he's shown that the risk can be very rewarding. We've seen his extreme transformation from Apple Pie Adam, giving us hope that we too could be as fabulous if we believed and tried. The end of the battle and ceasing to give a shit about how others see us is liberating. He makes us feel that it's OK to freely express ourselves and has given us courage, paving the way for us. The effect is much further-reaching than just temporary escapism to weird and wonderful destinations with each performance, because he has allowed many of us to feel that little bit braver and has fired our imaginations to get our dormant creativity flowing. This has led to personal growth, newfound confidence and skills, and art that in turn inspires and puts us in touch with others who share this passion. I think this is the core of the Adam Lambert Effect, and as a result, our lives have been significantly enriched.

Thank you Adam, and thank you readers.