American Idol winner Kris Allen and runner-up Adam Lambert sat down with Mark Malkin of E! News to discuss the tragic loss of an American icon–the “King of Pop,” Michael Jackson.
“He was the most influential musical person that I had in my life,” Kris said. “On the artist side of things, everything that he did was just so right.” He continued, “Every album that he did, it hit you in a way that just made you feel good. It made you feel him and feel his music. He was a genius, a complete genius.”
“His voice was just one of a kind,” Adam told E! “No one else sounds like him. Furthermore, the visual stuff he brought to the table was so groundbreaking and edgy and ahead of its time, in a way. There wasn’t anyone else really going out there like that.”
Adam also added that Michael broke barriers. “He defied sexuality and race in a way that no one else has,” he said. “He wasn’t openly masculine or feminine. He was kind of somewhere in the middle in this androgynous space and at some point he was like, ‘Black or white, it doesn’t matter.’ There were a lot of things he straddled the line of, and I think that was really cool.”
Kris and Adam really most be heartbroken to have lost there inspiration.