Taste Test
What is “good taste” anyway? Allow your favorite actor, musician, celebrity, or comedian to let you in on what they’re watching, reading, and consuming.
For Mike Hadreas, or Perfume Genius, the human body is a complicated thing. At times, his has been a source of suffering and shame, like in high school, when he was assaulted for being publicly gay, or during the worst of his battles with severe Crohn’s disease. But over the years, he’s also come to see his body as a vessel for communication and beauty, especially after collaborating with choreographer Kate Wallich and the YC dance company on a 2019 show called The Sun Still Burns Here. In the visuals for his new album, Glory, Hadreas contorts himself into extreme shapes, laying down in a half-split on the floor or holding himself upside down on the edge of the bed. His usual musical themes remain — the terror of middle age, the uncomfortable allure of classic masculinity — but he’s allowed himself to be more playful in the rollout. “There are all these competing things — harmony and dissonance and silliness and seriousness,” Hadreas says of the album. “I was just trying to harness everything and then fuck it up.” (As to how he’s holding some of these poses: “I think that’s Pilates, for sure.”)
We originally planned to meet each other for a flying-trapeze session at STREB, a performance academy in Williamsburg founded by the avant-garde choreographer Elizabeth Streb, who, according to a 2015 New Yorker profile, once accidentally set herself aflame while performing a “fire dance” for her girlfriend’s 40th birthday. (“When I came back to the party, the heterosexuals all said, ‘My boyfriend never did that for me,’” Streb told writer Alec Wilkinson.) After all, what could be a more perfect interview setting for an acrobatic queer musician whose last album was literally called Set My Heart on Fire Immediately? But as luck would have it, Hadreas fell ill and we had to pivot to Zoom, where we discussed his sexual fantasies, old Substack high jinks, and Streb lore. “I had no idea there was such a deep story,” he told me. “But I’m really into it.”
What is your relationship to your body these days?
Well, since The Sun Still Burns Here, it’s become clear dance is where I can go to feel more embodied and connected. But when the routine and regimented rehearsal of it is gone, it’s up to me to do it myself. And whenever it’s up to me to do something helpful to myself, I’m unwilling, which is frustrating. I’d rather have a treat at home and watch TV.
You’re more resistant to dance when you’re not assigned an explicit creative project?
I’m more afraid, honestly. When I first started performing and writing, I didn’t start willing — I was terrified, but it felt important to me, and I did it anyway. I still get anxious but I’m able to exist alongside of it.
Me and Kate, we continued to dance. It was just research, but also personal. And same with my friend Tate. And now all of us and my husband, Alan, are hopefully going to make a new piece, but informed by how we use and counterbalance each other. I think dance is going to inform everything forever. Even the acting in my videos feels like a somatic thing that I needed to go to.
What were some of your movement inspirations for this album?
Some references came from a Belgian dance company called Peeping Tom, but a lot of them were film scenes. They weren’t aesthetic references so much as about the dynamic between people. What I wanted the most was like the scene in The Piano Teacher, where she smells that rag in the porn theater. Or there’s this Polish movie where a detective is hearing his friend confess to killing a little girl. His friend is weeping hysterically, and he starts comforting him, and then they start to make out, and it’s just so unexpected. I have no idea what the director’s intentions are. It’s kind of everything at once, but it’s weirdly relieving to me.
With the record, like, I came in with a lot of ideas, but I was still trying to keep myself safe in some way. And then Cody Critcheloe, my director, and Natasha Newman-Thomas, my stylist, brought in things totally outside of my comfort zone. Like, “What if your jeans were really low and your pubes are fully out?” We just tried a bunch of things and saw what felt good. I didn’t want to serve at all. And I wanted that to be the serve.
I would argue that holding yourself upside down, like in your single art, is a serve.
It is. It looks like a sitcom, like “There’s something wrong with Uncle Mike!”
Can you tell me about the Glory cover? You’re flopped over like a fish out of the aquarium.
I like that it could come across as sensual or dancey. It also looks like I could be ailing. In the room, there’s a little framed painting that I made like 15 years ago. But then there’s also absurd nonsense, like the Italian flag that’s in every single shot. What happened was I got really into this one designer who sent me a sweater that I didn’t really care for. But the sweater came in this box wrapped in that Italian flag tape. And all of us liked the tape. So I had a little shred of it, and then it became everything.
I know that in the past, people have spoken very seriously about your music, and then as an aside, been like, “Oh, and he has a very funny Twitter.” It seems like this time those two dimensions of you have merged. What do you think changed?
At the beginning, I thought I wouldn’t be taken seriously if I wasn’t being serious. When I was still doing drugs, people would see me sober and be like, “Are you okay? Is something wrong with you?” Just because I wasn’t being a ham. Those two sides have felt very disconnected for a long time. As I was telling my therapist all these things I was worried about with the album, and she’s like, “Well, what if you just showed up as yourself?” And I’m like, “Okay, I get what you mean. That’s very sweet, but I will fail.” But I can’t help it anymore. I don’t have the energy. I’m just showing up regardless of how much I think that that is gonna tank.
I’d love to know what you wrote in the treatment for the “No Front Teeth” music video.
“No Front Teeth” was kind of just like setups, and then we’d just go. I sent Cody this Pasolini movie Teorema. And then Peeping Tom has this performance where there’s an older woman and all of these men come in and just kiss her, or another one where this guy is holding like an older naked man in this living room setup, and you can’t really understand whether it’s sexual or if it’s his father.
Was the polycule storyline something that emerged organically? Or did you start off being like, I want to explore this strange dynamic with my friend, the singer-songwriter Aldous Harding?
In the sex scene with Alan, I was originally going to be cuckolded — but that didn’t feel right. Weirdly, when I stopped trying to figure out my exact chemical makeup, sexually, gender-wise, it became way more expansive. It’s very clear to me now that I’m writing scenarios that I’ve personally wanted to be in some way, which has always been true. I kind of think that that’s why everybody does anything, is getting off in some way.
When did the fourth character come in? You’re pinned up by this woman who’s holding a gun.
It was like a Tonya Harding thing. I refuse to be Nancy Kerrigan, but I kind of was Nancy Kerrigan. I don’t know.
I saw you tweeted about Riverdale recently. Do you think the Riverdale quad subconsciously influenced the video?
[Laughs.] I didn’t think about that.
And what is up with the baking montage?
I’m a horrible baker, but I like cooking, and I love The Great British Bake-Off. I’ll watch any reality competition regardless of quality. Honestly, I just love waffles. Pancakes with butter and maple syrup would be my last meal.
A few years ago you memorably published your review of the major granola brands out there. Do you have any recent snack endorsements or grievances you’d like to share?
I’ve been eating an insane amount of mango. I must have some sort of vitamin deficiency. Also Goop Kitchen has a gluten-free pizza that I like. I eat the whole thing and I feel good. I feel like there’s not a dark side to it. I can move on.
You are a movie buff. Are there any movies that you’ve been thinking about a lot?
There’s a French-Canadian movie called Red Rooms about a female incel that becomes obsessed with a serial killer and goes to court every day. I actually hated it. But I’m still thinking about it. I like watching horror movies because you’re trying to find the soul in it, why someone could do that. And the movie was just sort of soulless.
Did you read Tony Tulathimutte’s Rejection? The premise reminds me of that.
It blew my mind. It was very relentless. His willingness to just fully go there is so ballsy. And I really like it. Same with Lapvona and all the Ottessa Moshfegh books. I’m like, I hate this, but I will read everything that she writes.
Several of these songs have a country-rock sound, which I love, because my favorite song of yours is “Describe.” Were there certain artists that you were thinking about when exploring that palette?
I was listening to a lot of Arthur Russell at the time. I love that his music feels very familiar and warm but there’s still a loneliness to it. I was listening to a lot of Townes Van Zandt too. I was comforted by his acceptance toward things being how they are, which is something I don’t have.
I noticed that there’s a Jason in your song “Capezio” — is this the same guy from “Jason”?
Both are real people that aren’t named Jason, but they represent an archetype of masculinity to me. “Capezio” was a more recent dynamic that’s like, Why am I engaging or attracted to some guy that’s so withheld? There’s not a real collaboration. It’s more like me witnessing them and moving around their energy. There’s fiction in it and everything, but the other person and I were him to connect with each other, and being aware of while we were all in this kind of dynamic, and that felt icky.
Where does fan fiction come in? I’m remembering the Supernatural erotica you published a few years ago on Substack.
I need to write the third in the series about the angel, Misha Collins. When I started writing it, I was like, This is so ridiculous. But then I got obsessive about writing it and I would read it back like, Oh shit. It was just a way to let my brain go. But the second one on getting my eyes removed by Jared Padalecki, I literally stayed up all night writing it and didn’t sleep. I guess I was feeling inspired.
When you were compulsively revising your fan fiction, what were you revising for? What makes good erotica to you?
I remember when I was really little, I read fan fiction about Carson Daly and Metallica. I think LFO was there too. Do you remember LFO? They wrote that song that’s like “I like girls who wear Abercrombie & Fitch.” It was so demented. I liked that I was laughing at it, but then also getting off on it. I don’t know, I just have a map in my head: There’s some weird geometry that needs to click into place. And the Supernatural community — I didn’t realize that there were words for all of the things that I was writing about. Like vore is going into someone’s body. I’m not personally interested — well, I must be. I think it’s really beautiful when people know exactly what they want. But I’m still scared to find out what that would be for me.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
