By Juliana June Rasul

BACK in May, you may recall I raved and ranted over a certain Adam Lambert losing a certain TV show called American Idol.

The eighth season's actual winner, Kris Allen, 24, was a sweet boy, but so blah, and so not awesome when it comes to guyliner.

The rivalry starts again, as the duo who slugged it out at the American Idol finale five months ago release their debut albums within days of each other.

Allen's self-titled debut is out tomorrow, while Lambert's will be released on Monday. Will Glambert fans' predictions be right - that heavily favoured Lambert, 27, was always the real winner?

The New Paper takes an exclusive sneak peek at their debut efforts and susses out who's likely to come out tops after crossing over from reality show to real life.

ALBUMS:

KRIS ALLEN - KRIS ALLEN

This is straight out of the John Mayer, One Republic, The Fray and Coldplay songbooks - which is to say that it is pure sensitive white boy pop-rock.

Like those he's borrowed from, Allen has made his album eminently listenable.

There is about half as much yelping on the album as when he was on Idol, which is a huge improvement.

The one song he wrote himself, Red Guitar, is a beautiful, almost U2-esque number.

ADAM LAMBERT - FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT

For your entertainment, indeed. The album, with its myriad Glambert shrieks and beats, is at best exhilarating, and at worst, exhausting.

It's campy, swerving from techno beats to guitar wails to pop-rock sensitivity. There are some Freddie Mercury falsettos, and Robbie Williams vocal strutting.

At every turn, too, there's the possibility that Lambert is going to throw out some double entendre of a lyric that would make Kris Allen fans blush.

But when he gets down to the serious business of singing, he does it beautifully, like in Muse-written track Soaked and the haunting album closer, Broken Open.

Winner: Lambert. Really, I'm not biased. Really.

ALBUM COVER:

ALLEN: Oh look, a non-threatening Allen, subtly hinting at his crazed female fans that he's taken (note the wedding band on his left ring finger).

LAMBERT: Is that Paula Abdul? No, it's Lambert, who apparently has just returned from space with a Ziggy Stardust makeover. This is the kind of cover you'll probably freak out about finding in a pile of CDs in a few years' time.

However, the cover, as tweeted from the man himself, "is deliberately campy... it IS ridiculous". Phew.

Winner: Lambert. For the sheer amount of eye make-up involved.

FIRST SINGLE:

ALLEN - LIVE LIKE WE'RE DYING

We know Idols have released covers before - Ruben Studdard's finale song and first single, Flying Without Wings, was first done by Westlife (which had its fair share of success riding on other people's hit singles).

But Allen, who is sold as an earnest artist, should have tried harder to come up with an original first single.

This song, upbeat and hooky as it is, is almost exactly the same as the original by British band The Script.

LAMBERT - TIME FOR MIRACLES

Technically, the title track, For Your Entertainment, will be Lambert's first single.

But Time For Miracles was released first as the theme song of the hit disaster flick 2012. Is it this generation's answer to Aerosmith's I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing from Armageddon then? It's not quite as hooky, and I don't think anyone's going to shed any tears, but the drama befits the drama queen.

Winner: Lambert

COLLABORATIONS:

We don't have space to list Allen's collaborations, because look at Lambert's: Pink, Lady Gaga, The Darkness, Muse, Linda Perry, Rivers Cuomo (Weezer)and RyanTedder (One Republic). Allen who?

MUSIC VIDEO:

ALLEN: An artist's first music video is terribly important in establishing his identity - and so it is that we see him both strumming guitar and at the piano, to underscore that honest musician side of him.

LAMBERT: Over-the-top as always, he opens the clip crouching on top of a building looking like Brandon Lee from The Crow.

He then proceeds to overact in a video already full of drama with scenes of earth's destruction.

Winner: Can we call it a tie?

POST-IDOL BUZZ:

ALLEN: Allen got some paparazzi action after his win - he was tailed while getting juice, and, on another occasion, while he was out on a date with his wife, whom he married last year after seven years of dating.

The little news that's been trickling out since then has mostly revolved around his career.

LAMBERT: Even if Allen had been invited to all the parties Lambert's been to in the last five months,you probably wouldn't know.

Coming out of the closet in Rolling Stone magazine, celebrity dates (Katy Perry, at the movie premiere for This Is It) and highly-publicised break-up with his hottie boyfriend - Lambert's done all the right things to keep getting his picture, uh, name out there.

Winner: Do I really need to spell it out?

IMAGE - THEN AND NOW:

Past winners have often got lost post-Idol. Ruben Studdard failed repeatedly at making the switch from soulful "Velvet Teddybear" to R&B crooner.

It's heartening to know, then, that the rivalry between this year's finalists is still between good small-town boy Allen and glamazon god Lambert.

But while Allen has remained decisively Allen - aw-shucks smile and all - Lambert has, if it's possible, completely multiplied the guyliner and glamazon act by a hundred.

Winner: How can we fault either of them for being true to themselves, even if we sorta kinda need sunglasses to look at Lambert now?

julrasul@sph.com.sg

This article was first published in The New Paper.