Adam Lambert performs on the American Music Awards on Sunday
Photo: Michael Caulfield/ Getty Images

Thanks to talked-about performances from Adam Lambert, Lady Gaga and Rihanna and wins by the late Michael Jackson and country superstar Taylor Swift, the American Music Awards drew its strongest audience in seven years.

According to Nielsen estimates, the awards show drew 14.2 million viewers, which is 2 million more than last year's program and represents the best showing by the AMAs since 2002.

Though NBC still won the night with "Sunday Night Football," ABC pulled ahead during the 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. hours. The strong numbers for the show were boosted, no doubt, by the promise of more than 20 performances from some of music's biggest acts, including Jay-Z, Green Day, Carrie Underwood, Kelly Clarkson, Eminem with 50 Cent, Janet Jackson and Whitney Houston.

	2009 AMA Performances

In the end, though, it was Lambert who made the biggest headlines, with his aggressively pansexual performance of the title track from his major-label debut, For Your Entertainment. In addition to drawing more than 1,500 complaints from viewers who took issue with the man-on-man kissing, girl dragging and S&M play, Lambert's awards-show coming-out party lost him at least one gig when ABC's "Good Morning America" announced Tuesday (November 24) that it had canceled his planned appearance due to the controversy kicked up by the AMAs.

Lambert took it all in stride, though, telling "American Idol" host Ryan Seacrest on his radio show on Tuesday that he respects the "GMA" decision. "They gotta do what they gotta do," Lambert said. "It's too bad. I think there were a lot of fans who were excited to come see me. They probably had a lot of pressure coming at them from certain people who weren't happy about it. I respect their decision. I don't necessarily agree with it, but they need to do what they need to do."

Lambert, who lamented what he perceives as a double standard when it comes to risqué performances by men and women in music, said he felt no need to apologize for his AMA debut. "I don't feel I owe anyone an apology for anything," he said. "I performed, it was late-night TV, I did something that female performers have been doing for years, no different. It's just the fact that I'm me and it's a little different for people. It's really not that big of a deal. I'm not a babysitter, I'm a performer."

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Lady Gaga
Photo: MTV News

Two of today's biggest divas, Lady Gaga and Beyoncé, got sexy in the latter's "Video Phone" clip, with Gaga even embracing her inner B for the shoot. But the duo conquer a slightly more serious theme — Lady Gaga's fear of suffocation — on her song "Telephone," off her new LP, The Fame Monster.

Gaga, despite her penchant for making dance-floor-friendly pop, said she actually has a hard time just letting loose and having fun. Why? "Fear of suffocation — something that I have or fear is never being able to enjoy myself," she told MTV News. " 'Cause I love my work so much, I find it really hard to go out and have a good time."

Although it may be hard to believe because of her glitzy persona, the singer insists her life does not consist of jumping from nightclub to nightclub. "I don't go to nightclubs," she said. "You don't see pictures of me falling out of a club drunk. I don't go — and that's because I usually go and then, you know, a whiskey and a half into it, I got to get back to work."

And she told us the phone on the song isn't just a physical phone, but also that person in her head telling her to keep working harder and harder. "That's my fear — that the phone's ringing and my head's ringing," she explained. "Whether it's a telephone or it's just the thoughts in your head, that's another fear."

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Lady Gaga
Photo: Bryan Bedder/ Getty Images

Lady Gaga is exorcising her demons on her latest album, The Fame Monster. One is her fear of death. Another is her fear of relationships, which she addresses on the song "Monster."

"It's the fear of attachment and the fear of loving something that's bad for you," she told MTV News about the track. "If you listen to the lyrics, it's like being in love with the bad boy all the time, and you keep going back for more."

In "Monster," Gaga says she needs a stable relationship. "I keep falling in love with the monster," she said. "But what I really need is the security and the safety and the womanhood, responsibility of my femininity. And so that's what that song is about."

Gaga recently told MTV News that her music and performances are on extension of her belief that as an artist, she lives her private life in the public world. "To me, being an artist is being private in public," she explained. "So I'm being private in public every night, and all my monsters and my fears went leaping out of me and I just began to write."

Sporting a pair of black sunglasses and a black jacket with shoulder pads the size of her head, Lady Gaga sang "Bad Romance" on Monday night's "Jay Leno Show." Male backup dancers dressed in black suits and S&M headgear helped remove her jacket after the first chorus so she could dance more freely, maybe too freely, as her low-cut tank may have veered into wardrobe-malfunction territory on a couple of occasions.

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• Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga performs "Bad Romance" on "The Jay Leno Show"
Photo: NBC

On Sunday, Lady Gaga put on a glass-shattering performance at the American Music Awards, but the singer kept it low-key when she stopped by "The Jay Leno Show" on Monday night to perform and chat about her adolescent years and the Grammys.

Sporting a pair of black sunglasses and a black jacket with shoulder pads the size of her head, Lady Gaga sang "Bad Romance," the lead single off of The Fame Monster, which hit stores on Monday. Male backup dancers dressed in black suits and S&M headgear helped remove her jacket after the first chorus so she could dance more freely — maybe too freely, as her low-cut tank may have veered into wardrobe-malfunction territory on a couple of occasions.

After the performance, Leno asked Gaga about the recent news that she will be ineligible to receive a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist because her single "Just Dance" was nominated this year.

"I'll tell you the biggest reward for me has been my fans," she told the late-night host. "I truthfully don't rely on that outside validation. My fans are my family now, and really what I care about is what they think."

On Sunday, Grammy president Neil Portnow told Entertainment Weekly that the rules might be bent so that the songstress could snatch a Best New Artist nomination after all. "We change the rules frequently. We recognize that situation is not perfect, and we are looking at ways to figure it out," Portnow told the magazine.

But on Monday, an official spokeswoman for the Recording Academy told the Los Angeles Times that ballots had already been returned for the 2010 event, with nominees to be announced on December 2, and no further rule changes were expected until after the January 31 ceremony.

Even if she doesn't receive a nomination, Gaga told Leno that she will always remember the woman who initially attempted to bend the rules for her: her mom.

"I started playing out in nightclubs when I was 14," Gaga said. "My mom used to take me, and she'd be like, 'My daughter's too young to be in here, and I'm too old to be in here, but she's really, really good."

• Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga
Photo: Bryan Bedder/ Getty Images

Lady Gaga came onto the scene a champagne-swilling, fame-seeking disco queen in 2008. And while she could have possibly been just another flash in the pan, she soon evolved into a gutsy, unique pop star willing to almost die for her art — see her Video Music Awards and American Music Awards performances for proof of her dedication.

Now, with her sophomore release, The Fame Monster, Gaga is exorcising her demons — the very demons she gained on her journey to fame.

"I never really decided what I wanted to write about at all. I just felt this urgency to write about what I was going through — my fears and my monsters," she explained. "I had been so ambitious and dreaming for so long that I wasn't feeling very much."

Those fears and monsters pushed her to write the track "Speechless," a song about her fear of death — specifically her father's. "My mom called me and I was very depressed. I was on tour and I couldn't leave, so I went into the studio and I wrote this song 'Speechless,' and it's about these phone calls," she said. "My dad used to call me after he'd had a few drinks and I wouldn't know what to say. I was speechless and I just feared that I would lose him and I wouldn't be there.

"Once I got out on the road — when you're that vulnerable with your audience every night ... to me, being an artist is being private in public," she explained. "So I'm being private in public every night and all my monsters and my fears went leaping out of me and I just began to write."

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Lady Gaga onstage at the 2009 American Music Awards
Photo: Lester Cohen/ WireImage

Rules were made to be broken. Or, when it comes to Lady Gaga, one of the few true breakout music stars in a business that is starving for new icons, at least bent.

That's the message Grammy president Neil Portnow was sending in a red-carpet interview at the American Music Awards on Sunday night (November 22) following a revelation last week in Variety magazine that Gaga would not be eligible for the Best New Artist category at next year's Grammy Awards because her song "Just Dance" was nominated for Dance Recording at this year's Grammys.

Portnow told Entertainment Weekly that there may be a loophole that would allow Gaga to join the list of recent female luminaries who've snagged the award that includes Adele, Amy Winehouse and Carrie Underwood. "The awards and nominations committee meets to review the rules every year," Portnow said when asked if the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences might consider a rule change to let 2009's biggest breakout artist vie for the prize. "We change the rules frequently. We recognize that situation is not perfect, and we are looking at ways to figure it out."

However, on Monday morning the Los Angeles Times reported that Portnow's wishful thinking may be just that. An official spokeswoman for the Recording Academy told the paper that ballots have already been returned for the 2010 event, with nominees to be announced on December 2, with no further rule changes expected until after the January 31 ceremony. "First-round ballots were due back in early/mid-October, so it would be extremely challenging to change the rules now with nominations being announced next week," the unidentified Recording Academy spokeswoman said. "Any changes to be made will be considered after this year's show and therefore would not affect the current rule, which does disqualify her."

Gaga's debut, The Fame, was released in August 2008, but it didn't begin to take off until later in the year, going mega in 2009 on the back of a series of #1 hits — it has sold more than 1.6 million copies to date. Even without the prestigious best new artist nod, the Times said Gaga is expected to receive multiple Grammy noms, including Album of the Year and Record and Song of the Year for "Poker Face."

If it does somehow happen, the rule change could follow in the footsteps of another major reversal recently announced by Billboard magazine in reaction to the new realities of the music business. After a year in which albums by the Beatles and the late Michael Jackson experienced a surge in sales while being denied a spot on the Billboard 200 chart because of rules that mandate titles over 18 months old. Beginning this week, older releases will now be eligible for inclusion on the Top 200 chart.

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Photo: Interscope

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Lady Gaga performs "Speechless" at the 2009 American Music Awards on Sunday
Photo: Kevin Mazur/ WireImage

Surrounded by fire in a nude-colored bodysuit, Lady Gaga seemed to be defying death while performing her song "Speechless" at the American Music Awards on Sunday night. The song, featured on Gaga's latest release, The Fame Monster, is, fittingly, a plea to Gaga's father to save his own life. As with many of the songs on the album, she's fighting a monster of some sort.

This one, simply, is her fear of death. "Well, my dad has had a heart condition for about 15 years," she explained to MTV News about the impetus to pen the song. "He has or he had a bad aortic valve, and his body for a very long time was only pumping a third of the blood that you're supposed to get every time his heart beat."

Instead of seeking treatment, her dad decided to just live his life. But everything changed while Gaga was on the road pursuing her dream. "So he [was] resigned that he wasn't going to get the surgery and told my mother and I that he was going to let his life take its course," she explained. "And I've been away and on the road and he started to fade when I was gone."

So what else could Gaga do trapped out on tour, except express her thoughts through music? "My mom called me and I was very depressed. I was on tour and I couldn't leave, so I went into the studio and I wrote this song 'Speechless,' and it's about these phone calls," she said. "My dad used to call me after he'd had a few drinks and I wouldn't know what to say. I was speechless and I just feared that I would lose him and I wouldn't be there."

Gaga's father did eventually get the treatment he needed, but Gaga added, "I wrote this song as a plea to him."

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Gloriana at the American Music Awards on Sunday
Photo: Lester Cohen/WireImage

Sunday night's American Music Awards were so full of incredible performances — from Lady Gaga's liberal use of pyrotechnics to Adam Lambert's sexy display — that the actual awards given out seemed almost secondary. Still, the night's biggest upset probably belonged to country act Gloriana, who beat out Gaga (as well as R&B star Keri Hilson and rising hip-hop star Kid Cudi) for the Breakthrough Artist award.

	AMAs Red Carpet

The country group formed in 2008 when brothers Tom and Mike Gossin teamed up with singer and solo artist Cheyenne Kimball (who had first grabbed headlines as the winner of "America's Most Talented Kid" in 2002). Though the Gossin brothers are from Utica, New York, they relocated to Wilmington, North Carolina, to kickstart Gloriana. Once the band recruited Rachel Reinert (whom they discovered via MySpace), they began working on songs and ended up teaming up with producer Matt Serletic (Matchbox Twenty, Edwin McCain), who co-wrote their first single, "Wild at Heart."

The song was the highest-selling country debut single of this year and landed them a spot as the opening act on Taylor Swift's Fearless tour. The group's self-titled debut album came out on Serletic's Emblem Records label back in August, where it debuted at #3 on the Billboard albums chart and sold 44,000 albums. They'll no doubt get another chart boost from their exposure on Sunday's show.

Gloriana are currently preparing for a month-long tour of their own before they re-join Swift on the road beginning next March.

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Lady Gaga
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