Adam Lambert Says Censorship of American Music Awards Song Would Be "Discrimination"

In approximately 30 minutes the West Coast will get a look at the American Music Awards performance that has everyone talking: Adam Lambert's racy rendition of For Your Entertainment's title track. When Lambert finished his song — complete with simulated oral sex with a male backup dancer and a passionate kiss with a male keyboardist — earlier tonight, fans hit the Internet to debate whether the American Idol runner-up's first major televised performance since the Idol finale pushed the envelope too far. Lambert tells Rolling Stone he didn't do anything female performers haven't done on television already — and that if ABC cuts any part of his performance for the rebroadcast it will amount to "discrimination."

Adam Lambert shocks, Taylor Swift soars: the 2009 AMAs in photos.

"It's a shame because I think that there's a double standard going on in the entertainment community right now," Lambert tells RS backstage after the show at Los Angeles' Nokia Theatre. "Female performers have been doing this for years — pushing the envelope about sexuality — and the minute a man does it, everybody freaks out. We're in 2009; it's time to take risks, be a little more brave, time to open people's eyes and if it offends them, then maybe I'm not for them. My goal was not to piss people off, it was to promote freedom of expression and artistic freedom."

American Idol's glam-rock sex god: Lambert in action.

If ABC opts not to broadcast several of the more risqué moments of "For Your Entertainment" in a few moments, "In a roundabout way it's a form of discrimination because it is a double standard," Lambert says. "They didn't censor Britney and Madonna macking onstage did they? But yet two men kissing they'll censor?" The famous 2003 Video Music Awards moment Lambert is referring to went down on cable television — on MTV, of course — rather than network television. See more infamous awards show moments here.

UPDATE: Reports about the West Coast broadcast of the American Music Awards indicate that ABC kept the kiss with Lambert's keyboardist, but cut away from the simulated oral sex with his male backup dancer.

Infamous crotch-rock moments, from Lambert's AMAs to "Dick in a Box."

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Song Stories

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell | 1974

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.

More Song Stories entries »

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