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The longest day of the year is officially past us, which means you now have even more daylight hours to listen to new songs from your favorite queer artists! Billboard Pride is proud to present the latest edition of Queer Jams of the Week, our roundup of some of the best new music releases from LGBTQ artists.
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From Kehlani’s irresistible new album to Maren Morris’s stunning new single, check out just a few of our favorite releases from this week below:
Kehlani, Crash
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Kehlani knows how to write earnestly about even the deepest of emotions —it’s a fact she’s proven consistently throughout her dazzling career. But with her latest album Crash, the R&B star shows that she can continue doing that over a series of infectious, eclectic new sounds. Whether she’s heading to the dancefloor (“After Hours”) or bringing out a softer, folksy side (“Better Not”), Kehlani never loses the emotional maturity that’s defined so much of her output. Stark confessions, brutal kiss-offs and deep internal investigations yield phenomenal results for the singer-songwriter on yet another career highlight.
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Maren Morris feat. Julia Michaels, “Cut!”
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“How does she do it?” Maren Morris wonders of herself in the first few lines of her new song “Cut!” She touts her regimen of yoga, therapy and sleep over a glossy pop beat, while maintaining her vocal composure. But that all changes on the song’s bombastic chorus, as she (and later, guest Julia Michaels) takes a moment behind closed doors to “let my tears fall when they want.” It’s a stunningly intimate pop ballad from the singer as she navigates the balance between life both in and out of the public eye.
VINCINT feat. Betty Who, “Love Me Tonight”
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Just when we needed it, VINCINT is here with his second consecutive slice of pop perfection. “Love Me Tonight,” the propellant new single from the rising pop singer, sees VINCINT and special guest Betty Who leaning hard into the romance of it all, with a symphony of deep house synths and sweeping strings to drive home that yearning feeling. But as tends to be the case with his songs, it’s VINCINT and Who’s vocals that provide the souped-up engine for this unstoppable anthem, as the pair each declare that “if you love me baby, love me tonight.”
Kali Uchis, “Never Be Yours”
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A breakup has never sounded quite as good as it does on Kali Uchis’ stunning new single “Never Be Yours.” As lush instrumentation brings the listener into a dreamy world of strings, keys and chimes, the Colombian star takes on an old-school vibe to let her would-be lover know that she’s simply not interested in what they have to offer. “I’m not gonna be yours right now,” she coos, as a gentle guitar cushions the blow. “‘Cause I’ll never be yours, no how.”
The Japanese House, “:)”
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While Amber Bain (the artist behind the moniker of The Japanese House) may be best known for her introspective songwriting, her new single shows that she’s perfectly capable of delivering a sparkling love song. “:)” finds Bain at her most idyllic, as she waxes poetic about a girl she met online. What starts as digital flirting quickly turns to a whirlwind fantasy, where the singer boards a plane, meets her online lover and falls even deeper in love than she already was. The sunny guitars and persistent drum pattern boost her confidence as she declares that she might be crazy, “Who cares/ ‘Cause something’s happening/ I feel happier.”
Adam Lambert, “CVNTY”
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Looking for some booming new club tracks to help celebrate Pride Month? Adam Lambert is here to deliver with “CVNTY,” his ground-shaking new single dedicated to the art of serving … well, just read the song’s title. The pounding electronic beat only adds to Lambert’s laid-back vocal, as he calmly lets his passionate lover exactly how their relationship is going to go: “Sorry, baby, that you went and motherf—ing blew it/ I’ll break your heart, and I’ll look c-nty when I do it,” he croons, before letting the production crash into him like a tidal wave.
Big Freedia, “Holatta”
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Pride is meant to be a protest, and Big Freedia is making sure we keep that spirit alive with her new song. “Holatta” comes off of NOISE FOR NOW, VOL. 2, a new compilation album featuring tracks from Faye Webster, The War On Drugs, Courtney Barnett and others, with all proceeds from the album being donated to fund independent abortion providers across the U.S. in the wake of 2022’s Dobbs decision. For her part, Big Freedia digs deep into her bounce roots to craft an anthem for fighting back — the thundering beat echoes the singer’s own voice as she declares that “we got a point to prove.”
Sapphira Cristál, “Get Your Flowers”
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We all need a voice like Sapphira Cristál’s in our lives. The Drag Race runner-up made a name for herself as the motivational “mother” of season 16 — and now, she’s ready to do the same for you. With “Get Your Flowers,” Cristál steps firmly into the limelight of musical artistry, as she melds her penchant for words of encouragement with dace music and just a dash of operatic arias. Over a slick dance-pop melody, Cristál asks her listeners to put some more stock in themselves as she shows off exactly what made her Drag Race run so instantly memorable in this fun new track.
Check out all of our picks below on Billboard’s Queer Jams of the Week playlist:
Move over, Tchaikovsky, because Chappell Roan took her own stab at Swan Lake while on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Thursday (June 20).
Taking to the late-night talk show’s stage surrounded by lilies , the pop star performed her breakout single “Good Luck, Babe!” while dressed head to toe in white feathers and a frizzy blonde wig, resembling the classic ballet’s Princess Odette. As the performance reached a fever pitch with the song’s viral chorus, Roan crawled on her hands and knees toward the camera, flashing her long, white acrylic nails.
But Roan wasn’t finished there. The “Pink Pony Club” singer also sat down with host Jimmy Fallon for a brief interview. This time dressed in a black bustier adorned with enormous black feathers — presenting the black swan Odile side to her performance’s Odette — Roan chatted with the host about her humble beginnings operating out of Willard, Mo., and spoke about her self-ascribed moniker of “your favorite artist’s favorite artist” from her Coachella performance.
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“That was a reference to Sasha Colby, and Sasha Colby said, ‘I’m your favorite drag queen’s favorite drag queen,’” Roan said, referring to the drag legend and winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race season 15. “It just hit me through the heart. And so I hope one day Sasha Colby watches me, and that’s why I said it.”
The nickname has stuck for the singer. When Fallon revealed that he’d Googled her earlier that day (“Did you not know who I was before?” she cracked), a message popped up below the search bar saying, “Did you mean: your favorite artist’s favorite artist.”
Roan clarified that she’s not the one who put the suggestion on the website, but shared her theory of who was behind the message. “It’s this random twink that works at Google, I know it is!” she said. “It’s some assisstant that said, like, ‘We love her.’”
The star also spoke with Fallon about her recent string of successes, saying that they’ve helped validate an opinion she’s long held. “It feels like I was right all along,” she quipped with a laugh. “I feel kind of like, I made it already when people showed up to my concert a few years ago … everything else has been a cherry on top.”
Check out Roan’s performance of “Good Luck, Babe!” above, and watch her full interview with Jimmy Fallon below:
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David Furnish felt a rush of endorphins wash over him. It was a warm June evening in 2023, and the surging crowd of over 120,000 had gathered to witness the first-ever Glastonbury Festival set — and, at least for the time being, the last public concert in the United Kingdom — by Elton John. That crush of concertgoers was screaming for Furnish’s star client — who also happens to be his husband.
“Even the concession stands in the back closed down so that they could watch the show,” Furnish recalls, still flabbergasted nearly a year later. “The crowd just filled in around the stands and along the entire north barrier. It was a sea of joy.”
The performance would break records for the annual festival: Along with that in-person crowd, John’s performance garnered 7.3 million overnight viewers on BBC One, making it the most-watched Glastonbury set in history. And if not for Furnish, it never would have happened.
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“Elton and I have been talking about it for years. He would say, ‘I just don’t know if I’m right for Glastonbury,’ ” Furnish tells Billboard over Zoom today as John chuckles next to him at their home in Windsor, just outside of London. “I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? You’ll go down really, really well.’ And sure enough, it was overwhelmingly wonderful on every level.”
While Furnish, 61, has been a part of John’s life for just over three decades — the couple began dating in 1993, entered a civil partnership in 2005 and officially tied the knot in 2014 — he has spent the last nine years working as the icon’s manager, bringing his years of experience in advertising to preserving John’s legacy, reestablishing him as a legendary singer and revitalizing his brand. That meant taking an aggressive approach to telling John’s life story through a tell-all memoir (Me) and blockbuster feature film (2019’s Rocketman), introducing his music to a younger audience through strategic partnerships and closing out his touring career with a record-setting farewell outing that was the highest-grossing trek by any artist prior to Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour.
“I cannot think of anybody in the world who would have done a better job than David has over the last nine years,” John says. “This man has done the most incredible job with my career, and what’s more, he has helped me enjoy it even more than I thought I could.”
Jack Alexander
Born and raised in Toronto, Furnish didn’t imagine a future where he would be working behind the scenes for an entertainment legend. After graduating from high school, Furnish says he originally dreamed of becoming “a musical theater-type actor.” But on his family’s advice, he instead pursued a business degree at the University of Western Ontario, where he graduated in 1985. Recruited out of college by storied advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather, Furnish thrived, becoming the youngest director at the company by the time he was 30.
“At the end of the day, I’m more of a creative than a businessman. That’s just the dominant side of my brain,” he explains. “I chose advertising because it was the most creative business I felt I could get into.”
But after meeting John in 1993 at a dinner party hosted by a mutual friend (they began dating shortly thereafter), Furnish found himself in need of something a bit more flexible. Leaving advertising behind, he pursued a career in film, producing multiple movies, including 1999’s Women Talking Dirty and 2006’s It’s a Boy Girl Thing, through John’s own cinematic imprint, Rocket Pictures — where he also made his directorial debut with the singer’s 1997 tell-all documentary, Elton John: Tantrums & Tiaras.
During that time, Furnish noticed that his husband’s career needed further direction. “I was trained to understand how you start at the beginning of a journey and then figure out what steps to take with the audience to get them from point A to point B,” Furnish explains. “I also knew the most important thing for Elton was keeping his songs alive and relevant for the next generation. So the rest came rather naturally.”
Taking over as the star’s manager in 2015, Furnish devised a business plan to reinvigorate John’s career — an approach the singer points to as a marked improvement from his past management. “Before David started managing me, our relationship with the record company [Universal Music Group] was just my former manager saying, ‘Let’s go in there and ask them for more money.’ And that is a terrible attitude to have,” John says with a laugh. “Now I have the best relationship with my record company because [David] came in with a plan to get us in better shape.”
Elton John and David Furnish with party attendees (clockwise, from left) Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Lucien Laviscount, Andrew Watt, Charlotte Lawrence and Brandi Carlile at the Elton John AIDS Foundation’s annual Academy Awards Viewing Party in March.
Michael Kovac/Getty Images
After sharing his plan with John, Furnish says he immediately sent the strategy to UMG CEO Lucian Grainge, aiming to show the label that “things were going to be different.” That open line of communication led to a groundbreaking deal between Rocket Entertainment and UMG in 2018, in which the two companies signed a global partnership spanning recorded music, publishing and licensing rights for the rest of John’s career.
Furnish explains that, with John’s label contract set to expire in 2018, it felt right to begin renegotiations with UMG as soon as he signed on. “To do any negotiation, you want to have the most robust environment, and you want to do it at the right time,” he says. “We didn’t go in and say, ‘Here’s the new plan, so we want a new deal.’ It was a simultaneous conversation, and we all walked away happy with the results.”
With negotiations at UMG squared away, Furnish set his sights on bolstering John’s reputation among younger audiences. The first step in that direction came with Apple Music. Meeting with co-creator Jimmy Iovine “back when it was still called Beats Music,” Furnish pitched him on John as an asset for what would become Elton John’s Rocket Hour, now one of Apple Music’s longest-running programs. “We just took what Elton naturally does in his everyday life — he listens to everything — and found a passionate vehicle for it,” he says. The strategy worked: Along with burnishing John’s reputation among young listeners, the show has also championed vibrant new talent like Lil Nas X, Rina Sawayama and, most recently, Chappell Roan.
Another cornerstone of Furnish’s plan came to fruition with the 2019 release of Rocketman, the award-winning musical biopic starring Taron Egerton and covering the early years of John’s career. The film scored John his second Academy Award win for best original song — with longtime collaborator Bernie Taupin for “(I’m Gonna) Love Me Again” — and introduced John’s catalog to an eager, younger audience.
As John puts it, “Things really started to change with the film.” Its themes of “self-love, addiction, familial love and acceptance” helped make the living legend’s career more accessible for less-familiar viewers, Furnish says. In the years since Rocketman’s release, he reports, 58% of John’s streams have been generated by 18- to 35-year-olds.
Elton John (left) and David Furnish onstage at the Elton John AIDS Foundation’s annual Academy Awards Viewing Party in March.
Michael Kovac/Getty Images
With more youthful listeners hearing John’s music, he and Furnish ensured that he would keep their attention with a pair of hit remixes: 2021’s “Cold Heart (Pnau Remix),” featuring Dua Lipa, and 2022’s “Hold Me Closer,” featuring Britney Spears. The tracks returned John’s music to the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time in over 20 years, with both songs putting him in the chart’s top 10 for the first time since his 1997 No. 1, “Candle in the Wind 1997/Something About the Way You Look Tonight.”
The active effort to bolster John’s audience reflects the pair’s shared interest in holding on to his legendary catalog. While other legacy artists have sold off their song collections to companies like Primary Wave or Concord, Furnish and John remain steadfast in their desire to maintain control.
“To be the custodians of that legacy that Elton and Bernie built is more important to us than anything. Elton’s catalog is about as blue chip as I would want an investment to be,” Furnish says. “Look at the disruption that has happened with Hipgnosis [Songs Fund]; I can’t think of anything more worrying than selling your catalog to a group you liked and then suddenly, it’s in the hands of somebody else. That’s heartbreaking, especially after spending your life protecting it.”
With their two sons, Zachary (now 13) and Elijah (11), reaching school age, John and Furnish enacted the final component of their plan: ending the singer’s touring career. “It was never a question whether I wanted to stop, because I knew I needed to be with our boys. I had been on the road since I was 16, 17 years of age,” John says, sighing. “Of course, I’ve enjoyed it all, but you have to know when to quit. And I wanted to quit at the top.”
Starting in September 2018 and running through July 2023, John achieved his goal with the Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour. Across 330 shows spanning five continents, the trek grossed a whopping $939 million in ticket sales, according to Billboard Boxscore, becoming the first tour in history to surpass the $900 million mark.
That figure is a point of pride for both John and Furnish, especially considering all the work they had invested in making John’s departure as spectacular as possible. “Elton put the most extraordinary foundation in place at the beginning of his career, and I got such a greater sense of appreciation for how hard he worked throughout this tour,” Furnish says. “As a businessperson, I knew how to chart a path that could get him to where he deserves to be. When you put those together, it’s a winning combination.”
The tour also secured John a prestigious honor held by only 18 other creatives — an EGOT — thanks to an Emmy win for outstanding variety special (live) for his Elton John Live: Farewell From Dodger Stadium special on Disney+. “It was such an important moment for Elton professionally and for us as a family,” Furnish says of the November 2022 performance, John’s last in North America. “To have it honored that way, and preserved in time forever, is really beautiful.”
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Yet despite pulling together an unheard-of string of accolades in his husband’s career, Furnish also speaks with unparalleled passion about his work as chairman for the Elton John AIDS Foundation. Throughout his conversation with Billboard, he regularly mentions the organization’s work in Johannesburg, the southern United States and elsewhere to improve community access to standard HIV testing and treatment, reduce the stigma surrounding the spread of the virus and raise millions of dollars to help end the AIDS epidemic by 2030.
It’s important, Furnish points out, to translate the success of both his and John’s careers into actionable, meaningful change in the world. “You need the other side of life to keep your feet on the ground, to take the gifts that you’ve been given and the opportunities that you’ve been given and help other people,” he says. “We both work incredibly hard, but we also realize we’re incredibly lucky. We have an obligation to give back.”
With so many career-defining victories over the last decade, John says he feels privileged to share them with his companion — in no small part because their partnership is what helped make those victories happen. “The complete trust that we have in each other is a godsend,” he says. “Looking at this from a completely egotistical point of view, I’ve always been a big artist. But what David has done lifted me into the echelon of artists like The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Paul McCartney. That’s how good he is.”
Furnish quickly interrupts to correct his husband: “No — that’s how good you are.”
This story will appear in the June 22, 2024, issue of Billboard.
On a recent trip back to London, rising pop-rock artist Towa Bird visited the house she lived in during university — it’s where she started producing, writing songs and posting videos online — and felt a rare moment of pride upon returning there. “Standing back in that house, it sort of hit me: ‘I have come a long way,’ ” says Bird, 25. “Even though I don’t necessarily let myself believe that, I have.”
Bird’s career has been growing gradually since 2021, when she scored a major-label deal with Interscope and moved from London to Los Angeles. She gained recognition as the towering guitarist who could shred in Olivia Rodrigo’s 2022 Disney+ special, driving home 2 u. In 2023, she scored an opening slot on Reneé Rapp’s Snow Hard Feelings Tour and, in October, released breakout single “Drain Me!,” an electrifying alternative-rock hit about lust that appears on her debut album, American Hero, out June 28.
Growing up in Hong Kong and later London, the half-Filipino, half-English artist was raised on alternative and classic rock, identifying most with guitarists (her idols include Jimi Hendrix and Prince). “Hearing the way that guitarists would manipulate the instrument, making it sound just as strong and present as the lead vocal, I was attracted to that,” Bird says. By 12, she was learning how to play on her father’s old guitar, “which I think had like three strings on it,” she recalls. “But I definitely tried to make it functional.”
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Two years later, Bird formed her first band, The Glass Onions, and started performing at local Hong Kong dives. Yet, despite her early strides, Bird assures she wanted to be everything but a full-time artist — namely because she never felt empowered or allowed to be one at all. “I don’t think anyone in my family thought that [this] would be the case — including myself,” she says. “I thought it’d be a cute hobby.”
Nicole Nodland
She went on to attend Goldsmiths, University of London, but dropped out in 2020 just before the pandemic. Shortly after to pass the time, Bird started uploading videos of herself shredding over other artists’ songs on TikTok and soon “fell into” writing, producing and playing guitar for more emerging acts. Never feeling like she had “permission” — mostly from herself — to be an artist, Bird preferred working outside of the limelight. But what she didn’t expect was that through those sessions — many of which were done on Zoom late at night in London with artists in L.A. — she felt the authority she had always sought. “Just being in the scene and being seen was good,” she says.
Around the same time, Bird met music managers Jacob Epstein and Zack Morgenroth (of Lighthouse Management, whose clients include Rodrigo) “through the internet,” as she says, and signed with the pair. She figured a publishing deal would follow, but despite being “too scared to sing,” Epstein and Morgenroth were simultaneously setting up label meetings for Bird as an artist. The interest she received piqued her own, saying the encouragement and support from major labels “gave me a little kick up the ass” to focus on her own music. In 2021, she signed an artist deal with Interscope and moved to L.A.
Bird has since emerged as an urgent voice in rock music, whether through her singing or shredding. And most often, it’s both. She believes that in the last few years, there has been a groundswell of interest in live instruments again, especially among her generation. She credits the resurgence in part to her pal Rodrigo. “Olivia really opened doors for me,” Bird says, referring to the Disney+ special that earned her early praise and press. “It was really cool of her to see a young female artist and be like, ‘I want to highlight you.’ ”
Nicole Nodland
Last year, Bird had another peer (and labelmate) give her a boost when Rapp enlisted her to play guitar on “Tummy Hurts,” off Rapp’s debut album, Snow Angel. She then brought Bird on her 2023 tour, which allowed the singer-guitarist to meet her fans in person for the first time — and to spend time with singer-songwriter-producer Alexander 23, a fellow Rapp tourmate and friend of Bird’s whom she worked with on American Hero.
Across the album’s 13 tracks, Bird reflects on a range of relatable 20-something woes: raging over how expensive life is and the lacking U.S. health care system on “B.I.L.L.S.”; adjusting to life in L.A. and a career in music on “This Isn’t Me”; and feeling fearful about falling in love with a friend on “Sorry Sorry.”
“I was never like, ‘Oh, I’m going to write a gay song today,’ ” she says of her approach to writing. “It was just like, ‘I want to write a good song about love or sex,’ or whatever I was feeling. It’s funny how [my music has] been labeled as queer music or whatever people decide to label it as, but for me, I think it’s just good music — maybe.”
Nicole Nodland
True to form, Bird struggles to celebrate the victories she has had so far. She can’t even say the word “success” without using air quotes. She insists she’s trying to get better at acknowledging her wins along the way — which now include a slate of summer festival gigs — and already has an idea of how to celebrate her album’s release. “I’ll sit and listen to the full thing, front to back. And then probably cry and get aggressively drunk,” she says with a laugh.
But in spite of feeling “sh-t scared” about its release, Bird recognizes its importance. While she never felt like she had permission to land exactly where she has, with American Hero, she gives that runway to anyone who listens. “It’s something that I clearly still continue to lack,” Bird says. “I mean, what young woman will tell you that that [support is] something they received growing up? Probably none. Especially in this industry. So if I can help in any sort of way, even inadvertently, then that’s great.”
This story will appear in the June 22, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Between climbing the charts and making headlines for her festival performances, rising pop star Chappell Roan is having a moment — and one cast member at Saturday Night Live would like to be a part of that narrative.
In the latest episode of Las Culturistas, his podcast with Matt Rogers, Bowen Yang revealed that he attended a pair of the “Good Luck, Babe!” singer’s concerts with the show’s talent team to try and persuade them that she might make a good musical guest.
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“I went to both of her Brooklyn Steel nights,” Yang said, referring to Roan’s pair of shows at the Brooklyn venue in October 2023. “I went to see her two nights in a row, the first night was the only time I’ve skipped a Tuesday writing night … because the talent people at SNL were like, ‘We’re gonna see Chappell, do you wanna come with?’”
Yang said that while he wasn’t “pressing my thumb on the scale” when it came to the issue, he did offer his input on the singer as a potential SNL guest. “I did wanna be there to talk to them about, like, ‘What would booking her be like?’” he said. “It was just me being like, ‘You guys should experience her.’ So I went with them, and during ‘Casual,’ this person on the talent team — Grace Shaker, love you — turns to me and goes, ‘She’s special.’”
Billboard has reached out to representatives for SNL and Roan for comment.
Over the last two months, Roan’s star has risen quickly. Her breakout single “Good Luck, Babe!” recently broke into the Billboard Hot 100′s top 40, and is currently sitting at No. 21 on the chart dated June 22. Meanwhile, nine months after its release, her debut album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess ascended to No. 10 on the Billboard 200 on the chart dated June 22.
During a recent concert appearance in Raleigh, N.C., Roan commented on her sudden rise, saying she was feeling a bit overwhelmed: “I think my career is just kind of going really fast and it’s really hard to keep up.”
Listen to Yang talk about Roan on the latest episode of Las Culturistas below
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. Yvie Oddly isn’t one to shy away from the spotlight, having won the eleventh season of RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2019, […]
In between sips of that me espresso, pop star Sabrina Carpenter is wishing all of her exes the best with a cover of fellow singer Chappell Roan‘s latest single. Taking the stage at BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge on Tuesday (June 18), Carpenter performed her own take on Roan’s breakout hit “Good Luck, Babe!” Swapping […]
More than a year after his farewell tour officially wrapped, Sir Elton John would like to give fans an inside look at his life on the road. On Tuesday (June 18), the Toronto International Film Festival announced its first slate of film premieres, including the world debut of Elton John: Never Too Late. Directed by […]
St. Vincent still isn’t over how impressive the fan love is surrounding Taylor Swift‘s “Cruel Summer.”
Eight months after the song hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — where it reigned for four weeks, a full four years after it was originally released on 2019’s Lover — the singer-songwriter born Annie Clark opened up about its delayed success in her Billboard digital cover story published Monday (June 17).
“I remain blown away by ‘Cruel Summer’ being the phenomenon that is it,” she said. “Not because it isn’t a great song. It’s indicative of the time we’re in, where a song from many albums ago, that wasn’t even a single at the time, the fans go, ‘No, this one — we pick this one.’ And then they march it up the charts.”
Clark added, “That’s completely a testament to her fan base being so powerful.”
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Shortly after “Cruel Summer” reached the summit, Swift and the track’s other co-writer, Jack Antonoff, celebrated the unexpected feat on social media. “The song that we said was the best song, but we thought, ‘Oh, you know what? This will be our secret best song.’ That’s what we thought,” the producer said in an Instagram video at the time, before the pop star chimed in. “We just wanted to say thank you so much for making ‘Cruel Summer’ a Hot 100 No. 1, and it’s not even summer anymore,” Swift said at the time. “It’s deep fall, I’m wearing a sweater.”
Now fresh off the release of her own seventh studio album All Born Screaming, St. Vincent also spoke to Billboard about her identity as a queer artist in the Pride Month issue. “Every record I’ve ever made has been so personal about what’s going on in my life at any given time,” she said. “I’m queer. I know how to code-switch. The idea of identity as performance has been very clear to me since I was a child.”
“I’m queer, I’m living in multitudes,” she added. “But this record in particular is not about persona or deconstruction.”
Read the full cover story here.
Did you come in when I was dressed like a sperm?”
Despite her wry tone, Annie Clark — the artist better known as St. Vincent — isn’t joking. Not quite an hour earlier, Clark was posing for her Billboard photo shoot in a hooded, ruffled cream mini-dress in front of a billowing blush-pink backdrop meant to evoke a different bit of human anatomy. (Let’s just say the setup was a spiritual descendant of Georgia O’Keeffe’s work.)
As St. Vincent, Clark conjures an enigmatic, opaque aura. But today, she’s in a frank, funny and freewheeling mood. She jests about the suggestive pictures of female models plastered on the walls around us (“Boner patrol, look out!”) and swerves easily from topics highbrow (abstract Russian painter Kazimir Malevich) to low (an off-and-on gamer, she was briefly obsessed with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild). Clark chose to soundtrack her shoot with David Bowie’s coke-fueled 1976 classic, Station to Station, and as we gush over it, the singer-songwriter gives her beige Prada jacket a little shake. “I do like to think this trench coat is giving ‘Dancing in the Street,’ ” she says, referencing the outrageously ’80s music video for Bowie and Mick Jagger’s hit cover. “Minus the cocaine.”
Much like Clark herself, St. Vincent’s Grammy Award-winning output — which has run the gamut from twee indie to ass-kicking art-rock to conceptual electropop — is an arresting mix of the intellect and the id. Her latest album, All Born Screaming, can be experienced as an atavistic staring contest with existence — or simply as a rippin’ alt-rock record.
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“It’s about life and death and love,” she explains. “And that’s it.” For the 41-year-old Clark, at least two of those topics are intrinsically linked to her own identity as a queer artist. “Every record I’ve ever made has been so personal about what’s going on in my life at any given time. I’m queer. I know how to code-switch. The idea of identity as performance has been very clear to me since I was a child.” Even so, Clark shuts down the suggestion that she adopted a mask or performative identity for the album: “I’m queer, I’m living in multitudes, but this record in particular is not about persona or deconstruction.”
Shushu/Tong dress and headpiece, Zhilyova gloves, BY FAR shoes.
Lenne Chai
Code-switching — changing one’s behavior to suit an uncomfortable environment — is nothing new for LGBTQ+ people. Even in the generally progressive-minded music community, Clark says the world queer musicians currently inhabit is “very different” than when she kicked off her recording career in 2006 with the three-song EP Paris Is Burning. “Which is one of those things which gives me a lot of hope,” she notes. “I know there are certain things in the world trending in a scary direction, but all in all, I’d rather live right now than any other time in history. We wouldn’t be having this conversation 60 years ago. I would be a nurse, I would be a secretary, or I would be a mother.”
When I suggest that 60 years ago, I would have been pushed into a heterosexual union and having same-sex dalliances on the down-low, she laughs and perks up. “Exactly! You would have a beautiful wife at home and would be getting your d–k sucked at the whatever. And you’d never know if it was a cop [trying to entrap you].”
As she references the hankie code (as early as the ’70s, gay men used different-colored bandannas to signify sexual preferences) and Hal Fischer’s 1977 photo book, Gay Semiotics: A Photographic Study of Visual Coding Among Homosexual Men, it’s clear Clark knows her queer history. “People the world was hostile to developed these secret languages, secret codes, in order to communicate. I find that fascinating,” she says. “You’re very aware there’s a subterranean, subtext layer to everything that’s going on — and you have your antennae up at all times. That is erotic to me. But I’m glad that [I live in this era].”
As for the downside to LGBTQ+ culture going mainstream? “Well, if you’re safe for the TV screen, you also invite an aspect of grift [from the outside world],” she muses. “Which… I raise an eyebrow at.” To emphasize her point, she cocks her left brow; for a moment, she could pass for a hyperlogical Vulcan on Star Trek. “But there have been plenty of queer people in music. Even if the culture was saying no, there were always queer people in the arts. Please. We have built this.”
For a college dropout, Clark has done pretty well for herself. Born in Tulsa, Okla., she relocated to Texas as a child when her mother moved her and two older sisters to Dallas following her parents’ divorce. (Clark now has four brothers and four sisters from the combined families.) Her childhood obsession with the guitar, ignited by the 1987 Ritchie Valens biopic La Bamba starring Lou Diamond Phillips, became serious as she entered her teen years, and a stint as a roadie for her uncle’s jazz-folk duo, Tuck & Patti, gave Clark her first taste of the touring business.
Clark attended Boston’s prestigious Berklee College of Music but left after three years (though her parents didn’t find out until several years later, when they read it in the press). “Other people have real educations,” she says. “I had philosophy teachers who were like, ‘How is Kierkegaard like Bob Marley?’ ” She shakes her head, almost tenderly. “It’s not. It’s not and that’s fine.” (When I ask how a music school dropout seems to have an endless fount of cultural, historical and artistic references at her disposal, she laughs and asks, “Is that your way of saying, ‘It’s OK you never went to real college’?”)
After cutting herself loose from Berklee, Clark spent 2005 and 2006 on the road with the robe-rocking, symphonic indie outfit Polyphonic Spree, joining Sufjan Stevens’ touring band for a spell shortly thereafter. Her solo debut album, Marry Me, released in 2007 on Beggars Banquet, was a chamber-pop cauldron with notes of Stevens and Spree, but had a playful, wry sense of humor that indicated it was just the tip of the St. Vincent iceberg. (For one thing, the album takes its title from a running joke on Arrested Development — a fact that today causes Clark to rest her head on her fingertips in faux embarrassment before concluding, “It is a great show.”)
On her next release, Actor, Clark’s music developed a jagged, sardonic bite that brought her to the Billboard 200 for the first time (at No. 90). Her top 20 follow-up, the 2011 art-rock statement Strange Mercy, was tinged with pain, fury, self-doubt and confusion — and dispelled any lingering misconceptions that she was a holdover from the demure, precious indie pop of the ’00s. While Clark had always seemed like an artist with something to say, on Strange Mercy, she sounded like an artist who needed to say something.
“In order to get good, you have to go through a series of humbling and humiliating experiences,” she reflects. “On the other hand, you have to have this psychotic belief — an unreasonable belief, truly — that you are going to write songs and make music that is going to matter. And that’s a really crazy thought.” She pauses. “I have that thought — with plenty of self-loathing and self-laceration — but I also have this [feeling], ‘If I don’t do this, I’m going to die.’ ”
Camilla and Marc shirt, Nour Hammour coat, Zhilyova gloves.
Lenne Chai
Among those who took notice of Clark’s creativity and drive was Talking Heads legend and fellow rock eccentric David Byrne. Their 2012 collaborative album, the funky, brass-heavy Love This Giant, netted Byrne his first top 40 entry outside Talking Heads on the Billboard 200.
“Annie is so many things all at once,” Byrne tells Billboard. “Beautiful, inventive, inscrutable — in the best way possible. I know her as someone warm and friendly, but as anyone listening to her music can hear, she’s got a dark side that as far as I know just has an outlet in her music. Would that all of us could do that.”
After a lengthy tour with Byrne — “I love playing shows. I’m up there, and truly, something else kicks in,” Clark emphasizes — she solidified her reputation as an art-rock auteur on her self-titled fourth album, the first of three on Loma Vista, in 2014. With a chromatic purple-blue-pink palette and a gray ’do teased to the heavens, Clark delivered the most stylistically cohesive St. Vincent album yet — and for the first time on wax, she sounded like she was having a blast. St. Vincent won Clark a Grammy for best alternative music album, kicking off an active streak of her collecting at least one Grammy per proper studio release since. In 2014, Clark also spoke publicly about her queerness for the first time, telling Rolling Stone, “I believe in gender fluidity and sexual fluidity.”
With 2017’s Masseduction, Clark pivoted to electropop and paired it with neon-drenched, latex-heavy visuals, as well as some of her most personal songs yet. Co-produced by Jack Antonoff, the album (her first top 10 entry on the Billboard 200) expanded her creative circle to include a range of musicians such as Sounwave, Kamasi Washington, Jenny Lewis, Mike Elizondo, Pino Palladino and Cara Delevingne (the latter of whom Clark dated for a year and a half, briefly putting her in the tabloid spotlight). Masseduction singles “New York” and “Los Ageless” hit the Adult Alternative Airplay and Hot Rock & Alternative Songs charts, and the title track won her the Grammy for best rock song. Not that she’s in it for the accolades: “I’m a musician because I’m obsessed with making music,” Clark states. “If I wasn’t, God knows, I don’t think it would be pretty.”
As her profile grew, Clark earned her first GLAAD Media Award nomination for outstanding music artist in 2018; that June, she unleashed “Fast Slow Disco,” a dancefloor remix of one of Masseduction’s tracks, along with a music video where she cavorted with a throng of leather-clad men making out with one another. “Happy Pride,” she tweeted. “It was sweet of these boys to let me crash their party.”
Fittingly, the tune’s title was inspired by a text message exchange with Wendy Melvoin, whose romantic relationship with Lisa Coleman in Prince’s backing band The Revolution provided sorely needed representation in the ’80s. “Annie’s a real artist. It’s always satisfying to be friends and compatriots with people that you have respect for,” Melvoin says. “She’s extremely talented,” Coleman agrees. “[She’s] a real musician that was so influenced by what we did, and she had a reverence for us. It was easy to return that because she is so good.”
St. Vincent wearing Ultra Open Earbuds by @Bose and Maggi Simpkins.
Lenne Chai
By 2021’s Daddy’s Home, Clark had nothing left to prove, which might explain why the album — partially inspired by her father’s 2019 release from prison after he served time for a stock manipulation scheme — was her first where she looked backward for inspiration. (Then again, maybe she meant it literally when she titled her 2017-18 tour Fear the Future.) Steeped in ’70s rock, AM pop and queer camp, the album netted her another Grammy for best alternative music album and another GLAAD nomination for outstanding music artist. As a victory lap and era-appropriate tie-in, she supplemented her own headlining trek for the record with a stint opening for Roxy Music’s farewell tour.
Beyond Roxy Music and Byrne, Clark has amassed an enviable Rolodex of rock royalty. She performed alongside the surviving members of Nirvana at their 2014 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony; produced Sleater-Kinney’s 2019 album, The Center Won’t Hold, and co-starred with the band’s Carrie Brownstein in the trippy 2020 mockumentary The Nowhere Inn; contributed to the 2021 remix album McCartney III Imagined (even getting a phone call from the Beatle himself); and feted Eurythmics at the duo’s 2022 Songwriters Hall of Fame induction, performing “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).” Having worked with so many of her own musical heroes, she has also paid that forward, contributing to tracks by next-gen fans like Willow and Olivia Rodrigo.
“I’ve been a huge St. Vincent fan since I was a teenager. I think she’s such an inspiring artist and a wonderful person. I was so excited to bring her in to work on this song,” Rodrigo tells Billboard of co-writing “Obsessed” with Clark for the deluxe version of GUTS. “She added so many unique textures and sounds that I could’ve never thought of.”
Those inventive, meticulous methods stuck out to Willow when Clark guested on “Pain for Fun” from the former’s 2024 album, empathogen. “St. Vincent’s prodigious attention to detail is something that I have admired since hearing her for the first time at 12 years old,” Willow says. “To have had the opportunity to be in the same room with her, to witness and observe her process, is something that I will always hold close to my heart and something I will always refer back to for inspiration.”
“She’s an inspiration to me, but I can see [she is] to a lot of other singers and songwriters as well,” Byrne says. “And a somewhat underrated guitar goddess.” (Clark even has her own signature axe, a collaboration with Ernie Ball Music Man, which Jack White played on Saturday Night Live in 2018 and Rodrigo trotted out on her tour this year.)
Another one of those singer-songwriters is, of course, Taylor Swift. Alongside Antonoff and Swift, Clark wrote (and played guitar on) “Cruel Summer” from 2019’s Lover. After years of fan campaigns and three subsequent studio albums, Swift finally released “Cruel Summer” as a single in 2023; it topped the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks and has spent more time on the chart than any of her other hits, earning an astounding 1 billion official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate.
“I remain blown away by ‘Cruel Summer’ being the phenomenon that is it,” Clark says. “Not because it isn’t a great song. It’s indicative of the time we’re in, where a song from many albums ago, that wasn’t even a single at the time, the fans go, ‘No, this one — we pick this one.’ And then they march it up the charts. That’s completely a testament to her fan base being so powerful.”
While some critics and fans have described the rock-heavy, emotionally raw All Born Screaming as a return to form, the album also marks a few notable firsts for Clark. Though distributed by Virgin Music Group, it’s the inaugural release on her own label, Total Pleasure Records, which she calls “just a little cozy place for me.” She’s excited about plenty of young artists but shrugs off any label boss ambitions. “I never want to be the person who is like, ‘I’m so sorry, we can’t afford to pay for your video unless you shill for cat laxatives,’ ” she deadpans. “I’m not trying to be The Man to any talent that I love. It just means autonomy.”
Clark insists that “DIY till you die” is her guiding mantra on all fronts, from making music to mounting tours on a scalable level. “I more enjoy the creative side, but you have to be across all of it. It’s your career. You can’t just let someone tell you where you are going. And putting all those pieces together is fun for me.”
St. Vincent wearing Ultra Open Earbuds by @Bose and Maggi Simpkins.
Lenne Chai
Perhaps more significantly, All Born Screaming is also the first of her own albums on which she is credited as sole producer (though she has co-produced more than half of her discography).
“I don’t think I could have made this record any other way. I don’t think I would have written these songs or explored this stuff without the solitude,” she says. “Around 2019 [I thought], ‘OK, I eventually just want to produce my own work.’ When I was making Daddy’s Home, I started making a plan for my engineer, Cian Riordan, to make my studio proper — to get more into the engineering side, hone my chops and build a playground for myself. But if I’m honest, the seed was planted earlier, because by the time I was 14 or 15 I was recording myself in my bedroom.” (Clark’s studio is in Los Angeles; she splits her time among New York, L.A. and Texas.)
A 2023 study of popular songs by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that just 3.4% of hits were produced by women in 2022, and Clark is still one of very few female producers finding success in the music business — with plenty more, she notes, deserving attention. “There are lots of women making their music DIY-style, and that is production,” she says. “My friend Cate Le Bon [who guests on All Born Screaming’s title track] is a great example of someone who produces herself and other people.” (The album also features drumming from Dave Grohl, Josh Freese and Warpaint’s Stella Mozgawa.)
When it comes to ways to increase LGBTQ+ inclusion in the industry, Clark is reluctant to provide any glib or easy answers. “The answer is, ‘Of course,’ but I can’t go, ‘If we only changed this policy.’ ” The Texas-raised Clark does not, however, hold back when asked about Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who she says is waging “an absolute war on women and reproductive rights. That dude sucks. He sucks. I hate that dude.” For a brief moment, she sounds like an exasperated teenager ranting about her high school principal, but soon regains her poise. “What I love about Texas is the toughness and the grit. You can’t be too highfalutin. With love, they’ll knock you down a peg.” She looks thoughtful. “I did run away when I was 18, but at the same time, if you asked me to name parts of my identity, ‘Texan’ would be up there.”
St. Vincent wearing Ultra Open Earbuds by @Bose and Maggi Simpkins. CAMILLA AND MARC shirt, Nour Hammour coat, Zhilyova gloves, JW PEI shoes.
Lenne Chai
As an artist who has explored both identity and technology deeply, Clark is cautiously intrigued by the musical potential of artificial intelligence in the hands of artists. “The tool is as interesting as its holder,” she says, then flashes a mischievous half-smile. “In some ways, I’m more concerned about artists sounding like AI than I am [about] AI sounding like artists.”
Clark is far more troubled by a more established technology in the digital music era. “If you are a big pop artist, streaming is fine. But there is some music that reaches you very deeply but isn’t music that you put on every single day. I’m not going to listen to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme every day. It’s one of the most pivotal records of my life, but I’m not going to stream it over and over,” she says. “Streaming incentivizes songs to be consumable over and over again. Now, certainly there’s great music you want to consume like that — but there’s a lot of music that’s excellent and doesn’t fall into that category. And those artists, because of streaming, are wilting on the vine.” (St. Vincent’s catalog has accumulated a respectable 394.6 million official on-demand U.S. streams.)
Aside from friends like Le Bon, there are plenty of modern artists who keep Clark jazzed about music’s future. “I love Rosalía,” she says, leaning forward in her chair. “I saw her show last year. It was just art. It was so thoughtfully done. Post-modern choreography, flamenco. Just excellent.” All Born Screaming includes “Sweetest Fruit,” a tribute to the late trans artist SOPHIE, whom Clark deeply admired (though fan reaction to its literal lyrics was mixed). British rapper Little Simz is another favorite, and she lights up when talking about Willow. “She’s unbelievable. Her knowledge base and depth of reference is deep and varied. She’s pulling all these things together and making them her own, which is exactly what an artist should do.”
Whether speaking about her fellow artists, the music industry or her queer identity, Clark is animated and engaged; the only time she seems at a loss is when talking about how she fills her time that isn’t spent making music.
“I listen to a lot of audiobooks. Which is so boring,” she murmurs. “I work out. So boring.” Does she cook for herself? “Girl, no. Even playing Zelda, I would make dubious food.” Watch TV? “I will maybe watch something to fall asleep. I rewatched 30 Rock recently. I am obsessed with Girls5eva. It’s all the sensibility of 30 Rock, but with deep musical references. It makes me so happy.” Foster any unusual hobbies? “I walked into this bar across from Electric Lady [Studios in New York], but it was the wrong place — it was a coffee shop that turns into a knitting hour. I got the f–k out of there.”
After nearly two decades of making music professionally, Clark doesn’t seem fatigued or disenchanted by a business that often frustrates uncompromising creatives. If anything, she’s finding it easier to “trust in the process” with seven albums under her beloved trench’s belt. “There’s going to be speed bumps, and there’s going to be days when you don’t want to get out of bed. ‘Ugh, I can’t even face myself.’ And other days where you’re like, ‘Yeah, I am crushing it, wow!’ ”
Calling those polar mood swings “cancers to excise,” Clark says “it’s a miracle” she gets anything done. “The whole thing is chasing this feeling of being lit up and confused but excited at the same time,” she says. “It’s a bunch of people blowing into the same thing to make a balloon and, eventually, it rises. I don’t know how anything happens. I really don’t. The whole thing is mysterious. But I know if I focus on this little thing that I love, it will be OK.”
This story will appear in the June 22, 2024, issue of Billboard.
