Parallel Tracks by Douglas Wolk via @FuseTV - Examining 'Whataya Want From Me'
Making It Clear
Adam Lambert knows exactly what you want from him - as did another Adam before him. DOUGLAS WOLK examines the question at the root of Lambert's hit "Whataya Want From Me" and finds a couple of similarly rhetorical predecessors.
It's easy to forgive Adam Lambert for asking "Whataya Want From Me." A dedicated rocker emerging (via American Idol) at a moment when the pop-idol landscape isn't too keen on rock from unfamiliar names, Lambert's got an uneasy relationship with his audience. He's a runner-up who sings like a champion, a performer who doesn't write his own songs in an idiom that usually demands it, a star who was subject to a mountain of outside expectations before he'd recorded a note, a big name who resorts to SEO-friendly title misspellings. The song lets him show off his raw, imploring rasp, but it also betrays its pop origins: co-written by P!nk and the behind-the-scenes pop maestros Max Martin and Shellback, it sounds very much like it could be one of P!nk's own records. And its lyrical persona is someone who used to be a lot more malleable, but now needs whoever's paying attention to him to clarify his or her intentions instead of just having unspoken expectations. The title is a young man's question, in other words.
As it happens, half a century earlier, another handsome young Adam breaking into pop music asked pretty much exactly the same question of his audience...
Read the rest of the article on Fuse.TV!
I think this is a fantastic article, save for the one slip up saying Adam doesn't write his own songs. Give it a read, and definitely check out the other songs being compared to Whataya Want From Me. Sometimes a good musical history lesson is in order. ;) - Nikki