“I’ll be going about my business and letting my guard down and somebody will call me a ‘faggot’ on the street. All of a sudden your otherness is magnified,” he says. “One time in the [American] South at a gas station I had this group back away from me as I walked through, and in a way it was kind of awesome. It was the first time that I thought maybe this could not be so shameful and bad if I were to be like, ‘Yeah fucking move; I’m coming down the aisle’.”
“So ‘Queen’ is kind of saying that all the things you’re scared about are true and it’s me, so watch out,” he says, laughing. “And it’s also kind of playful and hopefully magnifying how ridiculous that is.”
There was certainly a “gay panic” when Hadreas released his video for “Hood” in 2012. In it he was being held tenderly in the arms of the porn star Arpad Miklos. Despite an absence of nudity, YouTube deemed the clip “not family-safe” and banned it; after widespread objection they eventually overturned their decision.
Perhaps as a result of this prejudice, when it came to writing his latest album some industry figures and friends advised him to “tone it down” to have a better chance of breaking into the mainstream. “They were basically telling me to be less gay,” he states, matter of factly. Against his better judgement, he took on their advice. “I ended up writing more universally but the music was going to be less touching and less moving for everyone who was going to listen to it,” he says. “Even though the songs were good they just didn’t feel important to me and there wasn’t the level of conviction that I like to have with everything I make. And so, I just decided to do whatever I wanted and stop worrying so specifically about how it was going to be received.”
Mike Hadreas, aka Perfume Genius in the Independent On Sunday.
Fagburn still isn't sure if he thinks he's any good or not.
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