“Wow. Posthumous. I’ve not heard that word [used in interviews] before.”

Jules Peters, the widow of the Alarm’s late frontman Mike Peters and a member of the Welsh rock band for 15 years, is discussing what has sadly turned out to be the final Alarm album, Transformation. The LP was completed back in October 2024, literally the night before Mike — who’d miraculously, successfully battled blood cancer several times over the past three decades — entered the hospital to undergo CAR T cell therapy. Mike was hoping, or even assuming, that he’d beat the disease yet again, and the record was originally planned for a June 2025 release.

Instead, Transformation will now come out on May 29, 2026 — the one-year anniversary of Mike’s funeral (which was live-streamed and attended by more than 4,000 “Alarmies,” aka Alarm superfans), and exactly one year and one month after he lost his valiant fight with Richter’s Syndrome, an aggressive form of lymphoma, at age 66.

Jules was with Mike for 39 years — he was her “alpha male”; she was his “muse” — after they fatefully cute-met on the high street of Mike’s hometown village of Rhyl and got engaged just two weeks later, when she was 19 years old. She’s speaking with Lyndsanity via Zoom from the Peters’ home in Dyserth, North Wales, where Mike passed away after his CAR T treatment unfortunately failed. “We managed to get Mike home. He died in our house, which throws out a whole other set of trauma,” she says, sitting in her office with the Alarm’s gold and platinum albums on the wall behind her. “He died in this house. It was fucking hard. It’s only about now that I can really put the key in the door and walk in and not feel overwhelmed with devastation.”

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During our 90-minute conversation, Jules is surprisingly, sometimes almost uncomfortably frank. One moment, she’s chatting cheerfully about her “out of control” social life, her “life’s work” with the Alarm charity Love Hope Strength, and managing her local pub, the Red (located across the street from the churchyard where Mike’s ashes are buried). In the next breath, she’s reflecting much more somberly on her husband’s illness and the aftermath of her grief, and even going into unflinching detail about Mike’s final days and the loving way they said goodbye.

“When I start talking about him like this, this is healing me. You are my counselor today,” she quips, revealing that she has started a grief club called Red or Dead and is even considering launching a grief podcast. “As I’m talking to you today, I don’t have that weight of grief in my tummy that I have had, that physical feeling of grief. The whole year has been traumatic. … But I think we should have these very open conversations. I think it’s really important to talk about grief. I’m very open about my grief. I’m able to speak to you today without collapsing into tears. But yeah, a year — it feels like it was only yesterday. It’s very difficult for me to cope with the idea that he’s not walking in through the door.”

Mike, the strident voice of triumphant arena anthems like “The Stand,” “68 Guns,” and of course “Strength,” was first diagnosed with lymph cancer in 1995, with doctors telling him he had a very slim chance of survival. However, after rejecting Western medicine and going on tour anyway, he somehow went into spontaneous remission. A decade later, he was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and that time he did undergo traditional treatment, but his illness once again didn’t stop him from hitting the road. It seemed nothing could stop Mike Peters — not even when, in 2022, he found himself back at the North Wales Cancer Centre, facing what at that point was his most difficult cancer fight yet. In fact, it was during that months-long hospital stay that the famously workaholic musician wrote an entire optimistic Alarm album, Forwards.

For those unaware of Mike’s long medical history (the subject of several documentaries, including Mike Peters on the Road to Recovery, The Man in the Camo Jacket, and Mike and Jules: While We Still Have Time, which also chronicled Jules’s own 2016 breast cancer battle), it might seem like Transformation is a farewell opus, a la Blackstar by Mike’s idol David Bowie. But Julie clarifies that Mike actually created it while very much in that detemined Forwards mindset.

“Maybe he had an idea that it could have been his last album, but I don’t feel he did, because I feel like everything he’s written in this album, you could interpret it in two ways,” she muses. “Like, ‘Totally Free’ was about him being totally free of cancer. He believed that CAR T was going to give him a next chance in life. … He really, really believed he was going to get through it. He wrote Transformation not as his last album, but as the beginning of a whole new chapter for him. He was excited about coming to America [to tour in support of the record]. He’d ordered the biggest pedalboard you could ever see! Leading up to his admission into the hospital after his [2024] diagnosis, he’d performed 50 shows in the U.K. He focused on writing the album, and in between, he managed to fit in his chemotherapy. So, bizarrely, he had the most positive year.”

While Mike was hopeful about his chances, Jules, despite being a cancer survivor herself, was secretly terrified. Doctors had initially thought that Mike had Richter’s Syndrome during his 2022 heath scare, and Mike had been relieved to find out that was not the case. But that now he had received that damning diagnosis — just five days before the Alarm were supposed to begin their 2024 U.S. tour, which was included a slot at the Cruel World festival — Jules recalls, “I just had an instinct that we’d reached [the end], that cancer had finally caught up with Mike.”

Jules admits, “He didn’t fall apart. I personally, inwardly, fell apart. … I think maybe he didn’t want to acknowledge it to me as his wife, or to the family and our nearest and dearest, that it could potentially be the end. … So, for the last year of our life, it was an incredible year, but I also felt like I had to fake it a little bit with Mike, fake it to match his positivity — which I did not feel.”

Jules faked it all the way until the day Mike entered Christie Hospital in Manchester, accompanying him as he filmed the video for “Live Today” on a Northern English beach that very morning. “I’m like completely in my head, falling apart, thinking this is the last time Mike is ever going to be on the beach,” she recalls of the emotional shoot. “But Mike wasn’t thinking like that. We got him in the tour bus, and he had the most rock ‘n’ roll arrival at the hospital! He was just full of enthusiasm. It’s heartbreaking in many ways, but also incredible. The doctors and nurses around him said they’d never seen a patient so forceful and focused on getting through this.”

From that point on, Mike “turned CAR T into a plan,” printing T-shirts with different Transformation lyrics for each day of his treatment (all of which Jules still has in her possession); choosing his real-life PET scan for the album’s cover art (“I can barely look at it,” Jules now admits); and going rogue by shooting another surprisingly energetic music video, for “Outlier,” in the hospital (something he also sneakily pulled off during his Forwards era for his “Next” video).

“It was very hard for me and Andy Labrow, the Alarm’s tour manager,” Jules says of the impromptu “Outlier” shoot at Christie. “But you know what? It was getting Mike through. All the time he was doing CAR T in that hospital room, he felt like a caged animal, but he turned it into a studio. He turned it into his record company room. He did all his artwork. … This was a dying man who didn’t know it. Making this video, and for Andy and I, we were petrified, but we just went along with what he wanted to do. It was traumatic, having to go along with his focus.

“Even in the last few days when we got him home, just before he lost consciousness, Mike managed to open up his computer, lying on his back, pointing to all the different kinds of [album] formats. And I was like, ‘My husband is hours away from dying, and he is specifying to me what color vinyl?’” Jules laughs incredulously. “But I was lucky that Mike carried on behaving like that. Imagine if he’d fallen apart in front of us all! He didn’t. He just kept on believing. And I think all of us fell in love with Mike because of that great optimism and belief.”

Mike became “very, very poorly at the end” due to the effects of CAR T — an “unbelievable,” revolutionary immunotherapy treatment, “a big, big process,” that involved removing his blood, shipping it to the U.S., re-engineering that blood over the course of 28 days, and then shipping it back to the U.K. and putting it back in his body. “The day they bring in the cells to reemerge into his system, there’s all this white ice, dry ice, and it’s all very dramatic,” Jules chuckles, as she describes this somewhat rock ‘n’ roll medical spectacle. And Mike once again turned this into art, actually writing the Transformation track “Chimera” (sample lyrics: “Science fiction therapy/Two bloods, collide inside of me” and “Supercells, programmed in a laboratory/Killing me to stay alive”) about that literally transformative experience.

“While he was in the Christie Hospital, it’s hard to explain, but all the time when he had CAR T, it didn’t feel like it was Mike. It’s as if his personality and everything had been moved around. He was the Chimera, so he was a different person in those last few weeks,” Jules recalls. “It would’ve upset people to see him, but he just kept powering through and saying, ‘Oh, I’m in this physical state because of the side effects of CAR T. It’s not the cancer!’ Whereas for me, I felt like I could see him dying in front of me. I cannot explain how traumatic that has been. But, this is life.”

It would be understandable if Jules had resented Mike for spending his final days — or many other times when he was sick — focusing so intensely on his music. (Mike once admitted in a 2018 Lyndsanity interview that he’d “lost count” of how many times his doctors had scolded him for working so much.) But Jules knew what she signed up for when she married Mike, and she says their “rock ‘n’ roll marriage survived because we were in it together.” In fact, the only time she really resented her husband’s go-getter personality when she was “in the thick of domesticity” in Dyserth with their young sons, Dylan and Evan (conceived via IVF, a harrowing medical journey that she says actually took more of a toll on their relationship than cancer ever did), while the Alarm were on tour for months. That same year, 2007, Mike embarked on a month-long trip to climb Mount Everest, while Jules was still back home dealing with a four-year-old and a nine-month-old, and she less than thrilled.

But as a workaholic herself — who eventually “ended up being in the band, much against my wishes,” and going on the road with the Alarm — Jules mostly understood and appreciated Mike’s Type A mindset. “I quite liked the idea that he was using the time efficiently,” she says of his dedication to seeing the Transformation project through to completion. “I was always very attracted to Mike for being a hard worker. There’s nothing worse than being with someone who’s lazy, and he was never lazy. So, I thought, ‘Yeah, good on ya! You turned a negative situation into a positive!’ Yes, my proactive alpha male, right to the end.”

Jules therefore says she has few regrets, “except that maybe I’d just taken Mike home [earlier], so I could have been just lying on the bed with him and said goodbye over weeks.” Whether it was denial or just his usual steadfast self-belief, Mike didn’t want to leave Christie Hospital until he had no choice, even when he was being warned that the CAR T therapy had only a 1 percent chance of succeeding. “Mike only had two days in his whole life when he was told by the doctors, ‘There’s nothing more we can do for you,’ and my God, was Mike shocked [this time]. He was so surprised. He almost collapsed with the shock,” says Jules. “He didn’t let me tell anyone, because he didn’t want anyone to not believe. He wanted you all to believe.”

Mike Peters circa 2024/2025 (courtesy of Reybee, Inc.)

Jules then begins to share — without any prompting, as if she just needs to get it all out there — her detailed memories of Mike’s final days at home. “This is just brutal. … Everyone’s got their story to tell, and this is my story,” she says. “So, I’m in Wales, and he was in Manchester, and he phoned and said, ‘Oh, darling, it’s the conversation I never thought we were going to have. They’ve just come in and told me there’s nothing more they can do for me.’ I should have been there with him. I jumped in the car, drove over, and the minute I got in there, he just looked at me and said, ‘I’m so sorry. I feel like I’ve let you all down.’ Yeah, that was Mike. And then he looked at me and went, ‘Take me home, Jules. Take me home.’ I said of course — but hospital life means that it’s 24 hours for discharge. And he said, ‘No, no. Take me home now.’ And so we literally picked him up, scooped him up, put him in the car, and drove him home,” she recalls. “He gave it everything he could. And the last two days —  surreal. One minute, he’s there fighting for his life; the next minute, I’m carrying him into the house and being told I have to phone the undertaker to plan his funeral. I’ve never known anything like it.”

Once Mike was settled comfortably at home in hospice care, he “didn’t look like Mike,” Jules says. “To me, it wasn’t Mike, if I’m allowed to say that. He was on morphine. I have to be honest about stuff like this. He had a little mohawk. For me and the children, it wasn’t Mike.” She prefers, understandably, to remember him in happier, more robust times. “I just shared the ‘Strength’ video, and I glanced and got a quick image of the man that I fell in love with. And my heart skipped a beat. My heart always skipped a beat. Whenever I saw Mike, even when I went to visit him in the Christie, it was that very big, intense love.”

Jules still seems to be struggling to grasp the reality of her great love’s death as she describes their last tender moments. “I am still very, very shocked at how cancer can destroy — and I’m a bit of a cancer veteran,” she says. “I haven’t talked about it before, but I want to tell people how it was. We held hands and he said, ‘I love you.’ And I said, ‘I love you.’ And we went backwards and forwards for what seemed like an eternity: ‘I love you.’ ‘I love you.’ ‘I love you.’ ‘I love you.’ … And then, he never said ‘I love you’ back. … Nothing. No more I love you’s. He died. I don’t think I ever recovered from that. … But I can see I’m healing, because I can say this and not be falling apart.”

A dear family friend who used to work as an intensive care nurse, and who was by Jules’s side throughout this ordeal, told Jules that “Mike’s death was one of the most beautiful deaths she’d ever seen” – which is exactly how the perennially positive Mike Peters would have wanted to go out, since he’d once assured Jules that “death is as beautiful as birth.”

And Mike’s beautiful music lives on, not just through Transformation, but through his 19-year-old son, Evan. “In that moment when Mike died at home, Evan was there with his feet on the bed, strumming Mike’s guitar,” Jules recalls. “And I looked over and I’m like, ‘How do you know all these songs, Evan?’ And he says it’s in his DNA.” A month later, in what Jules calls “the most surreal scenario” at Mike’s funeral — a celebration of life that was “amazing,” “upbeat,” “joyous,” and “fantastic” — Evan made his live solo debut performing Oasis’s “Wonderwall,” which came out the year that Mike was first diagnosed with leukemia and became Mike’s cancer anthem. “He taught Evan how to play it,” Jules says with a smile.

Since then, the younger Peters son has played multiple “Evan Peters Present the Alarm” tribute gigs, including one recreating the Alarm’s historic “Spirit of ‘86” UCLA show (MTV’s first-ever live concert broadcast) to celebrate that event’s 40th anniversary, and he’s about to go on tour with Big Country playing his father’s catalog. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve been in this really weird dream, and that I’ll wake up one day and I’ll go, ‘God, Mike, I dreamt that you died and that Evan took over as the singer!’” Jules chuckles.

And now as Jules enters what she calls her “second chapter” at age 59, she’s keeping busy too. She’s got her dance and yoga classes, her travels (ironically, she and her sons are planning a trip to Mount Everest to commemorate of the 20th anniversary of Mike’s above-mentioned ill-timed Everest adventure), and the Love Hope Strength Foundation, which finds bone marrow donor matches for patients in need.

Jules confesses that in the 48 hours following Mike’s death, “I just thought, ‘You know what? Fuck Love Hope Strength! Fuck doing work for charity! I’ve just seen him be destroyed by cancer.’” And recently, right before the first anniversary of Mike’s passing, she led a Love Hope Strength spiritual trek in Portugal and Spain and came home feeling “so bereft, worse than I’ve ever felt in the entire time since I lost Mike. And I thought, ‘Holy shit, is this how it’s going to go? Is it going to get worse?’ It was that idea when I walked in the house that he wasn’t here to meet me.” However, she understands that grief is not linear, and now she’s back to feeling “110 percent” committed to Love Hope Strength and other Alarm causes.

“I have got a lot to do, and that’s exciting. As long as I do that and I can keep the message of Mike Peters moving on, the spirit of it, everything is manageable. You can deal with your grief when you know that you’re moving everything forward,” Jules says. And it takes a village — literally, in her case, with Dyserth quickly turning into “the new Graceland” for Alarmies — but she also has the support of famous friends like the Cult’s Billy Duffy, longtime Alarm admirer Bono, and Ian McNabb of Icicle Works. The latter regularly sends her much-appreciated tough-love messages, like ‘Don’t be a pussy,’” she giggles. “I love Ian’s counseling services; I don’t need to go to counseling, because I’m surrounded by therapists and counselors! And I don’t think I’ve been a pussy, but I know what Ian was saying. He was saying: ‘Mike would not like you wallowing.’”

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A general resistance to wallowing was always something that kept the Peters’ “rock ‘n’ roll fairytale” marriage going strong through the toughest of times. “I understand how [cancer] can destroy a lot of marriages, but we always said that cancer enhanced our life. I know sometimes that’s difficult for people to hear… but we always compared everything to the day we got told we had cancer. Any day that wasn’t a cancer diagnosis, we’d be like, ‘Hey, life’s pretty wonderful!’ So, I think it helped our outlook,” Jules explains. And she’s trying to maintain that “no-nonsense” attitude, and heed McNabb’s advice, now that she’s going it alone.

“Grief is the price you pay for love. So, hey, I’ve just got to keep marching on. I’ve just got to keep retaining that positivity. And I’m being grateful,” she says. “Mike could have gone when he was 35, when he was diagnosed, or when he was 45, when he relapsed, and so on and so on. I did really, really well to have him in my life for 39 years. I really hoped I was going to get at least 20 more years, but life’s not like that.

“But every day for Mike, he’d hit the jackpot. He never had to get a proper job. He’d always just lived life through music. We had a charmed life together,” Jules continues. “So, I’m a badass, and I’m going to turn all my grief into positivity and keep moving forwards, just the way Mike was — because it’s the only way. I practice gratitude over sorrow. I’ve got to be grateful for the fact that I had this amazing love. And I’ve got my two sons; Mike lives on in Dylan and Evan. I just don’t want to be destroyed by grief. I don’t. I don’t know how long I’ve got left. I want to have a great life. I’m going out again tonight!”

And so, as Jules suddenly realizes she’s been “talking for ages” and signs off to meet up with an old friend at the Red, she offers one last road-trip anecdote to emphasize the important point that — despite the heavy and ultimately tragic circumstances under which it was created — Transformation is not at all a depressing record. And Mike, in his typical positive manner, would want Alarm fans to enjoy it at full volume, just as he had.

Jules reveals that just two weeks before Mike died, she took him for one last joyride in her Mustang, a present he’d surprised her with for her 50th birthday after she’d completed radiotherapy for her breast cancer. “He said to me, ‘I want you to take me to the beach house,’ which was about an hour away. Bearing in mind, he could barely stand. So, I got him in the Mustang and he wanted the top down and he wanted to go for ice cream, and he was excited. He said, ‘I want to blast out Transformation,’” she recalls.

“This is the album Mike thought he was going to be leading onto his next life of being cancer-free and being alive and coming to America with his big pedalboard. He was planning what he was doing and he was air-drumming, air-guitaring,” she continues, smiling at the fond memory. “I was driving along — again, inside not quite able to match this positivity, but faking it all the way. And he had it on so loud! I could barely hear myself drive. I thought, ‘I’m going to have an accident, the music’s so loud.’ But I didn’t dare ask him to turn it down, because he was lost in this whole world.

“And that is the memory that I hold of Mike — of him being so excited for the future, blasting it out loud. And that’s what I try and say to everyone that’s going to buy Transformation: ‘Please play it loud.’”

Watch Jules Peters’s extended and in-depth video above, in which she also discusses her own battles with cancer and infertility, how she and Mike made their “fairytale” relationship work, why she didn’t want to join the Alarm at first, memories of Mike’s celebratory memorial service, the importance of accepting (and talking about) mortality, future plans she has for the Alarm Archive, and much more.

The Eldest Daughter, the debut album by Florida-born indie-folk artist Gatlin that sees its deluxe reissue this week, might have been ever-so-slightly overshadowed by Taylor Swift’s The Life of Showgirl, which coincidentally featured a song called “Eldest Daughter” and was released on the same day last year. But rest assured, this fearless (no pun intended) singer-songwriter very much has her own unique voice.

Inspired by her conservative Christian upbringing in Florida (as, you guessed it, the oldest of three children), and how she has processed and made peace with her childhood trauma since coming out eight years ago (she even re-read her teenage diaries during the recording process), Gatlin Thornton’s album is heavy at times. “I think that Christianity and my relationship with God was so tied into my identity, and growing up, I was very much taught that I was born bad. I was born evil, and God is the only thing that is good. That’s a really damaging way to grow up,” she explains, sitting with Licorice Pizza Records’ LPTV in Studio City right before her in-store performance. “I had to learn how to trust myself and believe that I was good.”

But The Eldest Daughter is also laced with wry humor, whether it’s the clever play on words in “Florida Man” (the comma is silent); the diaristic, nostalgic memories of Gatlin’s first girl-crush in “If She Was a Boy”; the rebellious declaration in “Jesus Christ & Country Clubs” when she sings, “I’m going to hell because girls are fun”; or that moment in “Man of the House” when she proclaims, “My cats can be gay if they want to!”

And that humor definitely comes through in Gatlin’s charming and candid LPTV interview (as seen in the video above and Q&A below), in which she opens up about undergoing ketamine therapy; dissociating during interviews (thankfully she didn’t during this one!); the whole “Florida Man” viral phenomenon; going (temporarily) no-contact with her family; donning empowering male drag in her music video; her ever-shifting relationship with spirituality; and, yes, gay cats.

LPTV: I’d love to start by asking about the significance of the title The Eldest Daughter, because I know you grew up in a conservative, religious family.

GATLIN: I think I was in this process of really doing a lot of healing with my family dynamic, and really a lot of things were coming to light. And so, naturally, I’m going to write about it.. And everything I was writing about was pointing towards being an eldest daughter and all of the pressures that come along with that.

What was your family’s dynamic, in terms the pressures you felt as the oldest of three kids?

I felt like in a lot of ways the truth-teller, the protector, another parent.

Did you feel you had more expectations placed on you, because you were the leader of the pack? When you’re the eldest, you’re the kid that does everything first.

Or you’re the guinea pig!

Yes! And also, parents are usually much harder and stricter with the oldest child. By the time the later kids come around, they’re much more chill.

It is crazy, the difference. I think also because when [the oldest is] female and the baby [of the family] is male, the gender of it all… yeah, there was a big difference. I wasn’t allowed to have sleepovers, or what I was consuming in media was just very strict, versus with the baby it was free reign.

I do want to get into specific songs on the record that address your childhood, but in general, what were you revisiting or maybe even reinterpreting when you were making this album?

I think it really started with my queerness and figuring that out. And then it was not only an issue with my family, my queerness, but then to talk about it publicly. It was almost more of a big deal when I decided I wanted to start talking about it and letting other people know! Because I think that’s a Southern culture thing: having this presentation of being perfect and everything is all put together, and not wanting the judgment from other people. So, it felt like I had to just full send it and go all the way there, of being honest and being open publicly in my art and my songs.

When did you come out?

When I was 19. Now I’m 27.

(photo: Dualtone Music Group)

So, it was relatively later in life for you.

Yeah. And it was bisexual. I came out as, “Oh, I have a crush on this girl.” But even at the time, I was like, “But I’m not going to do anything about it,” because I was still in the church. And so, it was very interesting, the way that I even presented it to my family and my community. It was like, “Everyone start praying for me! I have feelings for a girl!” It took me a really long time to process it and be OK with it myself. And then I was still dating men, so I think maybe my family would view it as I only came out two years ago, because that was when I was really [started] dating women.

Did they think it was a phase?

Yes. And obviously it wasn’t a phase!

Where do they stand with all this now?

It’s a process. I think they’ve come a long way from when it started. The song on my album “Love Me” is a song to my mom, kind of about right when I came out and she was saying extremely hurtful things. It has come a long way since then, but I still am struggling with it, because I do think that there is a difference between tolerating something and celebrating something about someone. I want this part of me to be celebrated.

How did your mother react to “Love Me”? I assume she’s heard it and knows it’s about her?

Yeah, I did show [my family] all of the music before it came out. It’s a hard thing that we’ve been having to navigate, because for me, this is my story and I’m just trying to be honest and it’s my way to process. I was like, “I’m not trying to hurt you through this!” But I think she did take it as hard to hear.

You mentioned this crush that you had on a girl, which was sort of your sexual awakening. The song “If She Was a Boy” is about that. Tell me about that real-life experience.

I wrote that [two years] ago, but from the perspective of 19-year-old me, when I was in that place of “I have feelings for a girl, everyone start praying.”

Did you really want to “pray the gay way”?

Oh, man. Yeah. I truly believed that if I acted on that [crush], I would go to hell. And so, it was a product of the environment I grew up in, and was in. I was living in Nashville [at that point]. I was at a Christian school and surrounded by other Christian kids and deep in the church. I grew up Baptist, and then we went to an evangelical Presbyterian church. It was very much: “Go spread the word of God, go convert everyone.” It was fear-based. I didn’t want anyone to go to hell.

This seems like it was traumatic, and yet you seem very untraumatized. You’re sort of laughing and joking as you talk about it.

I think maybe that’s just my way of coping with it. I’ve done a lot of work about all of this. I’m currently doing ketamine therapy. It’s really rocking my world.

I don’t know if you ever acted upon that crush at age 19, or if that woman knows about it. But I do believe I’ve read that you wrote about her in your diaries, and it was finding and re-reading those diaries — and in the process rediscovering your 19-year-old self — that spurred much of this album.

Yeah, because that was kind of the first moment when I began to really question. Maybe it was because I wasn’t living in Florida anymore; I was in Nashville. I felt in the space to start questioning. Before I was like, “Well, I’m as religious as it comes,” but I finally had the space to start questioning these feelings, and then that just stirred up kind of an entire deconstruction of faith, of politics, of what my family dynamic was, of gender. That was the catalyst.

Is it weird when you visit home? Is it one of those cliché situations of awkwardly being at the dinner table with people who don’t share the same beliefs you have now?

Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of people are having a hard time because of the political climate right now. [I didn’t go] home for the holidays [last] year. It’s my first time not going home for the holidays, but the beautiful thing about it is I have this chosen family and a beautiful community of friends and the queer community. I had a wonderful Friendsgiving and there was just so much love and acceptance.

I do think the whole notion of chosen family is very important. I assume you’re not religious anymore, at least not the religion you were raised in, but are you still spiritual, or do you still have some kind of faith in your own way? How do you define your faith, or are you just completely agnostic or atheist now?

Thank you for asking that! I love talking about it! I’m definitely very spiritual. I’m kind of like, re-finding God. For a while I had to separate from it, because there was a lot of pain attached to God. But it wasn’t God — it was people and humans that would corrupt it. I’m kind of in my journey of finding out what [faith] looks like. I’ve been in a lot of discovery, looking into different religions, reading the Bible again and seeing what I feel about this, now that things have kind of calmed. I think I’m just searching right now.

Is ketamine helping with that? I don’t know much about ketamine therapy.

I’ve been seeing this therapist for like eight months. I went to this place, got prescribed the medicine. We refer to it as “medicine.” It’s been very helpful for me. I don’t think it’s for everyone, but she had suggested it. I think it’s just been a way for me to reprocess things or create new neural pathways, because I can logically know something so well, but my body would still react. Even this process of doing interviews for the record and talking about the way that I grew up and family things… I was doing a podcast [recently] and I fully dissociated mid-podcast. And so, it’s just like, “Oh, there’s still work to do.”

I hope you don’t dissociate during this interview! Actually, you’re welcome to dissociate if that’s what you want to do, but hopefully you’re OK with how this interview is going so far. Do you mind me asking what the podcast question was that triggered that response?

I think it was just something about my parents and what they thought about me. And I just was like, “Annnnnd… I’m now no longer in my body.” It’s a body-keeps-score thing. The body remembers.

Well, if anything I ask bothers you to the point that it would make you disassociate, please let me know.

It would have a few months ago, but I have done a lot of work and I’m much better.

I’m glad to hear that, because as I get into asking about specific track, we’re obviously going to get deeper into this. I did want to ask about “Jesus Christ & Country Clubs,” because I love the line :“I’m going to hell because girls are fun.” That’s a great line.

I think that song is more me being a little bit angry. Growing up, I wasn’t really allowed to feel anger, or I didn’t feel like I was allowed to be angry. It felt good to get some of that out. It’s about hypocritical Christianity, like MAGA Christianity, and how the Jesus I knew wouldn’t be acting like this. It was really therapeutic for me to write that and to feel angry about it.

Which song on the record is the most therapeutic for you to perform live?

That one’s really fun. I feel like at shows, that’s the one that people really respond to and get excited about. “Love Me” is one that I have not been able to sing live without crying. I’m very deeply uncomfortable, but I think that is a good thing. It also has allowed for people who are there at the show to make me feel safe and make me feel seen. And I think it makes the space feel very safe.

Another track, “The Hill,” is about religion as well. There’s a line in it about how walking away from Christianity was the greatest loss of your life and the hardest thing you ever had to do. I imagine that’s another cathartic and/or difficult song to perform live.

Yeah. I think that Christianity and my relationship with God was so tied into my identity, and growing up, I was very much taught that I was born bad. I was born evil, and God is the only thing that is good. That’s a really damaging way to grow up. And so, leaving that, I had to relearn… not relearn, but I had to learn how to trust myself and believe that I was good. All of these things that were very difficult to do. It felt like I was completely losing myself. And I think for a lot of people who grew up in Christianity, that’s why it’s so hard to question it or to walk away from it, because you have grown up thinking that’s how life is. And then, also, my whole family is in it. And church is also such a wonderful place for community; I had so many friends and I felt so loved. So, it was a really hard thing to walk away from. And yeah, that was a painful song to write, but I think a good one. It phrases it almost in a Stockholm Syndrome kind of way.

https://youtu.be/O_Mpp3qR6hw?si=yqep6nBamGo2ST8M

When you talk about the community, did you lose a lot of friends or family members when you came out and changed the way you were living? Did you lose a lot of support? Did you have to make new friends?

It was a process, like a year’s process. I was living in Nashville at the time and a lot of my friends were all kind of coming out of it at the same time, which was really nice and felt less isolating. Family relationships changed, definitely. And that’s sad and heartbreaking, but also OK.

You do approach all this with a bit of humor, like I said before. You have a song called “Florida Man,” which I love because if you ever read The Onion or even the real news, there’s always a headline along the lines of, “Florida Man Does Some Crazy Shit.”

Have you done the thing where you put your birthday and then “Florida Man”? Google your birthday and “Florida Man,” and there’s always going to be something!

Ha! So yes, Florida has a bit of a reputation that’s probably somewhat deserved. But there’s a comma, at least an implied comma, in your song title, because you basically say, “I’m never going back to Florida, man!” It’s a fun play on words. So, tell me about this song, because there’s a lot of humor, but also a lot of anger in this too. It’s kind of like an F-U Florida, or at least that’s how I’m interpreting it.

I think now, retrospectively, I view “Florida Man” as this metaphor of almost who I was when I was living there, playing my role in my family dynamic and not being who I was and not questioning and being in the closet and all of these things, I kind of view it as, “OK, I’m never going back to that.” Through honestly writing this album, I kind of got to reclaim Florida as mine.

I hope anyone reading or watching this interview who’s unfamiliar with your music doesn’t think The Eldest Daughter is an entirely a sad, mopey, angry record! So, I’ll cite another example of your lyrical humor, in “Man of the House.” My favorite line in the album is from that song: “My cats can be gay if they want to.” I’m all for gay cats. I’m all for cats living their truth.

Let the cats be gay!

Yes! But what is “Man of the House” really about? Because that’s a loaded term — patriarchy, gender roles, all that.

Yeah, I was kind of claiming that for myself. In the visualizer I did, I was in male drag. I had a beard and the camo and I felt awesome; I feel like it unlocked something in me. When I wrote it, I was living in an apartment by my own, by myself, and paying the bills from my music, which was wild. And at the time I wasn’t talking to my parents, because you go through breaks, or at least I do with them.

Are you talking to them now?

No, not right now.

Oh, I’m sorry.

It’s OK. So yeah, I think it was the first time that I was like, “OK, I’m a little bit on my own. Let me figure this out.” I just felt powerful. It was a time of my life when I was like, “I’m a strong person!” So, I wrote “Man of the House” and I was like, “I get to live by my rules. My cats, if they want to be gay, can be gay!”

Are your cats gay?

One of them definitely is gay. For sure, gay. My partner says that I project a little bit. Like, I’m almost forcing them to be gay, when they might not be.

You’ve just got to let your kids, even your furry kids, be who they want to be, whether they’re gay or not. That’s one thing we’ve learned one thing from this interview! I also want to ask about “Soho House Valet,” because your press release called it the “north star” of The Eldest Daughter. It’s about a very specific conversation you had with a family member, I assume at Soho House…

I wrote that a week after I had this f fight with my dad walking into Soho House Warehouse in Downtown L.A., and I wrote it to process that. I was very honest in a way that I hadn’t in my writing before. I viewed the song as, “Well, this is for me. No one else is going to hear it. So, who cares? I’ll just say everything.” And then I sat with it for a while and I was like, “You know what? I think I do want to put this out. And I want to make an entire album that is this honest and is for myself.” I guess why it’s the north star. It was like the catalyst of, “OK, I want to start making music in this way.”

Do you mind me asking why you’re not speaking with your parents right now?

I think it’s a rollercoaster. Relationships change. And right now for me, as this album’s coming out and I’m talking about it, and there’s been fights, and the political climate… it’s just a lot. And I’m kind of like, one thing at a time. Sometimes space is good for healing as well. When things are really emotionally charged, sometimes it’s OK to say, “Everyone needs to take a break. Take a break and breathe for a second.”

But even though you have differences of opinion, different political beliefs, different religious beliefs, I understand that your parents always been very supportive of you of being an artist from very young age. And that’s interesting. Maybe some people would assume they’d be like, “Be a housewife! Don’t pursue a career!”  But they always encouraged you to be musician.

Yes, and I feel like that’s such a gift, because I’ve had so many friends who parents were like, “OK, be practical.” And doing music is not practical. It’s a hard thing to go out and pursue. And especially my parents are not creatives and not in this world, so they didn’t really understand it, but they were willing to learn with me and figure it out. So, I’m like, “OK, see? If you can do that with music, then you can do that with me being gay, too!”

Did you always want to play music?

Yeah, when I was young, it was always, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And I’d say: “A singer! I want to be a singer. I want to write my songs.” Maybe in middle school I thought I would do something practical, but then in high school I got diagnosed with an anxiety and depressive disorder and I was like, “Music is the only thing that makes me happy.” And I was really supported in that.

So, your parents supported you in your mental health journey and got you help, et cetera?

Yes, they did. So, you see, they’re not… there’s so many redeeming qualities. I had a lot of great things in my childhood.

I’m glad to hear that. So, let’s end things on that positive note. You were obviously unpacking a lot of stuff from your adolescence when making this record that was painful or dark, but there’s nostalgia on The Eldest Daughter too. What did you revisit that was nice to remember?

I think the last track, “Kissimmee,” which is where I was born. I had gone back to Florida and was able to go out with some queer people and discover so many beautiful people in Florida and be with family in a really positive way. And I was like, “Oh, I have this nostalgia for childhood again!” Coming back and being able to be who I am and really love who I am in Florida, I think was really good for me — because I’d kind of had this view of loving a place so much, but not really being loved by it. Maybe that’s a generalization, but you can find pockets and find people anywhere.

My last question is, what advice do you have for people who are going through something similar — whether it’s coming out, or just in some way breaking away from their upbringing — about they can be as grounded as you seem to be now?

Oh, wow, thank you! … I think being honest with yourself and learning how to love yourself is such an important thing. And I think I was able to do that by spending a lot of time by myself and doing a lot of work, but also finding community and finding people who celebrate you for exactly who you are. And it doesn’t need to be a lot. I think that has made all the difference with me — just having my few friends who are like, “I see you. I love you. And I’m here for you no matter what.”

Genre-fluid musician and multimedia artist Mz Neon may be preparing to release her debut album, Maximaschina, but she’s already lived many lifetimes of rock-star adventures. As a queer misfit and self-described former “femme-boy” who started playing music at age 5, she found her tribe in her native Boston’s alternative scene (once even winning a Dicky Barrett-judged WBCN Battle of the Bands contest and touring with the Mighty Mighty Bosstones), before making her way to the glam/punk capital of the East Coast, New York City. There, she worked at Patricia Field’s iconic boutique alongside Amanda Lepore, did styling for Sex and the City, and was discovered by electroclash godfather Larry Tee, before she formally transitioned in 2016 and eventually headed west to become a darling of Los Angeles club circuit. And along her journey, Neon has worked with the likes of Lydia Lunch, L7’s Jennifer Finch, Poppy, Surfbort, Marc Almond, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, and even Linda Perry, with whom she cowrote her forthcoming single “Sex Bomb.”

It’s the sort of blossoming career that wouldn’t have been possible for trans musicians a generation ago (or maybe even just decade ago), and Neon is deeply grateful for all of these opportunities — including her upcoming run on acid house/industrial cult legends Lords of Acid’s Cheeky Freaky U.S. tour with Princess Superstar and Tony & the Kiki. But in the fraught year of 2026, this tour places her right in the line of fire, with several shows in red states like Texas and Florida — where it could be considered illegal and even punishable by jail time or sex-offender charges, under “existentially terrifying” and vaguely worded cabaret laws, if she performs for all-ages audiences.

“As someone who’s from the punk-rock and Goth scenes — and part of the reason why I felt simpatico with those scenes was because of the freedom of expression and playing with gender — I think that everyone should really consider how serious the implications are. It’s not just about trans people,” Neon tells Lyndsanity. “It’s about everyone that’s in a subculture scene — and beyond that, basic freedoms of expression. So, whatever I can do to call attention to it and be safe for myself in the meantime, and try to make things safer for other people … it’s not my obligation, but I feel like it is, if I have this opportunity.”

While Neon admits that it can be frustrating to be mainly defined as a trans artist, she realizes in this moment that her very “identity is political,” and that by being as visible as possible, she could help foster change. “I could be a gateway. It’s not frivolous for people like me to be doing what I’m doing,” she stresses. That’s why Neon won’t be changing much about her wild live show — “I’m actually doubling down on the bitch that I am!” she laughs — although she will be mindful of how she dresses and presents herself when she’s traveling through conservative parts of the country where she’s “not as insulated.” (Ironically, she thinks her hyper-feminine, blonde-bombshell style will work to her advantage in Texas, where she jokes she can “kind of pass as an evangelical trophy wife at a glance.”)

“I’m leaning into some patriotic imagery on this tour because I do think that I am the American dream,” Neon states. “Yes, this country has plenty of criticisms and we should be as vocal about that as ever, but I am that person that should be exemplified like anyone else. … I’m making the point that my freedom is everyone’s freedom. If they’re able to take away my freedoms, that does come back to you. … [Trans people] are always the warriors on the front line. So, whatever awareness I can bring to this, I’m happy to.”

Mz Neon is self-releasing a new single, “Queen Hyena,” to coincide with the Cheeky Freak tour  (pre-save it here), but she’s holding off on unleashing Maximaschina — particular the Perry co-write “Sex Bomb,” which she believes has pop-crossover potential, and an “evangelical Christian diss track” called “Abomination,” because she feels that controversial song could make her a target — until she has record-label support and infrastructure behind her. She acknowledges that it’s “a very weird climate for the type of artist that I am,” and admits, “It’s been tougher than I would’ve thought to get the support around this record, but I’m a relentless bitch. … And for the right record label, I am their Madonna. I think the right label getting behind someone like me is really the move, and the kind of statement that someone should want to make.”

In the fascinating, in-depth, and wide-ranging video chat above, and in the edited Q&A below, Mz Neon opens up about her concerns about her upcoming tour (and her concerns for queer kids and the United States in general); her new album, which veers from her past rap style into genres ranging from dancehall to trip-hop to country; the “prison” of male privilege and why it’s actually masculine to protect people who are more vulnerable; and why, even though she “identifies as a Luciferian,” she believes being trans is a “blessing” and “God’s plan” for her, because “trans people are here to teach humanity about humanity.”

LYNDSANITY: Your last major U.S. tour was four years ago with Poppy, and much has sadly changed in our country since then. In 2023, a lot of anti-trans legislation started being proposed, and it just never let up from there. So, what’s going through your mind as you prepare to go back on the road, passing through a lot of red states, in the year 2026?

MZ NEON: Well, so many things. Overwhelmingly, I’m grateful for the opportunity… because prior to going on tour with Poppy, I’d only mostly done the “coastal elite” circuit. I’d never been to parts of the Midwest and the South. And I was so pleasantly surprised. The reception was so positive and so seamless. That tour was pretty much all-ages crowds… and I connected with that younger audience so deeply. The feedback I heard from these younger kids especially was so profound, in that I know what visibility means and to feel seen. Cut to now, and it’s pretty much illegal in most of these states to perform in front of all-ages audiences. And that is disheartening, to say the least.

Are you worried for your personal safety?

My safety concerns on this tour are largely existential, I would say. … The stuff I was nervous about the first tour all ended up being fine; I found that people are really, really nice. It’s the internet that kind of radicalizes a lot of people. I try to move through the world gracefully — except when I’m onstage! — but I’m aware of my privilege. I’m white-passing as well is cis-passing, but anything could happen. Some of these laws are pretty existentially terrifying, because people are really scrutinizing and looking for excuses. I mean, we could get more into what some of those laws are.

I did actually want to ask about “cabaret laws.” I wonder if there’s anything you plan to tone down or change, so that your show won’t be considered a “vulgar” act. Can you explain to me what the legal ramifications are?

Cabaret laws are purposefully written really vaguely, and they really started rolling out under the auspices of drag bans. And the way that they word “drag” and now more broadly “cabaret,” what falls into that category is what they deem anything that is a “gender presentation other than their birth sex.” I’m not a drag queen, but I’m a trans woman — and it’s not like a costume I can just take off. So, they’re basically trying to categorize all trans performers as adult acts that we might otherwise see in a designated place like a strip club.

And that would be the case even if you weren’t as glammed up as you normally are, like if you were onstage in a T-shirt and jeans with an acoustic guitar playing folk music, right? Would even that sort of act also fall under this definition, simply because you’re trans?

The thing about this that’s so existentially terrifying is that yes, it could. … The intentional vagueness of it is what is worrisome. I’m [touring] with artists that are mostly cis and the crowds are going to be very mixed, and I’m not in the least bit worried about the company that I’m keeping on this tour; they’re amazing, and I’m sure their crowds are going to be great. But all it takes is one person at a show to feel a type of way. And I feel like it’s worth [discussing this] because it is also so broad as to apply to cis performers that are “sexy” in some way. All these trans laws are just moving the goalposts for broader misogyny, gender-policing, expression-policing on opposite sides of the spectrum. It’s policing hyper-feminine men and masculine-presenting women, and not even trans men, but butch women.

I know Ohio [where Mz Neon is playing one Cheeky Freaky date, at Lakewood’s Mercury Music Lounge] is a state that has a lot of eyes on it right now — that’s trying to really make a statement about this, and trying to say more broadly that there could be penalties for these types of gender expressions in general, in public. As someone who’s from the punk-rock and Goth scenes — and part of the reason why I felt simpatico with those scenes was because of the freedom of expression and playing with gender — I think that everyone should really consider how serious the implications are. It’s not just about trans people or drag queens. It’s about everyone that’s in a subculture scene — and beyond that, basic freedoms of expression and how they scapegoat us and use us to create a permission structure for that kind of thing. So, I’m less worried about something happening to me, although it is a concern, but I do think this is an opportunity to create awareness around these issues, if possible.

Obviously it would be awful these laws specifically targeted only trans or drag performers, but the vagueness is indeed concerning. For instance, that Ohio bill includes “anyone who exhibits a gender identity different from their biological sex through the use of makeup, prosthetics, clothing, imitation genitals or breasts.” And there could be penalties ranging from first-degree misdemeanor to fourth-degree felony. So, theoretically, this could apply to an emo boy with guyliner and skinny jeans, a rocker dude with long hair, a tomboy with a pixie cut. Did you think about this as you were planning to go on a nationwide tour with an envelope-pushing group like Lords of Acid — like, maybe this isn’t the time to do it, or maybe you should only play in certain cities?

[States like Florida and Texas] are the ones that need someone like me that much more. It’s a call to action for me. This is the type of activism that I can bring and the visibility and the representation that these kids need. And just the escapism. I mean, I’m not defined by being a trans artist. Obviously, these conversations and concerns are coming up so much more now, and it’s frustrating for me because I don’t want to be defined by that. But I want to speak to it because I have a warrior spirit and I’m from a generation where when I was growing up as a kid, I didn’t even know that being trans was a possibility. So, we’ve been through worse. Things have gotten a lot better, but simultaneously there’s a much bigger microscope on us. A lot of trans people in the past just flew under the radar, and it’s complicated to get into all that.

But my tour partner that I’m going out on the road with is really great. I do genuinely feel like my team and the people I’m going to be out there with have my back, and I’m grateful for them to ask me to do this. And since Trump got into his presidency, since all this stuff happened, my experience is hearkening back to meeting all these kids and all these people in these states… it’s like, I want to do something to be there for them. And I know it’s extremely privileged to just go in and out and make a whole thing about it, but a lot of these people can’t make anything about it. So, whatever I can do to call attention to it and be safe for myself in the meantime, and try to make things safer for other people … it’s not my obligation, but I feel like it is, if I have this opportunity. I do have thoughts about using restrooms and all that kind of stuff — that’s where I’m not as insulated, you know? And I’ve thought about having different sets that I play in different states that are maybe a little bit more palatable for me.

I am curious about how you might tailor your show from state to state or venue to venue.

I’m definitely cognizant of that. I’m also on a bill with Lords of Acid and a bunch of really sex-positive, really sexy acts! And I’m a sexy performer. I’m not going to be doing anything beyond what would be protocol for me as an artist or being on this tour. More of my considerations are just the day-to-day stuff …. my biggest safety concerns are not in the venues, but everywhere in between. … [I am considering] toning down my look slightly [in public], even wearing more questionably coded things like an American flag scarf. I do think I read more just like a subculture/punk-rock girl or whatever. But ironically, in Texas… I think I pass more than in most places, because the female archetype there is so hyper-feminine, at least with the blonde hair. I feel like I kind of pass as an evangelical trophy wife at a glance. That’s kind of fun.

photo courtesy of Mz Neon

“Evangelical Trophy Wife” would be a good song title, actually.

As a visual artist and a stylist, I have to have fun with it sometimes and think, “OK this is a role. What’s the role I’m taking on? What’s my story? What’s she about?” I got this [cowboy hat] in Texas on the last tour, and I’m definitely bringing in it on this one. “Oh, I’m just visiting from the ranch and I’m here antiquing with my nephew.” Who knows? I have to try to make it fun, but also call attention to that it’s pretty serious. I just think that it’s hard enough being a touring musician when you’re not super-established like Kim Petras or Ethel Cain or someone like that. I’m sure they have concerns too, but they have a lot more infrastructure.

I just don’t think most people think about the basic freedoms of their movement being policed. It’s kind of wild. Like, OK, so I can’t use a woman’s restroom. Do you genuinely think I’m going to use a men’s room? The path of least resistance is me breaking the law, because something worse might happen with me using a men’s room, with my physical safety. When I’ve seen instances of trans people abiding by the law, it always causes more chaos than it would if they’d just [used their preferred bathroom]. It’s one of those Catch-22 things that [conservative lawmakers] do on purpose, because they’re basically baiting trans people to break the law, and making it such that now prisons are forcibly detransitioning people, and it’s this whole pipeline. It sounds really outrageous and hyperbolic, but it’s not. I mean, the state of Kansas just revoked every trans person’s driver’s license.

Did you grow up in a conservative or religious environment?

Yes and no. I did grow up Catholic, and in the time I grew up, there wasn’t much known about what I was. … I always found my escapes when I was younger in visual art, which still is the case. I was always the best artist in class, so I got my roses in that department. Later on, it was music and performing in bands, and part of that for me was being able to express an androgynous performance and play with my gender onstage and have context for that. I was always subject to the types of teasing and gesturing and bullying and all that type of stuff, but thankfully I always made friends with the older punk-rock girls that had my back, and I made my way and found my way. … My parents aren’t conservative people, but they didn’t have the tools to support me at that time, and it was definitely a contentious thing for us — and the culture, broadly. I know they would have [supported me], if they knew then what they know now. Now I’m so lucky to have their support and we’re so, so close. And a lot of people don’t have that.

Yes, you are fortunate. The reason I asked about that was I thought maybe that background would lend you some insight as to why religious right, and the right in general, are so obsessed with trans people, and hyper-focuses on a demographic that’s actually quite small, like 1 percent of the U.S. population. Why is this such a hot-button topic?

There’s so many things, but I think in their dogma, we are “playing God,” essentially. We’re not following the prescribed paths that they want us to follow. And not to get too philosophical or esoteric, but earlier incarnations of Christianity, such as Gnosticism and more ancient paths and pagan paths and non-dogmatic Christian paths, have more self-determination built into them. That’s not the ethos of hypervigilant Christian institutions — their whole thing is patriarchy and controlling women and policing gender roles. So, we’re a threat to the status quo. Genuinely, that’s really what it is. And we represent self-determination and making our own choices and showing that we can be sovereign and autonomous. The thing is, we don’t have as many trans elders in our culture as we really should. … It was so much harder to transition back then. You basically had to be extremely passing, and a lot of people chose not to even be out. So, a lot of the elder trans people, especially elder trans women, aren’t coming forward because their safety has been compromised by having to live stealth.

And I wanted to say something about the religious thing for me. My experience being trans, has always had a spiritual sort of motivation for me. And not to get too carried away with that train of thought, but for lack of a better word, this was God’s plan for me. And I think that trans people are here to teach humanity about humanity. Especially cis men and women are always so confused about [each other’s differences]. We are so confused. I could literally tell you! I know how men think. I wasn’t born a woman, but being hormonally female is wild — the changes that happen beyond the physical are really truly transcendent. We [trans people] experience and see some of the worst aspects of humanity, that I always try to alchemize into compassion and understanding and seeing that if Jesus was real, he would be a trans person. Our plight is that of a Christ-like walk of life. We do carry and bear a cross. All the things that Jesus went through are the things that we went through and go through, especially now. The way that Christianity is being used to promote hatred against people is the most un-Christ-like thing you can imagine. And I say that as someone who identifies as a Luciferian! I think that there is a way to look at a Christ-like way of life through a Luciferian lens and see that light and truth are not in opposition to compassion and empathy. I think we exemplify the human experience in so many ways because we live it. I think it’s a blessing to have that opportunity, to have this much insight into what it means to be a fucking human person.

Wow. That’s an amazing viewpoint. I want to ask you about my own theory about why trans people — specifically trans women — are reviled and persecuted so much. You’ve said that your ultimate dream isn’t for transness to be tolerated, or even accepted, but celebrated and seen as sexy and hot. And you obviously have a lot of sexiness in your live shows. I wonder if a lot of the hate that some cis, straight men have for trans women comes from them being uncomfortable with the secret attraction they feel, and what those forbidden feelings might say about their sexuality or masculinity.

I think that’s one of the if not the biggest barrier to our equality — that very issue. And it’s so complicated, and so simple. There’s an outdated stigma that being with trans women is “gay.” And sure, a guy could be bisexual, he could be into men and women, but I date straight men. … And I only date men that are past the point of having issues around these types of things. But the stigma is so real. And it often isn’t so much how [cis, straight men] feel about it. They don’t give a fuck. But they give a fuck about what their friends think. They give a fuck about what their communities think. They can’t take on that kind of stigma. And that’s the biggest, I think, barrier in preventing us from being seen as women and as equal. Yeah, we’re not cis women, but we are under the female spectrum. You don’t have to date or be attracted to trans women. It’s not to say that all cis, straight guys are attracted to trans women. But a lot of them are. And it’s like anything that gets repressed — it turns into a demon. Look at the stats around who consumes trans porn, and in what areas. It’s mostly predominantly red states, because they’re so closeted about it.

And when I say that it’s so simple, it’s just that I’ve had men talk to me in private, like, “I’m in love with a trans girl. How do I come out to my friends and family?” I think the best thing you can do is not come out, and affirm that you’re a straight guy and there’s nothing queer about you. I mean, if you want to identify as queer and you really genuinely feel queer, OK, but it’s not intrinsically queer [to date a trans woman]. I think it’s just normalizing that and being a man and having your woman’s back and saying, “Oh, this is my girlfriend.” If she’s open about being trans and it comes up, then, “Oh yeah, she’s trans and she’s my girlfriend and I’m a straight guy.” It’s just owning that. And the last thing I’ll say on this for now is a lot of men have these attractions, but they don’t talk about it with their guy friends, so they all think that they’re the only straight guy that’s ever had an attraction to a trans girl and that they’re a freak and something’s wrong with them. But six out of 10 of their closest friends probably do too, and they just don’t talk about it with each other because of that stigma. It’s as simple as normalizing that. I think a lot of men won’t step out of line in their social circles, or the ones that do might be ostracized. And that’s really sad. I think that’s so unmasculine. To protect those that are vulnerable is a masculine quality, to stand up for what’s right and own who the fuck you are.

It seems a lot of people are scared of trans people, and I don’t understand where the fear comes from.

I think that most people just lack the experience with a trans person, to [see] our humanity. I think something that could help people understand is this is just how interracial couples [were viewed] at a certain time. I come from an interracial family. My dad is Dominican, and he’s dark-skinned. My mom is white, French. And I think that might contribute to why my parents [are accepting], because when they got together in the ’60s, that was kind of radical. … There was a time in our past, and there still is in a lot of places and cultures, where interracial dating was a huge thing, and I think that can help people understand that this is just being part of being cultured and part of our humanity — integrating with people. Like I said, I think [trans people] are put here to help people have empathy and have understanding and live Christ’s fucking values, if you really want to go there. We are a vessel for that, absolutely.

And I try to be aware of that when I’m on tour and I’m at rest stops or thrift stores or whatever. I always attract attention for how I look more than anything, even especially when I’m not trying to, but I always genuinely enjoy having nice, pleasant, really everyday human experiences with people on the road, because I think people are generally cool. And if someone has an experience with me on the road in a small town — like, there’s an old lady and she might be religious or something, and she’s maybe never met a trans person and has this idea of what trans people are — she can have something to take to her community. She can say, “Oh, I met a trans girl, and she was really nice.” As edgy and crazy and whatever the fuck I am onstage and with my whole brand, I do think I’m relatable and approachable. And I don’t do respectability politics, but…

What are respectability politics? Sorry, but I’m not totally familiar with that term.

This goes more into a racial sort of demographic, like, “Don’t act that way around the white folk and be extra this or capitulate to the white gays” and all this stuff, which is something that my Dominican side of the family deals with. It’s a whole thing. There’s a lot of criticism about that these days, rightfully so, that capitulating and being a pick-me and all these types of things is not good, and I agree. But I coined the term “relatability politics” for myself, because I’m not changing who I am at all. I’m actually doubling down on the bitch that I am! But I can also be in my own way relatable because I’ve always had to teach people how to love me, how to accept me, and navigate through social situations that weren’t stacked in my favor by being funny. Humor does a lot, but it’s disarming to be kind too. Not to say that that’s always going to work or always the tactic, but I try to use my privilege in such a way to move through the world with as much kindness as I can, to relate to people and show them my humanity.

Because that’s how we’re being weaponized and scapegoated by these religious institutions and the language around “mutilation” and this, that, and the other thing. … “Transgenderism” is not a real word. A lot of these terms aim to dehumanize us in small ways. There’s so many conversations about us being had, without us in the room. So many people are speaking about our intentions or purposefully misrepresenting us. I did this sort of jubilee-esque YouTube thing one time that got taken off the internet and I can’t legally show now, but it was about trans people in sports, and they were just feeding us all these rage-bait questions. One of the questions was, “Are you for or against LeBron James dressing as a woman to play women’s sports?” And I’m just like, “Um, that’s not a trans person.”

Yeah, that’s like the plot of some old comedy like Bosom Buddies, or Some Like It Hot, or Tootsie. Cross-dressing to game the system in some way.

Yeah, give me real instances of this happening, not for rage-bait purposes. These aren’t real things. It’s so intentional. And we’re just trying to move through the world. We are, if anything, not trying to call attention to ourselves and do crazy shit, because the penalties that fall upon us are so much harsher than for other people. The same goes with all these fake statistics about immigrants committing crime. Do you think [immigrants] want that attention on them? They’re trying to live here and fucking make a living. We’re all just trying to live the American dream. I’m leaning into some patriotic imagery on this tour because I do think that I am the American dream. Yes, this country has plenty of criticisms and we should be as vocal about that as ever, but I am that person that should be exemplified like anyone else. I don’t think that they can gatekeep patriotism, as much as it is cringe. I also think I’m making the point that my freedom is everyone’s freedom. If they’re able to take away my freedoms, that does come back to you. And unfortunately, people don’t care about things, a lot of the time, until it happens to them. … [Trans people] are always the warriors on the front line. So, whatever awareness I can bring to this, I’m happy to.

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I like that you said that you’re the American dream, because despite how tough it is right now, the kind of career you have as a biracial trans woman would not have existed for the generation before you. You’re blazing a trail. I remember you saying during an interview we did in 2022 that at one time you’d assumed you couldn’t have a mainstream pop career, simply because you are trans. And then things have started change with Kim Petras, who actually won a Grammy; the late SOPHIE, who was Grammy-nominated and was a huge producer on her way to doing even bigger things; Arca, who I saw at Coachella last year; Ethel Cain, Cavetown. And then there are some artists that came out later, like Laura Jane Grace, Ela Melo from Rainbow Kitten Surprise, Anohni, Jenni Rose from Vandoliers, Ezra Furman, Teddy Geiger. But do you worry, as you’re shopping for a record label deal for Maximaschina, that these doors that have only recently started opening for trans artists are already closing again? Are you worried about how the shifting political climate could affect your chances of pop success?

For sure. It’s been tougher than I would’ve thought to get the support around this record, but I’m a relentless bitch. The only reason why I’m not self-releasing it, which I have done in the past, is basically because there’s so much policing and censorship over trans content generally. When I’ve tried to self-release things… I’ve gotten penalized for even boosting my own ad for a single where I’m wearing a bikini on the cover. And now all of these major social media companies have capitulated to all these right-wing ethos: Where there were once protections against hate speech, now they expressly allow it. So, it’s really hard because I have built this platform… and a tiny fraction of those [followers] see what I do. … So, I’m getting out there on the road, because it’s an organic opportunity to reach people and build an organic listener base of people are wanting to connect. … I’m also aware that I don’t fit neatly in a box outside of my transness. I’ve always been a genre-fluid artist or whatever. I think the world is kind of catching up to me a lot in that respect, which is good. … I think I am kind of a crossover artist, in that I am experimental in my process, but I write songs, and working with people like Linda Perry has been so expansive to my songwriting. And for the right record label, I am their Madonna. I think the right label getting behind someone like me is really the move, and the kind of statement that someone should want to make.

I’m going to keep doing it regardless. I’ve never waited around for someone’s approval to move forward with what I need to do with my life. But I also do feel that support from the industry would be great to have. And I’m a little bit older and I think I always have age dysphoria; I can only make so many examples of things in my career, but one of them is being a little bit older. And I think that that’s an asset. I’m not going to blow all my money on cocaine. I can be crazy in other ways, but I think I’m prime for what I’m doing at this time.

I definitely want to ask about the Linda Perry song, “Sex Bomb.” It’s a bit Goth, in a Placebo kind of way, and there’s a bit of Rocky Horror theatricality too. How did this collaboration happen?

That was such an amazing opportunity. I had the great fortune of having Linda as my manager for about a year around 2022, and during that time, we wrote that song together. It actually came out of her asking me what my artist’s statement was. I made it into this poetic prose thing, and I was like, “Sorry if this is too abstract or artsy. I can boil it down into something more traditional if you want.” And she was like, “No, this is great! We should write a song based on this!” I learned so much from her and from that experience. … She’s just such a real person. She’s really, really real and very blunt and straightforward, and she’s from the East Coast like me. She asked me to open for one of the 4 Non Blondes reunion dates in December, kind of out of the blue, and I was just like, “She’s a real one.”

You just mentioned Madonna, who was such a trailblazer back in the day, supporting the LGBTQ+ community when very few other mainstream pop stars were. And on your upcoming album, you cover Madonna’s “Deeper and Deeper,” from her especially sexual Erotica era, as a bonus track. Why did you decide to record that song? I was really happy to hear it, because I think it’s one of her forgotten singles, and it’s a great version.

Thank you! I always thought that song was great, and I feel like it’s kind of unexpected, yet it’s also the most obvious thing in the world for me to cover Madonna. I grew up with her, and she was such a huge impact on me as a little boy. That was one of the first instances of seeing a version of myself. I didn’t have that archetype or even know what that was, but with Madonna it was like, “That’s me. That’s what I want to be.” And then as I got older and got more into punk rock and subversive music and black metal and industrial and all these other things, it still does come back around to that for me. I ultimately feel like I’d want to be the punk-rock Madonna. And I want to work with her. I want to meet her. I think she’s amazing. Maybe I can get her attention by covering this song, low-key. I was kind of thinking that. But I also love ’90s Britpop and bands like Republica, and I was channeling some of that production style, making it sort of noisy and cyberpunk.

It’s really interesting that you mentioned that Madonna awakening something in you, because Laura Jane Grace’s autobiography begins with Laura seeing Madonna’s “Material Girl” video on MTV and experiencing a similar gender-euphoria epiphany.

I think that’s the power of, for lack of a better word, celebrity. I think it’s often used like a dirty word, and yeah, a lot of times it’s just a fucking capitalist bullshit system of selling products. But for me, and what I’ve seen on tour, what I now can offer to the younger generation is a sense of feeling seen, and seeing yourself in someone else. Not necessarily the cliche of, “Oh, you could do it too!” It doesn’t always work like that, although it can motivate people that are called to [entertain] to say, “Oh, there’s a place for me in this.” But also, just that there’s a bitch like me out there, or the attitude that I bring to my life. I gravitated to that rock-star archetype because that’s probably the only place where I make sense and honestly feel normal. I think I’m a synthesis of a lot of different archetypes. I mean, he’s problematic now, but to say the least, when I was very young and Marilyn Manson came out, that was another archetype: makeup-wearing, androgyny. All these things that led me to Skinny Puppy and Goth culture and other things. People are a gateway. So, I could be a gateway. It’s not frivolous for people like me to be doing what I’m doing. It’s not frivolous for Madonna. There is inspiration that, I think, transcends just being a show-person.

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You’re still looking for a label deal, but you are releasing an independent single to coincide with this Lords of Acid tour, “Queen Hyena.” There is a lot of symbolism there, and I find interesting and amusing that you’ve sort made the hyena your spirit animal. Can you explain why?

I think that’s such a timely question in the spirit of archetypes because yeah, the hyena is sort of my performer archetype. … Hyenas are a very anomalous species, but they’re matriarchal and the female hyenas are, for lack of a better word, intersex to some degree. Their genitalia is phallic. So, they are quite literally like chicks with dicks. And they are dominant and they are terrifying and they rule the fucking pack, and the men serve them. They are the quintessential transfemme of the animal kingdom. That’s where my artist persona can separate a little bit. I am a domme at life. I wouldn’t say that carries into every aspect of my life, as it’s a little exhausting to be dominant all the time, but that is my persona. That’s my spirit animal. So, for obvious reasons, that’s why I identify with that animal. And you don’t want to fuck with the hyena. They will fucking eat your face and they’re also cannibalistic. So, a man who crosses their path is not going to fare well, and let that be a lesson.

Are there any other songs from Maximaschina you’d like to preview? Several titles stood out to me, like “Come for the Doll,” “Secret Girl,” and “Abomination.”

“Abomination” was actually my plan for the debut single, and I shot a beautiful, beautiful video for it with an amazing trans video director. I actually wrote that song almost three or four years ago at this point. I’m only sitting on it because of NSPM-7 and these new speech policy things that are targeting anti-Christian, pro-trans [content]. Everything I say in this song is a target. I probably already have a couple Ops following me, I don’t know. But I want to wait till I have label support to put that song out, because I do think it’s that much more important to put a song like that out. It is a basically an evangelical Christian diss track.

Can you explain what NSPM-7 is?

There’s a protocol. It’s more than an executive order. And it targets more than just trans people. Everyone should look it up, but it does put people basically on lists for speaking out about political things… which applies to a lot of stuff, like being a trans activist, being anti-ICE, any persuasions that are basically leftist, trans, and/or anti-Christian. And that [song] talks about all those things, which is all the more reason why it should be out there. But I worry that it would just get me that much more shadow-banned and buried, in the beginning of me trying to roll out a campaign. I want to make sure that song actually has the best visibility that it could have. The lyric is like, “I didn’t ask to be born a heretic, but I’m fucking out here, baby, and I’m loving it.” And the chorus is: “I’m a proud abomination, hail Satan, self-love is freedom.” And OK, sure, if [“abomination”] is your idea of a slur, there’s worse things to be. I’d rather be an abomination than a fucking cuck.

But my next single likely is going to be a song called “Go On.” I think it’s going to be a really timely follow-up. That song is about just internet discourse and people talking about things they don’t have that much information about. … It’s also about having compassion for the exhaustion of having to pay such close attention to these issues all the time, sort of talking to my inner child or to someone else in my community and saying: “Baby, it’s all right if you don’t want to fight for your rights today. It’s OK if you just want to live your best life, honey.” The song “Secret Girl” is a lot about what we were saying about dating and being a secret — and refusing to do that. … There are a lot of softer moments on this album that I think people will be surprised about. There’s some country stuff, some reggae and dancehall kind of stuff, some trip-hop stuff, and some almost ballad-y stuff on this record. I’m really excited to put this out in the world, because I’m already writing the next record right now and getting excited about moving on.

photo courtesy of Mz Neon

I know you’d like to get to a point in your career where you’re not known as just a trans artist, when that wouldn’t even be the most talked-about or most interesting thing about you. But obviously, as you say, it’s important to talk about it right now. Do you consider that making music as Mz Neon is an inherently political act?

Of course it is. Lately, I’ve been having these fantasies about being apolitical, like, “Wow, what’s that like?” Politics is baked into everything. It’s inescapable, and I don’t have a choice. My identity is political. Most of my album is not about being trans, and I think that’s an important evolution of what I’m doing. I think when I came out with my first couple songs — similar to how Courtney Love used to talk about her first record and said, “I’m announcing myself as a bitch,” which was a political thing to be as woman artist of that time — I was making a statement about, “OK someone’s got to do this. Someone’s gotta just come out the gate about this shit so that it’s not a thing.” But here we are, and it is what it is. I’ve had some people say to me, “I just want to see you as an artist without the ‘trans’ thing associated with you.” And I’m like, “Same!” That’s ultimately what I think I am. I’m an artist. I do my own photography for my album covers, I direct a lot of my own videos, I do my own costuming, and I have all these other things that I do. I’m a compulsive creative. But being what I am, in this climate, is what it is.

But I also think I’m well-positioned to talk about it, so I’ll step up to that plate because not everyone can — or should! Sometimes it’s frustrating when I hear men straight, cis men, especially white men, being like, “Oh, I’m apolitical.” Well, you have the luxury of being apolitical, but you’re actually not, because politics do affect you. And the second that they ban Viagra, you’re going to be political, you know what I mean? But ultimately, don’t we all want to be apolitical, ideally? I don’t know. I can’t escape it. And some trans people are living stealth or living in places where being as outspoken as I am is a lot more dangerous for them than it is for me, so if I can help create a more climate that supports all people and makes me as a trans artist be less novel, I would love that. I would love to just have misogyny, you know what I mean? Obviously I’m being cheeky, but it’s like, most trans women work really hard to just experience normal everyday misogyny — and that says a lot! And that’s not to make light of misogyny, but it’s like, we don’t give up our male privilege for nothing.

Yes, if someone transitions from male to female, and then openly lives their life as a trans woman and voluntarily gives up all that male privilege, obviously this isn’t a “lifestyle,” or a fashion thing, or an impulsive decision.

One-hundred percent. And you know, even more so now after transitioning, I have so much empathy for men. Because the male privilege system in and of itself is a prison, but also a spectrum. In some ways I have privilege as a trans woman and a woman that I didn’t have as a gender-non-conforming boy, because I was always very petite. It’s funny, they would tease me for being a “girl” when I was little, and now they tease me for being a guy — which never really happens in real life, it’s just online. I didn’t have that sort of archetypal male privilege that my straight or straight-passing friends had. It’s like, you have to fit into this really narrow box of what is considered archetypally male, which goes into the whole perceiving things of being “gay” or this or that. It’s a prison. A lot of men don’t have the freedom to really, truly be who they are, to express themselves or be vulnerable. It’s like anger is the only emotion that men are allowed to have. And so, in some ways, I’ve actually experienced a lot more privilege as a trans woman… because I fit into some more conventional archetype of gender than I did previously. I always joke I was non-binary back when it was called “Goth.”

There’s a lot of misogyny baked into that whole mindset too. Like, if a little boy is considered a “sissy” or a “pussy” or “girly,” that is the biggest insult you can give them. This also ties into what we were discussing about straight, cis men being afraid to admit they are attracted to trans women — or maybe to any woman who falls outside of what’s considered conventionally desirable — because they’re worried about what other people will think, and especially what other men will think. We assume men do things to impress women, but really, a lot of the time they’re more concerning with impressing other dudes.

Totally. Ironically, it’s kind of really gay! There’s so much inter-policing of what masculinity is. It’s like, emasculation is such… is there “effemination”? I’ve never heard that. Is that even a word?

You can make that a song title! I like that.

It’s just so funny: The same kind of dudes archetypally that would bully me or try to beat me up or fuck with me or tease me [during my childhood] are the same archetypal kind of dudes that now are always in my DMs and hold doors for me in public and are super, super, super nice, but definitely get creepy and rapey and all these other things too. But generally speaking, as much as there’s vitriol from straight men towards trans women, men treat me a hundred-thousand times better like this than they did when I was a femme-boy punk-rock thing. … What’s also worth highlighting about dating and transness is I have more in common sometimes with just other girls that I know that are archetypally bombshells. I’m sure you and I have almost probably identical experiences dating men, because…

Are you calling me a bombshell?

Of course!

Wow, that’s a major compliment, coming from you! I’ll take it.

I just think the way men view me — more as an outspoken woman and a performer and someone who’s tattooed or “alternative” — it’s this whole fetishization that I have more in common with girls like you in our dating world. There’s always points of fetishization. I mean, I’m a Latin girl too, so hello! Or big personalities, or a certain color of hair. I’m sure you get some kind of thing for being a redhead that is specific to your experience, that you could speak on, that mirrors the trans thing in so many ways.

Well, I would never claim to walk in your shoes.

But we have more in common than not. I just think that there’s more points that we can all relate, in that the way men treat trans women often comes more down to a fetishization of a certain archetype. The way they might treat me, versus an archetypally different-looking type of trans women, would be actually really different as well.

To bring it back to why it’s important that you’re doing this tour and putting out music, we were discussing all these laws about presenting one’s gender “properly.” And with “gender-bending” being such a big part of rock ‘n’ roll for decades, I think that’s important. Because you got teased as a kid for not fitting the idea of what a boy was supposed to look like, and now there are laws dictating what a man is supposed to look like. It’s all getting so polarized and binary again. So, I think we need musical artists — whether they’re queer, straight, cis, trans, whatever — that are fucking with those stereotypes.

Yes, and I do really want to stress my advocacy for people that are outside of the trans community. I follow these issues really closely, obviously, and what we’re seeing, especially with bathroom laws specifically, is people are being targeted who are not trans. … Ironically, most cis-normative trans women are probably not going to have that much of a problem, because we have always acclimated to these worlds and are often navigating spaces where we’re not welcome. But it is going to affect alternative people and everyday people [who look androgynous or gender-non-conforming]. And I guess that’s what it will take for people to wake up on some of these issues. But I hope to use my experience as an example to create more awareness for everyone about what’s going on.

I really appreciate you doing that, and that I hope that anyone who attends your tour dates with Lords of Acid feel like it’s a safe space to dress or present however they choose.

Yes, this is a safe space, especially in some of these [red states] that are treacherous. I think it’s important to be able to offer that, for people that need it in [states] that are really not so safe. So, thank you for making that point, because I think that’s important.

Of course. And it seems like you have thought everything out, but I hope you stay safe on the road as well.

As Black Label Society release their 12th studio album, Engines of Demolition, that means that frontman Zakk Wylde — also known for his work with Pantera and, of course, as the long-running guitarist for Ozzy Osbourne — is heading back on the road. But his wife, Barbaranne Wylde, is used to that life. In fact, after more than 33 years of marriage (and more than 40 years as a couple!), she actually knows no other life.

“I would not know what to do with a husband that came home every night at 6 o’clock!” she admits, sitting with fellow rock wife Daniella Clarke during a live taping of their Honest AF podcast at Studio City’s Licorice Pizza Records. “That would be really hard for me.”

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The Wyldes’ odds-defying rock ‘n’ roll love story actually has surprisingly simple and suburban origins, when two “grew up together as kids” in Bayonne, New Jersey. “We were babies when we got together,” Barbaranne says. “We did really meet when I was 12. Zakk’s a year older than me. Sixth grade! And then later on in eighth grade, Zakk had asked me out on a date, and he took me to see the Urban Cowboy movie. He tried to go up my shirt and I wouldn’t let him, so he broke up with me the following Monday! I always thought he was an asshole for that.”

By the time they got to high school, however, 17-year-old Zakk had matured a bit, and he and 16-year-old Barbaranne had become platonic pals. “I don’t remember exactly how we worked our way back to each other, but we became total best friends, and he was dating my sister and I was dating the bass player in his band,” Barbaranne reveals.

But Zakk didn’t want to stay in the friendzone forever.

“Zakk told the bass player, ‘You’re not going to be with Barbaranne anymore, because I’m going to marry her.’ And then he came over to the house and he’s like, ‘Do you like Donnie a lot?’ And I go, ‘Well, he’s all right. Why?’ And he’s like, ‘Because I just broke up with him for you. Because if you guys started to further your relationship, then I couldn’t marry you. And I’m planning on marrying you.’

“And I’m like, ‘Marrying you? I don’t even like you! And… could you stop kissing my sister first?’” Barbaranne recalls, laughing.

HAPPY B-DAY To My SUPAH AWESOME GIRLFRIEND!My Parents were worried why I spent so much time in the bathroom & why we were constantly running out of Kleenex Tissue!!! THANKS to YOU There’s plenty of Kleenex!!!HAPPY SUPAH B-DAY! I SUPAH LOVE YOU BARBARANNE!!! pic.twitter.com/J45HwhxOeX

— Zakk Wylde (@ZakkWyldeBLS) November 9, 2018

Zakk and Barbaranne were a couple from that point on, and on Dec. 14. 1992, right after Ozzy’s two-year No More Tears tour ended, the two tied the knot in Bora Bora. It was during their honeymoon that Barbaranne amusingly realized that as the official Mrs. Wylde, she’d never escape the rock life, not even in the remote South Pacific.

“We’re thinking that we’re going to be by ourselves… but in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I kid you not, we’re on a boat doing our thing, and I’m hearing, ‘Zakk, dude, Zakk!’ And I’m like, ‘No way is this happening…’” she laughs.

And then, right in the middle of the newlyweds’ private, skinny-dipping honeymoon moment in a Bora Bora lagoon, up cruised a party boat with Ugly Kid Joe singer Whitfield Crane on board.

“Zakk’s naked with just a T-shirt over him, and I am completely topless. I have nothing on but a bikini bottom,” Barbaranne chuckles. “Thank God I had sunglasses on — I pretended to be sleeping. And [Crane] is like, ‘Dude! Come hang out with us! Come jump in our boat!’ And Zakk’s like, “Um, I’m on my honeymoon. I’m good.’”

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While Barbaranne still enjoys the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle after all these years, the Wyldes’ home life actually isn’t very wild at all.

“I definitely think my husband is a completely different person at home than when he’s in front of an audience,” Barbaranne reveals. “When he’s home, people are shocked when they’re at the house. He’s super-quiet! He retreats into his own little area. He’s writing; he’s in his own head. When he’s in front of a camera and people, he is on; when he’s home, he is not at all. And that’s surprising to people. … When he’s home and he just wants to hang out with the kids and the dogs and do those regular things, it’s really pleasant, because we don’t get to do it all the time.”

However, Barbaranne, who sometimes joins her husband on the road, believes that the unpredictability of touring life, along with a bit of naughty bedroom cosplay (“I have a lot of different wigs. I have lots of different outfits. I can be Business Barbie, Secretary Barbie, Porn Star Barbie…”), helps keep their marriage spicy.

“A change of environment… being in hotels and different locales and places, it completely changes the dynamic sometimes,” she says. “And I like the fact that my life is never boring and never routine.”

Below, watch Barbaranne Wylde and Daniella Clarke’s full ‘Honest AF’ podcast taping at Licorice Pizza Records, during which they share more rock ‘n’ roll marriage tips and secrets:

A decade ago, James Graham was on a high. After almost breaking up Scottish post-punk band, the Twilight Sad, a few frustrated years earlier, he and core member Andy MacFarlane had formed an unlikely bond with one of their idols, Robert Smith of the Cure, who turned out to be a Twilight Sad superfan. (Smith paid them the ultimate compliment by covering one of their songs, “There’s a Girl in the Corner.”) Thanks to the unwavering encouragement from the alt-rock legend that Graham now jokingly calls their “publicist, booking agent, all of the above,” the Twilight Sad suddenly had a new lease on life, touring America for the first time in 2016 when Smith personally invited them to be the Cure’s opener. In 2023, they even got to play three nights at the hallowed Hollywood Bowl as the Cure’s support.

But these professional triumphs also served as unfortunate bookends for a tumultuous time in Graham’s personal life. In 2016, his mother and “best friend” was diagnosed with early-onset frontotemporal dementia, and in the middle of the 2023 Cure tour, as his mother’s physical health deteriorated, so did Graham’s mental health, forcing him to quit and return home.

“We were supporting the Cure in South America, and I just woke up one day and I basically couldn’t move. My body just told me, ‘Well, you’re not doing this anymore,’” Graham recalls. “Luckily enough, I was surrounded by some good people. Robert was very much one of those people who told me, ‘You need to get better. This for you doesn’t matter right now. The most important thing is you need to go and get well and be ready for these opportunities again someday.’” Graham’s mother passed away two months later, right when Graham, who was nearing his 40th birthday, was also adjusting to becoming a new parent himself.

The Twilight Sad’s brilliant and gripping sixth album, It’s the Long Goodbye, was actually 80 percent complete by 2023. But considering everything that has transpired since 2019’s It Won’t Be Like This All the Time (the Twilight Sad’s lineup has also now been slimmed down to just Graham and McFarlane, with Arab Strap’s David Jeans currently on drums and Mogwai’s Alex Mackay on bass, plus of course some of this record was remotely written during COVID-19 lockdown), it is, understandably, only coming out now — fatefully, just three days after Graham’s mother’s birthday.

This seven-year gap is the biggest in the Twilight Sad’s discography, but it has been well worth the wait, as It’s the Long Goodbye is the sort of deeply personal, vulnerable, and fearless mid-life work that could only be borne from years of life, love, and loss. “It was a conscious decision to go, ‘If I’m doing this, then it has to be as honest as possible. There’s no hiding behind anything this time,’” Graham explains. “Not that I was hiding before, but I enjoyed the play with metaphors. It was like a bit of a shield, just so that it wasn’t giving away too much. But with this one, it was like, ‘If you’re going to do this, it has to be all on the table, warts and all.’ Because that’s what this is. This experience has been truly horrific and also enlightening and real-life, no bullshit.”

And in some ways, It’s the Long Goodbye (which features Smith on “Dead Flowers,” “Back to Fourteen,” and the especially gut-punching single “Waiting for the Phone Call”) even serves an unintentional companion piece to the Cure’s own recent grief-driven comeback album, Songs of a Lost World, which “holds a really special place” in Graham’s heart because he got to hear many of its songs previewed on the 2023 Cure/Twilight Sad tour.

In the extended video above and edited Q&A below, Graham opens up about his struggles with anxiety and depression, fatherhood, the influence that strong women like his mom had on his life and art, Smith’s contributions to the new Twilight Sad album, the pursuit of happiness, and why men tend to bottle up their emotions. “Men don’t talk about their feelings as much. I’m going to talk about my feelings whether you fucking like it or not,” he quips. And in this compelling interview, he does just that.

LYNDSANITY: There is a lot to unpack with this album, so I’ll be asking some tough questions. I hope that’s OK.

JAMES GRAHAM: Yeah, that’s totally fine. Feel free to ask whatever. I’m here to be as open and as honest as I possibly can be. The record means a lot, and there’s a lot that’s went into it. So, maybe I need some Kleenex…

Well, I don’t want to make you cry!

No, crying’s a good thing! We need to go over that stigma!

Well, maybe some people who listen to It’s the Long Goodbye will cry too, because even though it’s about some very personal things that happened to you, I think it will be relatable for a lot of people.

I hope so. I hope so.

I know that this album was partially inspired by your mother’s health issues, and then her passing and the grief you were processing at the time. And that all began over a decade ago, and then you started making the record started seven years ago, and then COVID also happened. So, this is the longest gap between Twilight Sad records, and a lot has happened since 2019.

Yeah, I think it would’ve been a long time anyway, but COVID as well added its own pressures and things for everybody. Whatever situation you were in, we all had to deal with it. So yeah, I lost my mother two years ago to early-onset dementia. … She was in her sixties when it kind of came on. It was the part in life where I was just about to become a father myself, and there was so much excitement and things on the horizon that we were all really looking forward to as a family. But she got diagnosed in 2016/2017, shortly after we’d finished our first tour with the Cure in America, and for seven years she deteriorated. It’s an absolutely horrible disease that basically strips a person of everything they are. And I was watching my sons grow and her fade at the same time, and at one point it felt like they met in the middle, if you know what I mean. And I found that it was too much. I got really [mentally] ill trying to cope with all the things like fatherhood, losing the person that brought me into the world, the pandemic. I’m an anxious person anyway, and I’ve dealt with depression in my life as well, and have managed to keep a lid on it. And music was a way of getting my feelings out. It was a cathartic thing for me. I was so lucky that I found a friend in Andy that was giving me the platform to be able to release my emotions and feelings, instead of bottling them up inside.

I think a lot of the things that led to my illness was I was bottling things up. I was doing the “just get on with it” thing, and that was against everything that I’d told everybody to do and people that liked our music. I was always saying, “Talk about these things,” and I didn’t even listen to myself. And yeah, I got really ill. And then my mom passed on. We were supporting the Cure in South America, and I just woke up one day and I basically couldn’t move. My body just told me, “Well, you’re not doing this anymore.” It told me that I needed to stop.

The Twilight Sad today (photo: Abbey Raymonde)

It’s so interesting that you can think you’re fine, but the body will tell you you’re not. Your emotional state will manifest in physical ways.

Yeah. It’d never happened to me before. I’ve dealt with all those kind of things before: anxiety, depression. It’s just part of my makeup, and I understand that now more than ever. But yeah, my body told me, “No, this isn’t happening anymore.” And luckily enough, I was surrounded by some good people. Robert was very much one of those people who told me, “You need to get better. This for you doesn’t matter right now. The most important thing is you need to go and get well and be ready for these opportunities again someday.” I mean, for him to do that was … he’s not just the person that I look up to as a musician, a songwriter, everything, but on a truly human level, that was a really important thing to be told.

The Cure recently released Songs of Lost World, and that album was informed by what Robert was going through, like deaths in his own family. I don’t know if you two bonded over that or talked about it, or if he gave you any advice, or if even the fact that he was working on a grief album of sorts inspired what you were doing with your own music.

Well, we’d started the album already. Obviously, it took seven years. I had to make sure that when I wrote the songs, when Andy gave me the music, that I only wrote when I was able to find a space in my life and my head to be able to get out what I needed to. But especially on the Cure tours that we did, the most recent ones before the new Cure record, I got to watch those songs being performed live for the first time, practiced onstage for the first time, soundchecked for the first time. And I made sure that I was there watching, because I am a massive fan, and I thought it would be really disingenuous to any other fans out there to have been given the opportunity to be there and [not] really experience that. So, I made a real promise to myself that this isn’t just about going along for have a fun time. We did have a fun time, but it’s a learning experience. I wanted to take away so much from that tour. But just to be able to see Robert up there on the stage pouring his heart out as a person, not “Robert Smith of the Cure” … that was kind of stripped away at points during those songs. I felt there was a real human connection, and the fact that he was being so honest through his music was truly inspiring. I was in the middle of having to deal with my mom’s disease whilst we were on that tour, and [Twilight Sad] songs like “Waiting for the Phone Call” were kind of in my head when I was away, every day waking up going, “Am I going to get that phone call to come back home?” And it wasn’t the coming back home that was the problem — it was just knowing what I would have to go home to. But to see Robert up on that stage was inspiring to me.

Sort of tied into why I was asking about Songs of a Lost World is some of the Cure’s lyrics are very obtuse or full of imagery, but Songs of a Lost World has some of the most direct, literal lyrics Robert has ever written. And I feel that is the case with It’s the Long Goodbye, too. Was that a conscious decision on your part, or did the songs just kind of come out that way?

It was a conscious decision, because it was a case of, if I was going to do this again, I needed to prove to myself to be able to do it. And “Waiting for the Phone Call” is a pretty universal thing now, I’m finding. We all at some point in our life are in that situation. … So, I’d say that yeah, it was a conscious decision to go, “If I’m doing this, then it has to be as honest as possible. There’s no hiding behind anything this time.” Not that I was hiding before, but I enjoyed the play with metaphors. It was like a bit of a shield, just so that it wasn’t giving away too much. But with this one, it was like, “If you’re going to do this, it has to be all on the table, warts and all.” Because that’s what this is. This experience has been truly horrific and also enlightening and real-life, no bullshit.

When you’re hit with things like that in your life and you step away from all the band and things like that, when you come to a point where you’re losing somebody that you really love, nothing else matters. So, it was like, this is how this has to happen. It can’t be shrouded in mystery. This is what it is, because ultimately I’m reaching out in a way to see if anybody feels the same way as me. And I’m finding that people are connecting with this record. Death is a thing that we don’t talk about a lot. I feel the Mexican culture does talk about it and embraces their loved ones that they’ve lost, and I think that’s such a beautiful thing. I think in our culture, people are scared to upset people or talk about something that might hurt, but getting to the other side of that hurt is a relief and a weight off your shoulders. I was always conscious of that, but a lot of the times when writing songs, I wasn’t in a good place and things were hazy, so what came out, came out. Looking back now, I can genuinely start to understand why I was feeling the way I was. At the time, life didn’t have any reasons for me or didn’t make sense. Life just didn’t make sense to me. But I was a father as well, and I had to get up every morning and be there for my family, and that was more important than this record or anything else that I do. That was what pulled me through it, really: Andy’s music and my family. And I have this body of work now that shows that it was a real thing.

Which tracks on It’s the Long Goodbye embody that newfound clarity most for you?

There were certain songs like “Dead Flowers.” I have been listening to the record a lot, to [prepare to] talk to people about it and perform it at some point, and every so often a light bulb kind of goes on, like, “Yeah, I knew you were feeling this way, but you’ve managed to subconsciously talk to yourself, in a way that your future self can look back and go, ‘I understand why you felt completely lost at the same time.’” It’s quite weird on reflection, looking at the record now. There’s a lot of strange coincidences. This record was, first of all, meant to come out possibly in the start of [2026], but it got pushed back a few times and then it just happened to land on [March 27], and the 30th is my mom’s birthday — which wasn’t planned. I only literally realized it maybe about three weeks ago. I hadn’t orchestrated that. The universe seemed to have decided that that’s when it should happen, and so many other things like that have been happening to me. I don’t know what I believe in, but something weird is happening as far as coincidences. When we booked the studio to go to the studio to record, we booked it in London and [Andy] booked a studio [Battery Studios] that he thought was really good. And we were talking to Robert one night and he was like, “Oh yeah, that’s where we recorded [the Cure’s] first two or three records” … And we were with [producer] Mike Hedges, who’d recorded those records as well with them, and it was just like, “Whoa. This is just a lot of universe stuff happening.”

They say don’t meet your heroes, but you met Robert, and suffice to say, it went extremely well. I can’t even imagine how thrilling it would be to have one of your favorite artists from your youth, one of your main influences, not only like your band, and not only eventually cover one of your songs and bring you on tour, but also appear on your own records and become a real friend. That’s the most ringing endorsement I can imagine. Is there still some fanboyish part of you that’s pinching yourself over all this?

The surrealness is fading a bit. It has a lot more since we’ve got even working together. I mean, watching him every night play three hours of just some of the best songs of all time, and just afterwards talking about the gig with him like a couple of friends in a bar around the corner, I feel extremely lucky. And I’ve wrestled with this in my head as well. It’s just like, “Why us? Why?” As a band, we’ve never been pushed in front of the global media or whatever. We’ve kind of existed in our own world, and you don’t know who’s looking or if anybody will notice you. You certainly don’t expect Robert Smith to notice you, because you’re constantly working, trying to make it work. And for that to happen, it was … yeah, I honestly feel, why us? I see so many other bands that also deserve to be championed, but he saw something in us. He saw through the music as well. He could see the way that we care about our artwork. We care about everything to do with it. And he saw that we didn’t want to become rock stars or anything like that. He could see that we were doing it because it was something we loved doing. And to have been given the opportunity to share our music around the world and introduce our music to different people, it’s still pretty magical and pretty unbelievable in many ways. When we’re with each other and hanging out and playing, it doesn’t feel that way. It just feels like friends playing a gig. But when you step back and actually have to look at the big picture — speechless.

Have you ever outright asked Robert what was it about your band that captivated him? He really has gone out on a limb for you guys. He’s practically a Twilight Sad publicist at this point.

Publicist, booking agent, all of the above! Yeah, he tells us. There was an interview [that Smith did] recently … and all the things that I would hope to find in a band that I loved, he said about our band, which is just amazing. That is the dream. There’s nobody that’s given me enough confidence to be myself other than Robert, besides Andy and the band. Andy and Robert have such a great relationship as well. Robert says that Andy and I combined are like him. We are quite ying and yang in some ways, Andy and I, but because Robert sees music from Andy’s point of view, and he sees it from my point of view as well, he gets both of us. Having the connection with Robert has given us the confidence to push ourselves musically as well. This album was always going to be what it is, but I wanted to make him proud. I wanted to show him that all his hard work and belief was merited, all the opportunities that he’d given us, everything. I wanted to show him that it’s through hard work and doing what we believe in, that’s the gratitude. He’s been a big part of why we’re still doing this, and I’ve realized I need it in some way, and I think he can see that within me as well. So yeah, there’s lots of things he has told us, and that’s enough. He’s done so much. I am constantly just like, “Are you not fed up with us yet?”

I assume Robert is proud of this new album. And I assume he was one of the first people outside of the band to hear It’s the Long Goodbye in its entirety.

He had the demos. When we started, we gave him all the demos. We met up in London with Robert and Mike Hedges one night, just for fun, really. … We played some acoustic songs for them, which was nerve-wracking, and then Robert said, “Get the demos on, let’s start listening to them,” and pulled out a massive notepad and had notes on everything! It was absolutely one of the most nerve-wracking things you can imagine, sitting in front of two of your idols with brand-new songs, going, “What do you think?” But Robert had so many suggestions. And it was always suggestions. It was never, “Do this, do that, do this.” He was like, “Try this, try that, see if that works. I like this, I like that.” And that put us to work. Instead of being told what to do, it made us go away with that idea and do the work. And he does that quite a lot with us. He plants little seeds with us. It’s our own thing, it’s us that’s doing it, but I can see that he’s gently nudging us in the right direction.

Was there any one really awesome thing he suggested that was really important to this record?

Two things spring to mind right away when you ask that question. The first one is on “Back to the Fourteen,” he introduced a melody. The song was good and I was happy with it, but he just put this really simple, beautiful melody in, and it was like the cherry on top. It was like, “Oh, that’s perfect. Beautiful.” Something that you didn’t know you needed that now you can’t live without, that kind of thing. And then on the last song on the album [“TV People Still Throwing TVs at People”], he added so much. He just told us to let it breathe, because it wasn’t as long as it was and it was more direct, whereas now it gradually builds and introduces some of the melodies that are going to come later in the song. He really helped that song breathe. And now that I listen to it, that song wouldn’t be what it is without his advice.

This is a question I would ask of Robert as well: There’s a cliché that artists make their best music when they’re in a dark place and struggling, and if they’re in a good place in personal life, their art becomes boring. Is that all true for you, or do you believe that in general?

It’s a good question, because when you’re younger and starting a band, you make the first record and you’re like, “I made it for a reason. There was something to write about.” And then you’re like, “What’s next?” And that thought sometimes popped into my head. I’d be like, “Maybe something bad needs to happen to me, so that I can write another record.” But I got really fed up with that quite quickly. As I started to write more records and genuinely be in an OK place, obviously there’s darkness and light in everybody’s life, but I didn’t have to go searching for it. Life really does bring it to you. I’ve got so many things that I’m so grateful for in my life. I’ve got a beautiful family. I’ve got a wife, my partner, who’s just been there for me, and our lives are fantastic together. But life just slaps you around the face sometimes. I always thought you might have to go searching for that stuff. Somebody once said to me, “Oh, people really like to come and watch you suffer,” and I was like, “Yeah, I suppose so.” But to feel like something bad needs to happen for you to make a record, I don’t believe that anymore.

Obviously, It’s the Long Goodbye is an extremely personal record, inspired by some very specific things that happened in your life. How do you make an album like that relatable and universal, so it’s not just like fans are listening to your audio diaries or therapy sessions?

I just think the themes that I’m talking about this time, everybody does go through it at some point in life. A lot of [journalists] have told me about their situations, and that’s why they’ve connected to this record. That’s why they’ve asked to speak to me. That’s amazing for them to be brave enough to want to put themselves into a situation to talk to me about that kind of thing. It’s given me a bit more faith and humanity, because it’s pretty hard to find that right now. Those little moments of connection with people and conversation is more important than ever. I don’t know, I think we need to listen to each other more instead of talking at each other.

It’s also only been somewhat recent that celebrities and artists have been open discussing their mental health.

Well, the conversation has to be open somehow. And music is the thing that connects so many people, so if it can be the starting point for a conversation in any walk of life, then it’s a good thing. I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts with artists that I know that have been through something similar, as far as the mental health side of my story. Matt Berringer from the National and Alan [Sparhawk] from Low did a really good conversation. Matt Berringer and David Letterman did a YouTube thing. And as they were speaking, I was like, “Oh, thank God” —  or thank somebody whoever’s up there — “I’m not alone.” I could hear people that do the same job as me, and they were talking about the exact same feelings and how they’ve managed to get out of it. So, I’ve taken a lot of inspiration, as far as my own health, from people that have opened up about it. And I know the effects of speaking out, from being the person that’s been listening instead of talking about it.

Have you ever had a feeling of almost like guilt, though? A lot of people would see a musician who’s supposedly living the dream, making music and touring the world, and might be like, “Shut up, suck it up. Your life is great. I work at McDonald’s. I have a much tougher life. What are you whining about?” Have you experienced any of that?

Well, where I grew up, men don’t talk about their feelings as much. I always felt that I was different from that and never really felt part of that. I was in many workplaces — I worked on building sites, kitchens, catering, offices, I’ve done everything — and the attitude was the same in those industries, and it was just it felt unhealthy. I think it’s just very much a man thing as well: that it’s a sign of weakness, perhaps, to show your emotions. I want to be the antithesis of that, because that’s not the way to live your life. It actually puts you in a darker place than actually talking about it. I think that was my worry of putting my feelings and emotions out in the world. That’s why I’m quite apprehensive about putting the record out, because I am a worrier. I’m very anxious. But I just think this is what I do. … I don’t want to bother anybody or hurt anybody or annoy anybody, but at the same time, I’m going to talk about my feelings whether you fucking like it or not.

I feel that men like Robert Smith and some of his post-punk peers, like Morrissey and Ian Curtis or Tears for Fears, might have given young boys, maybe even yourself, the permission to be more emotionally expressive. Like, they made it cool to be sad, or to cry, or admit to being insecure.

A hundred percent, without a doubt. And I think that’s something that we touched on earlier about: why does Robert connect with [the Twilight Sad]? There’s those reasons as well, a connection in being that type of person that’s not afraid to do that. I’m afraid to do loads of things, honestly. I’m so afraid of life in general. But I’m not afraid to do this. I don’t know where that comes from. It’s just amalgamation of all my experiences and the people that have come out in and out of my life. I’ve had very strong female characters, leaders, in my life. My grandmother was such an important person in my life. My mother was my best friend. And I was the only boy in my class in school; I was with five other girls in my class. I think within that, there was learning the lessons of sensitivity and strength in ways not through the male gaze, if that makes sense. And that’s been a big part of my makeup as well. I don’t enjoy lads, lads, lads and all that. It’s not how I work. My best friends, apart from Andy, have been women — like, my wife as well is my best friend. So, I think I had that in my makeup and my DNA, because of the people that were around me. But then when I heard these [male artists] being truthful and honest and the heartfelt and talking about those things, it was completely transformational and inspirational. Without those records and those inspirational people, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing here, talking to you.

I’m so glad you are talking with me! I have two last questions — one serious, and one not-so-serious. The serious one is: How your mental health these days, after emerging from all this darkness?

Better. I wouldn’t have been able to do any of this if I didn’t feel that I was on a forward trajectory. I’m feeling a lot more hopeful. I can see things that I’m excited and happy about. My kids give me a life and just make me so happy and test me so much. It’s been the biggest test of my life. I go for walks early in the morning and listen to my favorite records on those walks, because I realize if I sit in the house and let things stew, those [negative] feelings will come back and it’ll be history repeating itself. I want to be a happy person. I want to enjoy my life. I’m so fed up with being so worried about everything and scared of everything. I want to be very present every day, instead of thinking two steps ahead of myself. So, it’s a learning process. With the tools that I’ve got now, if those feelings start to come again, I know how to fight them. I know the things that are bad for me and good for me, and I feel like I’m doing the right things. These conversations have been great for me. I’ve been coming off interviews, and I’ll come off this interview as well, feeling lighter and better about things. And the fact that you’ve so kindly asked me these questions and you’re interested in what we’ve done is a positive thing, and I need to remind myself of that — not [remind myself of] when I was not feeling great, which is putting it pretty mildly, but I think I’ve been testing myself, because of all the buildup to the album and the thought of it being out there. And I’ve known how to deal with it this time, compared to when I was in the middle of just the unknown of my mum, the unknown of my own health. I really feel like I’m beginning to move forward with my life now. I know there’s going to be a few bumps in the road, but I think I’m more equipped to deal with them than I was. I’m stronger than I thought I was.

I’m so happy to hear that! And I’m so happy that you enjoyed this interview, because I did too. OK, and my not-serious question is, from one Cure fan to another: What’s your favorite Cure album? I just want to know from my own curiosity, no pun intended.

I think it’s Disintegration. I know that that’s the easy one to say, but it is a fucking great record. I mean, any album with “Plainsong” and “Pictures of You” … but I was listening to Faith the other day, and I love the coldness of that. The Head on the Door is also beautiful.

There’s no wrong answer, I guess!

Yeah, there isn’t, but I just know it’s quite the obvious answer when somebody says Disintegration. To be honest though, the last one [Songs of a Lost World] has a place with me for many reasons, apart from just the music. That was an overall experience for me. I probably will say that that’s the record that’s affected me the most, because I was quite present and watching it happen, in a way. That holds a really special place in my heart.

Gilby and Daniella Clarke in the ’80s; their daughter Frankie, right, remaking “Whatever Happened to Fun” four decades later with Kevin Preston. (photos: Instagram/YouTube)

When rocker Frankie Clarke (Frankie and the Studs, the Gourmandizers, Los Frankies) and her friend Kevin Preston (Prima Donna, Green Day) recently covered Candy’s “Whatever Happened to Fun,” they weren’t just unearthing a criminally underappreciated ‘80s L.A. powerpop gem. They weren’t even merely tipping their rakish hats to Frankie’s famous dad, Gilby, who played in Candy years before he got his big break with Guns N’ Roses.

Frankie’s remake was in fact a true full-circle, cross-generational moment… because if it weren’t for “Whatever Happened to Fun,” Frankie would literally not exist.

Gilby and Frankie’s mother, future fashion mogul Daniella Clarke, actually met on the set of the “Whatever Happened to Fun” music video, and what transpired was a storybook rock romance that has defied all odds and lasted more than four decades. It just might be the cutest rock ‘n’ roll cute-meet tale of all time. And it all started in front of that Hollywood Blvd. mural, right next to the infamous Playmates lingerie emporium.

Daniella and her two younger siblings were visiting from South Africa, spending the summer with their Los Angeles-based father, and were doing some Hollywood sight-seeing when they stumbled upon Candy’s video shoot on July 19, 1985. “I saw a crowd of people standing around and I asked, ‘What’s going on?’ And they said, ‘Oh, this is a band filming their video for MTV,’” Daniella recalls. “Then I saw the guitar player standing on top of a convertible. He had ripped jeans with fishnet stockings underneath, tons of black eyeliner, and hair sticking up in every direction. And for some reason, I thought, ‘That’s it. That’s my guy.’ Everybody else just kind of melted away, and I only saw him. And I stared at him. I think I stared at him so hard, with like, like piercing eyes, that he stared back.”

Gilby did indeed notice Daniella. “She was on my side of the stage, and I kept seeing this pretty girl smiling. She just caught my attention,” he says.

“We locked eyes. I saw him, and he saw me,” says Daniella. “And then my dad said, ‘OK, that’s enough. We’re going to go get ice cream.’ So, we left.”

It was then that Gilby sprang into action and dispatched Candy’s makeup artist to chase after the mysterious accidental video extra who’d caught his eye. “I said, ‘Go get that girl. Go find that girl. I want to say hi to her.’”

“The makeup artist from the set came up to me at the ice cream shop, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, ‘Excuse me, but you were just at the video shoot, and the guitar player there wants to talk to you.’ Well, I ran as fast as my legs would take me! I left my dad and my brother and my sister and ran right back to the set,” Daniella laughs.

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The pair’s first meeting that fateful afternoon was actually a tad awkward, because not only was that makeup artist Gilby’s ex-girlfriend, but Gilby had invited several love interests, past or present, to the shoot. (“Oh, there were so many girls there that were all saying they were his girlfriends,” Daniella chuckles.)

“Back then when you got to do your MTV video, it was a big deal, and you called all your friends. I called all my girlfriends — and they were all there!” Gilby chuckles. “Because it was a big event for us, there were a lot of other girls there. So, I was kind of hiding from those other girls, while meeting this new girl.”

And that wasn’t the only awkward aspect of Gilby and Daniella’s first encounter. There was also the matter of Daniella’s age. “The first thing Gilby said to me was, ‘What’s your name?’ And I said, ‘Daniella.’ And he goes, ‘Daniella, you’re very pretty. How old are you?’ And of course, I lied,” Daniella giggles. “I knew if I [answered honestly], he would never talk to me. The lie just flew out.”

“She right away said she was 18. But she was not 18,” says Gilby. “She was 16!”

It would take several years before Gilby would learn the truth (“We started dating, and the lie just kept perpetuating itself,” says Daniella), but regardless, the two were instantly smitten and inseparable. And this would not be the only time that the infatuated Daniella’s impulsiveness and determination would keep the couple together.

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“When it was time for me to go back to South Africa [at the end of the summer] and my dad dropped us off at the airport, I was already dating Gilby and I was in love, head over heels. I didn’t want to go back. But my mom was expecting us to come back,” Daniella recalls. “My dad dropped us off at the airport. I looked at my brother and my sister and was just like, ‘I’m not going with you. You guys are going to get on the plane without me. I’m going to stay here with Gilby.’ My brother and my sister were like, ‘Mom’s going to kill you!’ And I was like, “Well, yeah, she probably will. But I’m not going home.’ And I took off. Oh my God, my poor mom went to the airport to pick up three kids — and only got two! I swear I could hear my mom screaming all the way from South Africa. She was so mad.”

Daniella’s father wasn’t too thrilled either. “I called my dad and said, ‘Dad, I’m still in America.’ And he goes, ‘What do you mean, you’re still in America?’ And I go, ‘I’m still in California.’ And he goes, “What do you mean, you’re still in California?’” Daniella laughingly recalls. “And I said, ‘I didn’t leave. I’m staying with Gilby.’ And he said, ‘Are you out of your mind?’”

Eventually Daniella’s “furious” parents realized that their defiant daughter was never getting on that plane. “I told them, “Gilby and I are going to be together. If you make me go back, I’m going to run away. You’re not going to be able to keep me away from him. I will always run away, and I’ll always be with him. So, either you know where I am and I’m with him and I’ll enroll in school and I’ll get a job and I’ll take care of myself, or if you force me to go home, you’ll never see me again,’” Daniella recalls. “And they had no choice.”

And so, Daniella remained in L.A., but even though Gilby “would take [her] to school and pick [her] up,” he still hadn’t figured out her real age. “Meanwhile, I thought he was Elvis and I was Priscilla,” Daniella chuckles.

“I didn’t even find that out until we got married, when we went to do the marriage certificate. All those years, I had no idea,” Gilby insists.

“We went to the courthouse to go get our marriage license, and I figured, ‘Now is the time I better come clean. I better tell him.’ At this point, I was 21. We’d been together a long time already. He thought I was 23,” Daniella explains. “At first I said, ‘I have something to tell you…’ And oh, the poor guy’s face! I mean, he went white. He probably thought I was pregnant or who knows what. Then I said, ‘I’m not 23. I’m actually two years younger. I’ve been lying to you the whole time.’ And he was like, ‘Oh my God, I had a feeling, because you always had some stupid story about why you didn’t have your I.D.’ But at that time, he was already a pretty well-established musician around town, and we never walked in through the front door [of clubs and bars]. We always went in through the back. So, I never had to show I.D.!”

The Clarkes’ young marriage faced another challenge very early on, when — right after their 1991 rock ‘n’ roll wedding took place at Madame Wong’s West, on the legendary punk club’s last day of operation — Gilby received a job offer that had the potential to take his career to a stratospheric new level, but might also tear the newlyweds apart.

“After our honeymoon, we got back and went into our apartment, checked our answering machine, and there was a message. It was Slash, asking Gilby to audition for Guns N’ Roses, saying that they needed a new guitar player,” says Daniella. “At the time I thought it was a joke! Next thing I knew, two weeks after I married him, Gilby was getting ready to go on this huge tour.”

The opportunity was obviously one that Gilby could not refuse. Candy had never really taken off. “We were trying to do something that nobody else was doing at the time, and it was really hard. I think we had three record deals before we put out a record — we were signed to an independent, we were signed to MCA, and then Polygram — and by the time we got a record deal, the whole scene had changed,” Gilby explains. His next band, Kill for Thrills, amassed a sizable local following and released one album on MCA… but Guns N’ Roses were literally one of the biggest bands in the world at the time.

“I was like, ‘Oh, shit. What does this mean for me? Am I going to get left behind here? Is he going to run off with some supermodel?’ Because that’s what happens. I was pretty horrified,” Daniella admits, recalling her reaction to her groom’s new GNR gig. She also remembers wondering if her disapproving mom and dad, who’d always thought her relationship with Gilby was doomed, would be proven right. “My parents were like, ‘He’s a musician! He’s got a girl in every port! Are you crazy? You’re just one of a thousand girls. This is never going to work. He’s going to cheat on you!’ But luckily for me, Gilby is a meat-and-potatoes guy, a good ol’ boy from Ohio, and he was like, ‘The only way this works is if you come with me the whole time.’ And I was young enough, didn’t have that much going on at the time, that I was able to do that. That was a blessing.”

When Daniella joined her Gilby and GNR on the road, she learned to deal with the insecurities that any rock wife would understandably have. “There’s constantly chicks around, like a plethora of women. And that was tricky, especially at my young age. But as I got older and settled into who I was, and what our relationship was, and the trust that we have in each other, it didn’t bother me anymore,” she shrugs.

A decade later, the Clarkes’ lives drastically changed again, this time when Daniella’s career took off with her multi-million-dollar denim brand Frankie B., which set the trend for super-stretch, super-low-rise, super-sexy jeans in the Y2K era. “That was a very tricky time in our marriage, because I had spent most of my years together with Gilby on the side of the stage, watching him and cheering him on, and then all of a sudden I wasn’t able to go out on the road as much, because now we had a daughter and I had a career,” Daniella says of that new power imbalance. “But in a partnership, you’re there for each other when you need each other. So, when he was out on the road, I was there for him. And then when I was doing my work, he was at home helping me. And we worked it out somehow, some way, by hook or by crook. My career was going in one direction, his career was going in another direction, we met super-young, both high school dropouts, et cetera, et cetera. It shouldn’t have worked. But we always figured it out.”

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As for how they’ve stayed together in an industry where most rock marriages barely last as long as one album’s promotional cycle, Gilby says matter-of-factly, “Honestly, there is no secret. It’s just things change. Things that were important when we were first together aren’t important now. You just have to adapt, and I think more than anything, you need to put that person first. It’s about making her a priority. I mean, a gig’s a gig, but we just had to make our marriage a priority. And then we kept that throughout my whole career — and her career.”

“The ‘secret’ is we just love each other and want to be together, period. That’s it,” Daniella adds. “We just wanted to be together, and we knew that the most important thing was that we stayed together throughout it all and prioritized each other. I describe our relationships sometimes as a seesaw: We always balance each other out, because the ultimate goal is making sure our family works. So, he was always my strength and my supporter, and I was always his.”

“I mean, look, it hasn’t always been roses,” says Gilby (no pun intended). “There have been hard times. But we made it through somehow, and now this is the good stuff.” And as the Clarkes’ marital fun continues, he looks back on Candy’s memorable “Whatever Happened to Fun” video shoot and says, “It was a beautiful day. We’ve got a daughter, and we’ve had a life together. It’s been pretty good.”

Above, watch Frankie Clarke and Kevin Preston’s “Whatever Happened to Fun” remake — which includes video scenes shot in front of that iconic Hollywood Blvd. mural and at the San Fernando Valley’s equally iconic record store Licorice Pizza, as well as cameos by Gilby and his original Candy bandmates. Below, watch Daniella and fellow rock wife Barbaranne Wylde’s live “Honest AF” podcast taping at Licorice Pizza Records, during which Daniella shares more adorable details about her and Gilby’s Walk-of-Fame star-crossed first meeting.

Last year, my top 10 list was packed with pop bops and feminine energy (Kylie Minogue, the Last Dinner Party, all-night dance parties by Faux Real and the Dare, a Brat Summer that lasted all year long). But 2025 was the year when Euro-Anglo rock ‘n’ roll frontmen went bold and baroque, dominating my playlists while seemingly dividing the rest of the music-listening and music-list-making world.

Yes, aside from the inevitable and much-deserved Lily Allen inclusion, this just might be the most polarizing year-end albums ranking of my entire obsessive-countdown-compiling career. (Two of the artists on this actual list, the Darkness and Yungblud, even made headlines this year with an ongoing feud about their artistic merits!)

But hey, the heart and ears want what they want. And what my heart and ears, as well as my rubbed-raw nervous system, insatiably hungered for throughout this bonkers/bummer year was music that was unsubtle, audacious, elegant, and escapist — haters be damned. However, I do have wildly swinging musical moods and wide-ranging tastes, so I’ve also included 33 very honorable mentions. So, keep scrolling, and let’s do it all over again in 2026.

10. Ima Robot – Search and Destroy

For some dumb reason, in 2025 some dumb revisionist music historians randomly and wrongly decreed Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros’ perfectly pleasant “Home” the worst song of all time. But those internet trolls should’ve been funneling all that energy in a more positive way, by celebrating the unearthing of this long-lost 2006 treasure from Zeros frontman Alex Ebert’s electro-rock supergroup. It’s quite astounding that a band that sounded so utterly of-the-moment, futuristically flash-forward, and vacuum-sealed-’80s back in the aughts still sounds so funky-fresh more than two decades later. But Ima Robot’s quirky, herky-jerky post-rock (think Queen, Devo, and Andrew WK jamming at a Berlin disco circa 1982) still slaps. Forget the Zeros and get with these indie-sleaze heroes, who have finally come home.

9. Garbage, Let All That We Imagine Be the Light

Much speculation has been made about the future of Garbage, but if their eighth album ends up being their last, suffice to say they are not going quietly or gently into that good night. One would expect no less, of course, from the fierce, formidable, and forever flame-hearted/haired Dame Shirley Manson, but on this electrogoth fever dream of a record, for which she recorded much of her vocals at home in an opioid haze while recovering from double-hip replacement surgery, she often sounds uncharacteristically vulnerable. She confronts her own morality, or at least her own fragility, atop a dark, dense, and dystopian bed of super-producers Butch Vig, Duke Erikson, and Steve Marker’s analog synth hiss and angular guitars, and is at her most beautifully broken on “The Day That I Met God” — a first-take writing demo that she recorded in her bedroom, in her pajamas, on an afternoon when she, according to her stream-of-semi-consciousness lyrics, “found God in Tramadol.” But she’s still full of fire on tracks like the opening rallying cry “There’s No Future in Optimism,” and especially on the deliciously attitudinal “Chinese Fire Horse,” an anthem for all the unapologetically ungracefully aging women of Generation X. On that rebuke, inspired by Manson’s ludicrous experiences with ageist journalists repeatedly asking her when she’s planning to quit music, she snarls and snarks, “Just a fucking minute/Who you talking to?/You must be mistaken, or you are drunk/And failed to read the room/I may be much older, so much older than you/But I’ve still got the power in my brain and my body/I’ll take no shit from you.” Hell yes. So, perhaps rumors of Garbage’s retirement have been greatly exaggerated, because on this record the alt-rock innovators sound reborn, and they still sound like the (slightly optimistic) future.

8. Sloan – Based on the Best Seller

Canada’s finest never, ever disappoint. They’re such a consistently excellent import, in fact, that it’s all too easy to take the Nova Scotian gods’ greatness for granted after 33 years. Like all of Jay Ferguson, Chris Murphy, Patrick Pentland, and Andrew Scott’s worthy predecessors, this, Sloan’s 14th studio album, comes across like a lovingly compiled mixtape or some really awesome K-TEL compilation of ’70s AM radio gems — swaggeringly swerving from flying V-brandishing, drumstick-twirling, muscle-car cock-rock to soft-rock mellow gold as the hits keep coming. Sloan are blessed to have four sublime songwriters among their ranks, and all U.S. powerpop fanatics living in Canada’s basement are very blessed to have them.

7. Damiano David – Funny Little Fears

On his stellar and surprising solo debut, Måneskin’s formerly leather-sheathed Italian stallion transforms into an Armani-suited pop crooner — fully leaning into the camp of his Eurovision era and the world of musical theater introduced to him by his now-fiancée Dove Cameron, and singing more beautifully and purely than his day-job band ever allowed. He penned an ambitious 72 songs for this passion project during a quarterlife crisis, and standouts among the 14 tracks that made the cut are the majestic “Silverlines” with electronic auteur Labrinth; the teen-heartache prom ballad “Next Summer” with Jason Evigan and Sarah Hudson; and especially the Hudson/Evigan avoidant anthem “Born With a Broken Heart” (three minutes and 28 seconds of elegant, eloquent euphoria, complete with an Old Hollywood mini-movie music video and torn-from-his-diary lyrics that make it hard to believe that English isn’t David’s first language). Funny Little Fears didn’t garner nearly enough attention this year, but it showcases one of the most convincing and thrilling male pop reinventions since post-One Direction Harry Styles.

6. Ghost – Skeletá

The bombastic, theatric, operatic metal Swedes have become unlikely stadium-rock superstars over the years, and with every album, the backlash by wet-blanket-wrapped rockist detractors has seemingly swelled along with their devoted Congregation. However, when one such hater recently bitchily dismissed Ghost as “the metal ABBA,” it was clearer than ever that the good Papa V Perpetua and his band of merry Nameless Ghouls had gotten it right on Ghost’s sixth mega-opus. As if being compared to the almighty ABBA, in any way, could ever be considered an insult!

5. Lily Allen – West End Girl

This zeitgeist-capturing record was such an event, such a moment, in 2025, inspiring dozens of thinkpieces and at least two viral SNL clips, that I almost don’t know what to write about it at this point. Allen was certainly never one avoid messiness, mince words, or miss her target, ever since she debuted in 2006 with the gleefully nasty breakup song “Smile.” But even by Allen standards, the dirty-laundry-strewing West End Girl is absolutely eviscerating in its wittily and coolly delivered female rage. And now Allen’s ex, David Harbour — once best known as a Stranger Things actor, now better and probably forever known as a world-class fuckboy/love-bomber/narcissist/toxic masculinity posterboy/sex addict/gaslighter/butt-plug-hoarder — could only wish that she’d written music about him as relatively benign as “Smile.” Throughout West End Girl, the cringey, creepy scenes from Allen and Harbour’s coerced open marriage unfold and unravel in what feels like real time — from the unsupportive Harbour’s jealousy over Allen’s budding theater career, to Allen’s devastating discovery of her new groom’s emotional affairs (and, of course, her discovery of that infamous Duane Reade shopping bag). And Allen narrates it all in her breezy, beguiling, sing-songy manner, which only renders her confessions more startling — yet somehow also relatable, and maybe not so surprising or startling, for any woman who has suffered a brutal romantic betrayal.

4. The Darkness – Dreams on Toast

There’s nearly nothing that gladdens my little rock ‘n ‘roll heart more than the fact that Justin Hawkins and his British brigade are riding high again, two decades after they were written off as one-hit wonders. I never stopped believing in a thing called the Darkness, and the band had a real moment this year. They finally released their long-gestating documentary (or Darkumentary, if you will); that supposed one hit, “I Believe in a Thing Called Love,” shot back to No. 1 after a clip of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce belting it at the U.S. Open Women’s Final went viral; Justin’s music-critique podcast, the aptly titled Justin Hawkins Rides Again, was a viral sensation; the Darkness announced their first major arena tour in 20 years; and their eighth album, Dreams on Toast, debuted at No. 2 in the U.K., their highest chart placement since 2003’s Permission to Land. And it couldn’t have happened to a more awesome gang of rock ‘n’ roll lifers, who against all odds have stayed the course and outlasted trends, even when there were diminishing returns (as the ever-clever Hawkins quips on the Dreams on Toast anthem “Walking Through Fire,” they “never stopped making hit albums, it’s just that no one buys them anymore”). The Darkness’s latest instant classic skewers tired macho-rock tropes (“Rock and Roll Party Cowboy”); faces shaggy-head-on the realities of middle age (“Mortal Dread,” “I Hate Myself”); and loopily veers from campfire country (“Hot on My Trail,” “Cold Hearted Woman”) to speed-metal headbangery (“The Battle for Gadget Land”) to swooningly romantic, ELO-style blue-sky pop (“The Longest Kiss”). And the Darkness do it all with the catsuited camp humor and glass-shattering falsetto flamboyance that made OG fans believers in the first place. Let’s all toast to the Darkness!

3. Pulp – More

My Anglophilia was in even fuller force than usual in 2025 (spoiler: my top five album picks were all by U.K. artists). But in a year when Oasis pulled off the comeback of the century, it was this Britpop comeback that thrilled me the most. (Back in the ‘90s, my answer to the great “Oasis or Blur?” conundrum was always either “Suede” — who also released a great record this year, by the way — or “Pulp.”) Nearly a quarter-century after the last Pulp album, Jarvis Cocker and company are still in a different class all their own. Cocker’s observational and often self-deprecating lyrics have possibly only grown even more sharply witty with age, but unlike 1998’s nihilistic midlife-meltdown This Is Hardcore, this record, as hinted by its bold title, is unexpectedly celebratory. Sure, “Tina” is a sad, Sliding Doors-style stalker song about a love affair that never happened, and “Grown Ups” is an all-too-relatable lament about life’s all-too-speedy transition from young, starry-eyed hipsterdom to suburban middle-aged malaise. But the meet-cute story-song “Farmers Market” is a sweetly hopeful ode to all the unexpectedly possibilities of late-in-life romance, and the centerpiece “Got to Have Love” — a hands-in-air disco anthem absolutely intended to be played for the festival masses and Hollywood Bowl crowds (if you didn’t see Pulp play this song on tour, were you even living in 2005?) — is pure elation. Plus, that latter track features one of the best grown-up realizations in Cocker’s lyric book: “Without love, you’re just jerking off inside someone else.” I’m so delighted that the much-missed Pulp decided to meet up with us in the year 2025.

2. Yungblud – Idols

To call Dominic Harrison’s fourth album “epic” would be the understatement of the year. The record’s gauntlet-throwing lead single — a sort of please-allow-me-to-reintroduce-myself statement song called “Hello Heaven, Hello” — is a nine-minute, multiple-time-signature, three-act mini-rock opera that practically makes Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell,” Guns N’ Roses’ “November Rain,” or My Chemical Romance’s “Welcome to the Black Parade” seem like exercises in economy and restraint. And it’s accompanied by a cinematic music video starring a shirtless, horseback-straddling, Prometheus-winged Yungblud posing and preening against black-and-white backdrops of cranked-to-11 Marshall stacks and Discovery Channel-worthy aerial shots of medieval snowscapes. Such a potentially frontloading album-opener would be a daunting act for most artists to follow, but clearly, Yungblud is not like most artists. Sometimes he does wear his influences on his Burberry sleeve — for instance, the cheeky Cool Britannia of “Lovesick Lullaby” evokes Parklife-era Blur (complete with Harrison’s Phil Daniels-esque rap), while the soaring and storming “The Greatest Parade” brings to mind Black Market Music-era Placebo, and the closing piano ballad “Supermoon” sounds like a lost cut from either the Velvet Goldmine or Hedwig soundtracks. Other songs are reminiscent of the swirling shoegaze of Catherine Wheel, the chiming post-punk of pre-Joshua Tree U2, the ‘60s-meets-‘90s college-rock psychedelia of Kula Shaker, the Charlatans, and Stone Temple Pilots’ Vatican Gift Shop, or pretty much every era of David Bowie. But despite all that, and despite the album’s impudent title, Idols never sounds an exercise in nostalgia. It’s all so utterly unexpected from the new-school punk/pop provocateur, and it’d almost seem like a parody, if it wasn’t so clearly sincere and undeniably great.

1. Luke Spiller – Love Will Probably Kill Me Before Cigarettes and Wine

The audacious title of the stunning solo debut by the Struts’ frontman reflects all the ambition and emotion held within. The years-in-the-making project was inspired during Spiller’s rare between-tours downtime, when he was penning poetry and deep-diving into mostly classical music and Scott Walker albums, and his first two symphonic tracks created during this era of dark-L.A.-night-of-the-soul-searching were so fantastical, he actually pitched to them to be James Bond themes. And while didn’t happen (which is totally 007’s loss), there was no turning back after that. The result is a literal labor of love, in all love’s forms, but most of all, these 10 cinematic epics form a love letter to ex-pat Spiller’s second home of Los Angeles. “Hold me like Hollywood held you,” he croons on the classically noirish L.A. concept album’s title track, wearing his tattooed heart on his glittery sleeve, while he goes all Lauren Canyon on the sentimental seasick/lovesick Jason Falkner collab “She’s Like California,” and he so perfectly and specifically captures the wonder and anything-could-happen promise of late-night romance on “Magic at Midnight in Mel’s Diner”(which is as explosive as anything the Struts have ever recorded). For anyone in love with Los Angeles, or just in love with love, Love Will Probably Kill Me Before Cigarettes and Wine is heady, addictive stuff. (Now, can we please get Spiller to sing the next Bond song?)

VERY HONORABLE MENTIONS:

AFI – Silver Bleeds the Black Sun

Billy Nomates – Metal Horse

Blone Noble – Life’s New Adventure

Coyle Girelli – Out of This Town

Elton John & Brandi Carlile – Who Believes in Angels?

Foxy Shazam – Animality Opera

Franz Ferdinand – The Human Fear

Jake Wesley Rogers – In the Key of Love

Jason Isbell – Foxes in the Snow

John McKay – Sixes and Sevens

Lady Gaga – Mayhem

Lambrini Girls – Who Let the Dogs Out

Lucy Dacus – Forever Is a Feeling

Lydia Night – Parody of Pleasure

Mareux – Nonstop Romance

Margaret Cho – Lucky Gift

Miles Kane – Sunlight in the Shadows

Olly Alexander – Polari

Orville Peck – Appaloosa

Perfume Genius – Glory

Peter Doherty – Felt Better Alive

Peter Murphy – Silver Shade

Public Enemy – Black Sky Over the Projects: Apartment 2025

Sextile – Yes, Please

Skunk Anansie – The Painful Truth

Suede – Antidepressants

The Horrors – Night Life

The Ting Tings – Home

The Weeknd – Hurry Up Tomorrow

The Wombats – Sorry I’m Late, I Didn’t Want to Come

Tunde Abimpe – Thee Black Boltz

Viagra Boys – Viagr Aboys

Wet Leg – Moisturizer

At the beginning of  Welcome to the Darkness, frontman Justin Hawkins, he of the self-lacerating sharp wit and an equally dazzling trademark unitards, lays out what was allegedly his British rock band’s master plan all along: basically, release a massive debut album, follow it up with a slightly disappointing sophomore record, go on hiatus, and then stage a fabulous return.

He then quips, “The ‘fabulous return’ part hasn’t happened yet.”

The problem is, the Darkness’s documentary ends too prematurely, in 2023 — and during the past few years, the Darkness have indeed made a fabulous return to the mainstream. Hawkins was the breakout star of the Taylor Hawkins (no relation) tribute concert at London’s Wembley Stadium, practically upstaging Wolfgang Van Halen, AC/DC’s Brian Johnston, and even Dave Grohl with his otherworldly five-octave tenor and glass-shattering falsetto. The Darkness’s smash “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” then shot back to No. 1, after a clip of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce belting it at the U.S. Open Women’s Final went viral. Justin’s music-critique podcast and YouTube channel, the aptly titled Justin Hawkins Rides Again, is currently an internet sensation. And this year’s Dreams on Toast, the Darkness’s independently released eighth album (and sixth since returning from a seven-year hiatus in 2012) recently went to No. 2 in the U.K. — making it the band’s highest chart placement since their huge debut, 2003’s Permission to Land.

“Dan [Hawkins, Justin’s bandmate and younger brother] said in the documentary that one of his greatest fears for the band was if we become just a nostalgia-circuit band,” says Justin, speaking from the familiar studio where all his podcast magic happens. He reveals that the Darkness received plenty of lucrative offers to play retro-themed package tours and festivals over the years, and he was asked to be on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! and other British C-list reality shows many times, but even when the band was really struggling, he wasn’t tempted.

“There’s no such thing as easy money. In fact, I’d say the price would come that you would be condemned at that point to just being a heritage act. And there’s no way back from that,” he says. “You’re very, very unlikely to get a second chance. And we’ve actually forced that issue. Our second chance has been through determination and years of work. … You are lucky if you get one chance; I don’t think everybody gets that, to be honest. So yeah, I just think it’s work and belief.”

When the Darkness exploded onto the scene 22 years ago, standing out like a glittering thumb among the nu-metal, indie/garage, and pop acts of the aughts, they had many detractors who dismissed them as some ‘80s-revival novelty act, but also many supporters who declared them the new saviors of rock ‘n’ roll. “Rock is always in peril, in need of saving. It’s always tied to the railway track, isn’t it?” muses Justin. And no band has really come along since, at least not in such a grand and ostentatious fashion, to take up that mantle. But even though the Darkness are making some of their best rock records right now and cracking the U.K top five, he fears that the genre might be beyond “saving” — at least in terms of becoming youth culture’s dominant genre again. And he has a few theories as to why.

“I sound like a really old guy when I say that, because I am a really old guy,” Justin, now age 50, ponders, speaking with the same authority and thoughtfulness that makes Justin Hawkins Rides Again such a much-listen for diehard music fans. “It isn’t going to be the Darkness, I know that much, but whoever it is that saves [rock], that’s great. But rock ‘n’ roll has no chance of bothering the charts in the same way it used to do until there’s a change in attitude and people are more open to the idea of using that sort of soundscape in a different way.

“I think when people are trying to sort of push rock forwards, there’s a resistance among people who like the oldest style, the bawdy lyrics and the things you shouldn’t be able to do and doesn’t fit with our society now. I think rock is really sort of entrenched in, ‘Well, this is what real rock ‘n’ roll sounds like, and anything else doesn’t really count, and I want it to be small and special. I don’t want it to be mainstream.’ … It’s almost like holding onto that core, which is of another time half a century ago, really.

“But it’s not going to be like in the ‘80s, when charts were dominated by people with huge poodle perms and playing guitars. It won’t be like that again, unless instead of singing those sort of aspirational songs about girls, girls, girls and all this sort of stuff, we have some things that apply to the current climate. Unless you make rock music that speaks to the experience of living in the here and now, instead of focusing on the sounds and the attitudes of the ‘80s and ‘70s, it has no chance. It needs to be speaking to the young folk of today.”

That being said, Justin does notice his influence in today’s crop of rock ‘n’ roll newbies, even if some of those younger artists don’t give the Darkness proper credit. “There’s a certain stigma to admitting an influence, outside of the sort of ones that are really obvious. There’s always a reluctance, unless you’ve got the balls to actually be honest. … I see people with the little mullets, their mustaches, wearing their catsuits, and I know they’ve referenced me. I know they have, but they don’t come out and say it,” he says.

When asked if he’s referring to a certain pop star who performed with his idol Brian May at Coachella this year, Justin nods affirmatively. “By the way, I’ve got no issue with [Benson Boone]. But I know that his stylist referenced early the Darkness for that suit. And that’s not me saying that because I can feel it in the universe — it’s because I know [Boone’s] stylist. I know that this is what happened. Yeah, I’d love it if people would go, ‘Yes, it’s because of that guy.’ That’d be nice. … But I think it’s happening a little bit more lately. That’s one of the reasons why I love the Struts. At least they’re prepared to actually admit that they love the Darkness, and I think that’s cool.”

Against all odds, the Darkness have stayed the course and outlasted music trends, even when there were diminishing returns (as Justin snarks on the Dream on Toast anthem “Walking Through Fire,” they “never stopped making hit albums, it’s just that no one buys them anymore”). And they’ve not only survived the ups and down of the fickle music business, but various health issues (like Dan’s battle with testicular cancer at age 31, and Justin’s risky vocal surgery for a polyp he believes he developed while repeatedly straining to sing the 2015 track “Open Fire”). And of course, there have been Justin’s well-documented substance abuse problems, and although he refrains from discussing that much in this interview, instead cheekily referring to “a friend of mine called ‘Jason Hawkwind’ who used to do a lot of drugs years and years ago. … This is not me, obviously, can I just reassert that? Because I’m going to have to come into America at some point!” (The Darkness’s Dreams on Toast U.S. tour launches this week.)

And through it all, the beating rock ‘n’ roll heart of the band, and of their new documentary, has been Justin and Dan’s bond, which is the complete opposite of other famous feuding musical siblings like Oasis’s Liam and Noel Gallagher, the Kinks’Ray and Dave Davies, or the Black Crowes’ Chris and Rich Robinson. “We’re a formidable team. It’s funny now, because those traditional musical or creative brother relationships don’t apply to us,” says Justin. “It’s not like that — we don’t even bicker about who does guitar solos or anything like that.”

In fact, the most poignant scenes in the Welcome to the Darkness are when Dan gets choked up talking about how thrilled and relieved he is to be reunited with Justin (after Justin quit the group in 2007 to battle his addiction and other demons, and the two didn’t even speak for two years), or the moments when Justin expresses his deep regret over disappointing his brother. And the funniest part of the film is most definitely the priceless footage of Justin giving the best-man speech at Dan’s wedding, which demonstrates the dark Darkness humor that has kept the band going since they reconvened for their comeback album Hot Cakes 13 years ago.

Dan had beat testicular cancer a few years prior to getting married and had had one of his testicles removed… so, Justin of course decided to perform at Dan’s wedding accompanied a Jim Henson-style giant puppet testicle. “Towards the end of the speech, I was saying that everybody in the room, we’ve all wondered what happened to the mutated testicle that had to be removed. And then I announced that he was here today, and I had a puppet of a testicle, which sprayed semen out of the top of it from a special device inside,” Justin chuckles. “And the puppet and I sang ‘2 Become 1’ by the Spice Girls. It’s just simple maths, really. And it was beautiful. It really was.”

What didn’t make it into Welcome to the Darkness, Justin reveals, was additional wedding reception footage of “a bit when I’m talking about sibling rivalry, and there’s a photograph of us naked and I’ve used Photoshop to enhance a certain part of my anatomy. And I just leave it out there for ages, with people crying, children crying,” he laughs. “When I had the picture of me with the enormous appendage up on the screen, one of my sister-in-law’s relatives, who was in her advancing years at the time, was asking me if I wanted to sit down and take the weight off.”

Not all families would enjoy such an R-rated tribute, but Justin shrugs, “That’s just who we are, though.” And that humor has always come through in the Darkness’s music, even during their lowest times. “I don’t think we enjoy hearing ourselves whine or moan. There are [artists] who are great at that and I really enjoy listening to stuff that’s just full of despair, but I like it when there’s some sort of twist.”

And the joyful glow-up that Justin has undergone in recent years, which has coincided with the Darkness’s hard-earned renaissance, cannot be ignored. “I eat differently. I exercise. I don’t drink. I gave up smoking as well. My last vice was tobacco,” he says. He’s also now happily partnered up with Belgian-born musician Désirée Mishoe, aka May the Muse<, who he met after he was intrigued by her “really emotive vocal” on the soundtrack for the German series Dark, reached out to work with her, “and then sparks flew and it was magic.” A true story about their morning smooch in a Scottish orchard inspired the ELO-style Dreams on Toast romp “The Longest Kiss,” but even though Justin sings, “I think I found my wife” in that song’s chorus, he clarifies they are not legally wed — so, Dan won’t get the chance to give an R-rated speech at Justin’s own wedding any time soon.

“[Mishoe] is my wife in every respect. Not legally. The government hasn’t got involved yet,” Justin says. “I’ve had a fairly awful experience with actual marriage, but we are just life partners. So, it kind of works in exactly the same way, but without the looming specter. … It’s nice to have that sort of freedom with somebody because you love them, not because you’re obliged to legally.”

And so, with the band in a great place both professionally and personally, they’re going to keep soldiering on, whether or not their genre of choice ever “bothers the charts” again. When the Darkness played a glorious hometown show at London’s Wembley Arena the day after Dreams on Toast came out, they actually rallied the crowd to buy the album in order to block Mumford & Son from going to No. 1 that week (Justin even amusingly led the sold-out crowd in a spirited “Fuck Mumford & Sons!” chant), and while Dreams on Toast ultimately stalled at No. 2, that was still a triumph — considering that at one time Justin says “people thought I’d been dead for a few years, including myself,” and many fairweather fans had written the band off long ago.

“[Charts are] the sort of thing that I usually don’t care about. I wouldn’t even be able to tell you what number the last few albums went in at, because I don’t care,” says Justin. “But suddenly it was something that I wanted, and it was something that seemed like it was in reach. And we didn’t do it on this occasion, but what was it, our eighth studio album? So, yeah, there’s a couple more left in us, I think.”

When Peter Clarke, aka legendary Siouxsie and the Banshees/Creatures percussionist Budgie, has done recent in-store events promoting his gripping new autobiography, The Absence – Memoirs of a Banshee Drummer, he has recited the two passages that open and close the book: witnessing, at age 12, the sudden death of his fragile and ailing mother in the Clarkes’ St. Helens family home, and, at age 49, parting personally and professionally with the other major female power-figure in his life, bandmate/ex-wife Siouxsie Sioux, who he’d been with since age 22.

“I think that sets the mood and tone — for me, anyway,” explains Budgie, speaking from Berlin, where he now contentedly resides with his current wife and their two children. “And those [passages] were the most challenging [to write], as I thought they would be. I was thinking about how I am going to get in there as this young boy, sitting and observing everything, and how I am going to go into character to describe the two people at the end.”

Budgie admits that he pondered, “Oh gosh, is this even the right thing to do?” when he decided to write so forthrightly about his complicated relationship with Sioux (including the power imbalances within the band’s ranks and within their marriage, and the slow, sad way that their partnership came to an end) and his struggles with alcoholism, codependency, and lifelong attempts to fill the unfillable void (or absence, if you will) left by his mother. And it should be noted that The Absence is hardly some salacious, mudslinging, scandalous tell-all. Post-punk nerds will be delighted by Budgie’s tales of working with the Slits and short-lived Liverpool supergroup Big in Japan; recording classic Banshees records like Kaleidoscope, A Kiss in the Dreamhouse, and the Robert Smith-assisted Hyæna; crafting the Creatures’ landmark debut album in Hawaii; and making alt-rock history on the first-ever Lollapalooza tour in 1991. However, it is The Absence’s universally relatable recollections of loss, redemption, and midlife reinvention that will likely resonate most with readers, regardless of their musical tastes.

In the Q&A below (which has been considerably edited for brevity and clarity) and the full, 83-minute video interview above (which features many amusing tangents and in-jokes), Budgie, now age 67, talks about being a member of basically the post-punk Fleetwood Mac, the grieving process, the writing process, and what he learned about himself along the way.

LYNDSANITY: Your book opens very heavily, with the death of your mother. That’s literally the first passage. And the book is titled The Absence. I am assuming that refers to the absence of your mother.

BUDGIE: Yeah, it’s very much what primed me, what set me on the trajectory. I had no idea where I was going, but it really kind of fired me out. I thought, “Well, there’s nothing here for me now.” And also, there was that undercurrent feeling of, “And my mom will never know, anyway.” I could feel somewhere there was a feeling of, yes, sadness and anger, but just kind of, “Who cares”? And that kind of did fuel every turning point, I suppose. … The first night of the book tour I was in Glasgow and it was a very low-key start to the tour, very intimate, one those vinyl bars selling booze down at one end and burgers at the other end, and I was sitting with most of the people that were coming along. And I thought, “What do I read?” And so, I just thought, “Well, I’ll read the beginning and the end,” without really thinking too much about it.

Wow. In the beginning, you are only 12 years old, and your mother dies in a sudden, shocking way. And the book concludes with you and Siouxsie breaking up. To read those passages in front of a live audience, that must be intense.

I think that sets the mood and tone — for me, anyway. And those were the most challenging, as I thought they would be. I was thinking about how I am going to get in there, as this young boy, sitting and observing everything, and how I am going to go into character to describe the two people at the end.

You just touched on this, but in the book you say you might not have even had a music career if your mother had not died — because she would have been disciplining and chaperoning you, saying, “You’re not going on tour, you’re not playing this late-night gig, you’re not hanging out with this much older crowd in town,” et cetera. It must be a weird sliding-doors realization — because obviously you’ve had an amazing life and career, but it was a traumatic loss that set it in motion. Your life could’ve been very different in so many ways, good and bad, if that hadn’t happened.

The question has been asked, “Would your mom have let young Peter at age 12 be out at the weekend, sometimes as late as 2 or 3 AM?” … My sister answered that for me. She heard this on a podcast and went, “No, she wouldn’t!” And I thought, “Of course not.” It is funny how you remember your childhood. I remember coming home late, having been out with my friends all day. It was raining all day. We’d been playing in a muddy wood, and I came home around about 6 in the evening. And my mom just cuffed me around the side of the head. That’s all I remember — the one time, probably — but she was really upset, worried. … It took all these years later, with my sister sitting in the car park outside the pub where my grandmother’s house was just across the street, when she said, “Of course your mom loved you.” My brother was 10 years older than me, and my sister was six years older than me, and I kind of popped out in 1957. So, that combined with losing her at such a young age — she was only 45 — I didn’t really know her. Because illness had changed her. I didn’t know she was ill. She wasn’t bedridden. But my brother remembers a young woman who played tennis and liked golfing, who was much more active and sporty. When we were going on holidays together, just me and my mom and dad and sometimes my sister, she was a very quiet woman. I remember her laugh, but not much more.

You wrote that the loss of your mother at such a young age affected your adult romantic relationships because it made you pursue unavailable, strong women. And of course, that ties into one of the other formative women in your life, Siouxsie. I don’t know if the title The Absence relates to that too. I think you and Siouxsie were considered “couple goals” back in the ‘80s, like some sort of Goth power-couple, so it was interesting and surprising to read something was missing in your dynamic. You had a connection, and yet something was always absent.

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We were, as we were called in the British Press, the “Richard and Judy of punk”! That was when we were on the cover of Smash Hits and stuff like that. … It’s a lot to do with where I came from, what happened. And if we’re talking about Siouxsie, of course, then there’s a lot happened in her early life. It was very similar. We were born in the same year. We lost a significant other — her father, my mother — around the same age. It turned my life on its head, and it wouldn’t surprise me if somewhere that [is where the] connection was. I mean, I kind of met Siouxsie before I did…

Yes — your anecdote about when you saw her onstage from afar and were in so awe of her as a performer that you made a wax doll of her! It’s crazy that that happened before you were bandmates, friends, or a couple. And seeing her that night was another thing that set you on your musical path. Do you still have that doll?

I don’t know what happened to the doll. A lot of things survived in a little box that I actually found in London and took back to Liverpool. There were things in there that it literally was like Pandora’s box. All my sketchbooks are there, all those little photo-booth photographs which really cataloged my hairdos: short, long, black, blonde. But yes, I went home [that night I first saw Siouxsie] and made a little effigy, a tiny little thing, about 12 inches tall. I don’t know what happened to it. I didn’t do anything more like that. It was like, “OK, [music is] what I’m going to be doing.” I don’t know; as I say in the book, I didn’t even put pins in it! I didn’t go, “One day, you will be mine, in my power!” [laughs]

Well, it seems the initial attraction was beyond just thinking Siouxsie was hot or beautiful. And it was beyond a romantic thing. You first saw her as a larger-than-life rock star.

She sort of was somebody from the Magnificent Four, like, “Watch out, don’t mess with that person.” They’re sort of on another track, parallel. They seem to have a power, and yet a disregard. And maybe I recognized that that drive and yet that disregard for the consequences, almost. I don’t think Siouxsie ever really thought, “This could be dangerous”; I think she acted quicker than that. But the compulsive/impulsive [can be] infuriating, if you are trying to carefully manufacture a career out of certain talents.

Obviously, you eventually became bandmates, and then lovers. There’s much more about your relationship with her in your book than I anticipated. You really went there. Did you set out to write this story, or did the book take a shape you hadn’t expected?

Well, I knew I didn’t want to write an album-by-album [account]. … Of course, by the time our relationship ended, we’d spent half of our lives together, and I think it’s difficult to extricate yourself from that. We were never apart. And so, there was no, “I’m leaving, I’ll see you later” kind of thing. I always thought, what would it be like to go to work and come home in the evening? Would the house be empty, or would dinner be on the table? These things were never a question, never considered. But also, the downside was we were never apart, so there was no downtime. And so, you experience every aspect of every flaw, every wondrous part of your beautiful character.

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I mentioned earlier that, despite all your years together, there was some kind of disconnect. One thing you did share was surviving the early death of a parent, and yet, you two never actually talked about that. I would’ve assumed that sharing such a traumatic, unique experience would have been something you’d have a heart-to heart-about. Or that it would have at least come up. Is this a British thing, like a “Keep Calm Carry On” thing, that  you suppressed it?

I think Siouxsie mentioned somewhere that we had that in common, and of course we did. But we never took it further. It was never, as you say, just few drinks in the evening, maybe sit down and say, “So, how did that make you feel? What was it like for you? What happened to your family?” I saw Siouxsie’s family probably every Christmas when we went around there, and if I remember correctly, it was like [her father] was still around. … And my family, in comparison, was very quiet and seemed to be lacking a kind of compassion for each other. It certainly wasn’t cold; it was concern, but expressed in a different way. … The Banshees felt like a family sometimes. And certainly, when Robert Smith joined that family, it was a “mental family” — I think that was a term coined by Robert. And of course, the Cure were very much in our lives. It wasn’t until Lollapalooza that we saw bands at work and the way that they operated, because we didn’t hang out with bands. But what brings all these crazy characters together, quite often, is something has triggered them to run away to the circus. … And I think when my mom died, it was like, go find the circus.

You write in your book that there was a weird friction between Robert Smith and Siouxsie that you witnessed.

Yeah, Robert was the only person that called Siouxsie “Janet” — her second name. And I thought, “Wow, that’s really forward and familiar.” But she loved it and took it. So, she was “Janet” to Robert, and Robert was “Wabbit” to her, as in Elmer Fudd.

Did that make you jealous, like maybe there was some kind of emotional affair going on?

Oh gosh, I could just as easily be jealous of a crew member. Like, somebody was maybe getting too much attention, because we can’t show that much affection or it might disturb the equilibrium or something, the balance within the band. And so, in many ways, perhaps there was a game of distracting. When Robert was part of the four-piece, it gave a kind of a distraction, and also it was a new flattery as well. There was a new dynamic emerging in many ways, and perhaps that’s the way a band survives. It’s always slightly altering the depth of field, if you’re talking in camera terms of who’s in focus and who’s not. And in a way it really works, because you need revitalization, maybe in yourself as a person. Say, for instance, Siouxsie needed somebody new who isn’t playing the role that is already established. … And [Robert] wasn’t the pillar of emerging Goth [at that time]; he was a character in waiting, really.

There’s a lot to unpack with these band dynamics. It’s almost a post-punk Fleetwood Mac situation! Because Siouxsie had been involved with [Banshees bassist] Steve Severin before, and then you came into the picture and you were the cute new guy. And there was this flirtation between you and Siouxsie, and then you two went from being a secret couple to an official couple — and also an official couple that had a side-project, the Creatures. It seems that’d be a recipe for some fraught band dynamics, with people getting jealous or trying to mark their territory or battle for dominance. And of course, there was a power imbalance between you and Siouxsie, because you were dating the figurehead of the band…

In a way, Siouxsie would be seen as the figurehead, even though she didn’t want that. … I could have played more on that “my position’s safe” kind of thinking, but also it was suffused with, “I’m just one of the band,” as well. Very much my role would always be the oil on troubled waters, making sure the crew were OK, kind of acting as a go-between. I had that inner connection to, as you say, the figurehead, but also I was below decks, flitting between the upstairs and downstairs of the Banshee household.

Did the dynamics between either you and Siouxsie, or between you and Steve or the other Banshees, shift once you and Siouxsie were no longer keeping your romance on the DL and everyone knew you were a couple?

You said it with the Fleetwood Mac reference! [laughs] … I sort of saw two sides. I could see my duty and my role in assisting Siouxsie and then also passing on her feelings to management, but then also not wanting to step on the much longer-established relationship with Steven and Siouxsie, or with whoever might’ve been around. Nils Stevenson, who was the manager when I joined, and was Siouxsie’s partner after Steve, you know. So, there was a lot of very close-circle intimacy. And I did step into a very close circle.

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It seems that even after the romantic passion fizzled out, you and Siouxsie were always great musical partners. The Creatures kept going after the Banshees ended, but I don’t think they ever got their proper due; that music was so creative and innovative. I don’t know if you ever hoped for or imagined a reunion — not a romantic reunion, but professional one. A few other bands with former couples have made it work, like X, the  White Stripes, No Doubt, Blondie, Eurythmics. Even if your marriage had run its course, is it possible that the music, which is what brought you together in the first place, could have continued?

It deteriorated. Our world was coming apart during the last little Creatures episode that we were promoting. We were playing the songs from [2003’s] Hai!, but we ended up doing a kind of a Siouxsie Dreamshow, as it was called at the end, which was embracing every aspect of Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Creatures over the years. I think we’d really run out of… not ideas, which sounds like we were bereft, but just the will, really. … There was a long period of really, I suppose, the slow realization that this had all come to an end. And that’s when the real feelings came up. Every day, every week, we were getting further and further apart from the thing that had held us together for the longest time. The Banshees finished in ’95, and we went back to [live in] France and continued as the Creatures. It wasn’t until actually 2002 when we did The Seven Year Itch [Banshees reunion] tour that we thought maybe that was the resurrection of possibly a new life for Siouxsie and the Banshees. … But that didn’t happen, and really that was the point where it’s the Creatures or nothing. But I think our life’s path was… I changed as well. I’d quit drinking after the Banshees, in ’95, and so for that next 10-year period, 2002 included, I was a quite different person, the way I tried to conduct myself and be around different situations. Whereas nothing else had changed, really. And so, the dynamic between us was different, and that was becoming more and more difficult to sustain. Unless there is a mutual desire to change together, I think that’s how relationships need to go in order to deal with things. And we’d never been very good at dealing with things. We were great at getting on with the next thing, so as to not have to deal with that thing.

I really do think we achieved such a lot. When the Creatures became the main vehicle for a good 10 years and we just toured and toured and toured, there was a lot of fun, but it really took its toll. It gets to the point where you think you shouldn’t be together, but it’s easier not to rock the boat, to just to kind of dig in and go, “Well, just one more, one more.” I was not suddenly filled with courage and conviction, but I thought perhaps I needed to sort myself out first and then see what happens [regarding any possible reunions] during the course of that.

You mentioned that about half of your life had been spent with Siouxsie by the time you split up. You were almost age 50 at that point, you’d been in this life-shaping relationship for a long time, and you were so identified with the Banshees. When that all ended and you had to start over, how did you do that? It’s an inspiring tale, because so many people have to grapple with that, whether they lose a job they’ve had their whole life or get divorced from their high school sweetheart after decades. And you were doing it in the public eye.

I think I had to decide who I was going to be. “Am I Peter? Am I Budgie?”

And what is the difference between Peter and Budgie? Is there a difference?

I doubt it, really. I suppose it’s easier to explain some things by saying, “Of course, that’s the character I adopted.” … I suppose it gave me a mask, to hide behind a little, by adopting a character. I’m not sure what the character exactly was — it was underdeveloped! [laughs] But I think part of the reason for writing is to go back to when Peter did get left behind and shouldered the weight of that trauma. The character I became didn’t want to go back there. But by really getting honest, I had to become who I am, who Peter is, and then realize that of course Peter doesn’t have to be just one version. Change is internal, and perhaps that’s the hardest part —  that you are the same person, but you’ve not allowed every aspect of [yourself] to be fully available.

I think it’s about communication and being honest to oneself, and also releasing the self from the all-consuming ego. I mean, one of the first things that happened after everything stopped with Siouxsie was an old friend appeared and said, “Come and play with my band!” And so, I was suddenly the drummer [in Juno Reactor]. Suddenly I was introduced to another camp of music, the alternative dancing scene around Eastern Europe. … And I really loved it. And I was sober, so I only had the music. …. I was freed up from a lot of responsibility as well. I had burned out on Creatures before Siouxsie did, trying to run everything because I thought that was my role. And I really couldn’t do it anymore, but I had no plan B. So, it was nice stepping into that — and certainly with John Grant, just being the drummer in his band.

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I want to make clear that despite the focus of this interview, there is a lot of nerdy music stuff in your book. It chronicles a very special era. For instance, one chapter that I loved, that’s not even related to any of the stuff we’ve been discussing, is your stint in Big in Japan. Just the fact that there were all these connections between the bands like Banshees and the Sex Pistols and the Slits and the Cure, that was such an exciting time to read about.

I think there’s more than one book I could have written! That’s what the thrust of it was, and [music] felt like a booster rocket that fired me away from situations that made me uncomfortable to deal with. I put the photographs together [for the book printing], and there’s a photograph image of the family, and then I just had them remove my mum from the center of that shot. That was difficult in itself, as is reading the passage, because it pictorially illustrated what had just happened: The photograph was taken two years before she died, and we never took another family photograph. That was it. End of family. And I suppose we always called our band a family, and perhaps if you’ve lost a key member of a family, you don’t want the next family you adopt to end in a similar way. You want a longevity, maybe. But we knew pretty much with Big in Japan [that it would end quickly]. It felt like a lifetime, but we tried and tried and couldn’t make it work beyond the edges of Liverpool.

What was the hardest part of writing The Absence?

I suppose it would be the end. I had to dramatize it. … It’s second-person, present-tense, where I’m addressing myself as “you,” and it somehow… gave me enough distance from it to observe what was happening to me and the other person. And in that sense it didn’t… how do I put this? It didn’t feel one-sided. It felt like this event was happening and I couldn’t do anything about it. It gave me the opportunity to treat it as such, like a point of view, like what are the angles, what was the lighting, what did it smell like, how are we going to film this difficult topic and make the music stand up and support this? I felt that’s where I was getting closer to the difficult part of writing a memoir. … It’s truth, it’s real, and it’s neither good nor bad. It just is.

In parts of the book, Siouxsie does not come off as a perfect person, but neither do you. You’re very honest and transparent about your foibles, which I think readers will appreciate.

Of course, that’s the dilemma. It has to be an honest version, and understandable, and hopefully clear away some obstacles to my own wellbeing. And maybe somebody reading it could also relate. … That dilemma is what we face when we are holding onto something that is precious and we don’t want it to end, but we can’t escape how we feel, but we don’t know what to do — which takes me right back to when my mum went. It is the main thing in life, and now it is vanished, it’s gone, and yet you don’t want to even mention it for fear of, “I don’t want to embarrass you, I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable. Don’t mention that.” It creates a terrible inability to really experience things. You go about it a different way, rather than just letting it come into you and going, “OK, I can deal with this.”

I don’t know if you and Siouxsie communicate at all. She must be aware that this autobiography exists. Do you have any idea of how she’d react to it?

I can’t speak for her. …  My response and reaction to things is very different; it even surprises me. So, I have no idea where Siouxsie is in her position now. … I mean, I could go out there and think somebody’s going to come along and go, “You shouldn’t have put this thing out!” But enough people have said, “Thank you for just being yourself.” I’m not getting any closer to answering your question, though… [laughs]

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Well, I didn’t mean to turn this interview into such a therapy session! But I truly think that even if people aren’t familiar or interested in your music, The Absence is relatable just as a personal saga. What did you learn about yourself while writing it? You revisited parts of your life that you’d put aside, hadn’t thought about, or had avoided thinking about.

Gosh, it’s not the first time that’s been asked, and it’s certainly a question I’ve asked myself. … What I have found is that there was a lot of feeling and consideration going on back in the day, but there was just no time to really feel it and allow it to come through and express itself fully. Because I could have. And I still do feel terribly sad about people like John McGeoch, our guitarist only for three albums in the beginning of the ‘80s. John went on to great things as well, but it was just the way our particular relationship came to an end and because he’s no longer with us, that perhaps I could have [reached out]. He certainly tried to. I mentioned that in my writing. And that’s not to let me off the hook, but I’ve realized that I couldn’t have done anything much more than I did, because I was just not fully capable. I didn’t have all the tools in the kit at that point. And only through the writing, I think, do I understand that compassion for myself. It like me going back to the little boy I left back in St. Helens and saying, “It’s OK. It wasn’t your fault.”

Oh, wow. I think that’s a good way to end this interview. That’s profound.

Thank you, Lyndsey, for just giving me a moment. I thought this would be a different interview — and it was.

In a good way?

In a good way.

In 2024, singer-songwriter Andy Grammer was in the middle of doing Greater Than, a one-man show largely focused on grief and his own experience with losing his beloved mother, children’s music artist Kathy Grammer. “That was really, really special,” he reflects. “What’s so cool about it is there’s different items onstage and then there’s six phones in the audience, and people write down someone they love that has passed. And throughout the show I will take out a name and read it, and then the person will stand up and go to a phone and we’ll have a conversation about the person that’s passed away. Wild, awesome show — deep tears, crying, laughing, singing.”

But then, just when Grammer was wrapping up that emotional and vulnerable experience, he got a call from The Masked Singer, offering him the chance to theatrically perform songs by the Darkness, Post Malone, Jet, and George Michael, disguised as disco darling Boogie Woogie in a glittery purple leisure suit and perpetually smiling Muppet-face. “I was like, ‘Honestly, that sounds like a great pivot,’” he chuckles. “I thought that he was a fun character to inhabit for about a month.”

Grammer didn’t win The Masked Singer, placing second to Gretchen “The Pearl” Wilson. But judge Jenny McCarthy-Wahlberg unofficially declared that Season 13 had two champions and said Grammer “embodied this character.” So, clearly Grammer, who is officially the No. 1 Happy Pop Artist globally on Spotify, is winning at life.

While Grammer’s seemingly boundless cheeriness on anthems like “Keep You Head Up,” “Don’t Give Up on Me,” and “Good to Be Alive” have caused some critics to dismiss him as a fluffy artist, anyone who’s seen Greater Than; listened more closely to the nuance in Grammer’s lyrics; or checked out his many interviews about mental health and grief knows that he’s a deep guy behind his smile — and behind Boogie Woogie’s smile. “Coming from me, I think that talking about mental health could have an extra punch, because I’m seen as so happy,” he explains.

Following The Masked Singer Season 13’s grand finale, Grammer chats with me about why writing a happy song, while maybe not “cool,” is much harder than creating darker music; why “grief is an under-discussed topic” but “can be a really sweet door into unbelievable situations”; and how he developed a thick skin and stopped paying any mind to his detractors.

“Uplifting music… if it has intention and it’s grounded, then it’s a grounded optimism. I love the sound of that and when I’m in that lane, I don’t care what anybody says,” Grammer says, adding (with a smile, of course), “Everybody can screw themselves.”

LYNDSANITY: I’m excited to speak with you. I’m not happy you lost, but you didn’t lose. Jenny McCarthy said there were two winners this season, and I fully agree.

ANDY GRAMMER: Yes, two winners! I’m just holding onto that, putting that in my pocket.

But I’m happy because I’m talking to the No. 1 Happy artists on Spotify, and I’m happy that you got to the finale. On The Masked Singer, you said that you wanted to show that positivity and sincerity could win. You also talked about people would call you naive or critically dismiss you because of your cheerful attitude. I’d love your take on that, because why is it only “credible” if you’re singing about your misery all the time? We need both sides of the musical spectrum.

We need both sides. I don’t know, I don’t want to sound like something lame, but I think it’s really hard to write a positive song. I just think it is. I think if you sit down at piano and you play happy chords, it is much quicker to lean cheesy than if you just play dark chords. And so, there’s a skill, and then a straight-up perseverance to just write so many that you get to pick the ones that actually connect and feel grounded. There’s something about being too happy that can sometimes feel ungrounded, which I respect and understand. But we all need some positivity and to be uplifted from time to time, for sure.

Who’s the No. 2 Happy artist on Spotify?

I have no idea! [laughs]

I think it’s interesting you wore this Boogie Woogie costume that had a smile on his face at all times. I wondered if there was any significance to that, because you’re known for being this happy guy, but also, especially in recent years, you’ve talked very openly about your mental health. So, was there some kind of symbolism there, like smiling on the outside but not always on the inside?

Well, they tell you what your costume’s going to be. You show up to a Zoom meeting and they show it to you and go, “Is this cool?” And I’m like, “That’s unbelievable!” I really appreciated it. I thought that he was a fun character to inhabit for about a month.

As I mentioned, in the last few years you’ve done a lot of podcasts and interviews about mental health and going to therapy, and I think a lot of celebrities that used to never talk about that stuff now do talk about that. So, I’d love to discuss your mental health journey in the public eye. Why did you start to feel the need to talk about that?

Well, I think there’s room for both to be true. I think that sincerity and kindness and being uplifting does have a space and can win. And then also coming from me, I think that talking about mental health could have an extra punch, because I’m seen as so happy.

When you started to discuss mental health, how was the reaction from your fan? Were they surprised?

It’s been really sweet and sincere. I think that it’s a different world than I grew up in right now, and there’s a lot more things coming after your mental health that maybe weren’t when we were growing up. It’s just kind of the norm, with all the screentime and all the extra things that are coming at you all the time, to understand that it can be talked about and it’s OK to talk about it.

And you’re a parent; one of your daughters, very adorably, called in to the show. Do you worry as a parent when you’re thinking about mental health? Like you said, it’s a different world now. What are your concerns for your kids and for the younger generation in general?

Yeah, I think that with the phone stuff, it can be all day long. Unless there’s guardrails, there can be not enough time to just be. And so, I think talking about it, being intentional about it and figuring out spaces where you can take care of your mental health and create some space to be “bored” a little bit — I definitely am thinking about that a lot as I’m raising my two little girls.

How is all the stuff we’re talking about now — the world in general, but also you becoming so open about your mental health — affected your songwriting? Is it more happy, less happy, or about the same?

Well, I think that the secret to writing a happy song that works is being grounded. If you just go like, “Everything’s good, the world is amazing,” some people are like, “I don’t believe you.” If you go, “I’m having a really hard time, but even so, let’s be happy,” that starts to be something people can hear. Almost a rebellious sweetness.

What would you say is your absolute happiest song?

Well, it’s funny, because one of the ones that does the best is a song called “Don’t Give Up on Me” – which, I don’t know if that’s happy, but it leaves you feeling hopefully encouraged or inspired. So, the word “happy” gets a bad rap, I think.

What you’re saying reminds me of an interview I did with OMD. They’d done some more experimental music because they wanted to appeal to critics, but then they’re known for these very bouncy new wave hits. And the lead singer, Andy McCluskey, told me writing those bouncy hits was much harder than noodling around and doing the “weird” techno stuff.

There’s something very vulnerable and putting yourself out there to, yeah. There’s something vulnerable about writing a happy song. It just is. It’s just not as “cool” to start with major chords. It just isn’t, in my opinion.

Obviously, if you’re the No. 1 “Happy” artist on Spotify, then you’re doing something right. But did the criticism when you first started out bother you at the time, or make you think you needed to shift course?

I think so. I think no matter what, whether you’re an indie artist, you want a pop hit; if you’re a pop artist, you want an indie hit. You always want whatever you don’t got, but then hopefully you just continue to get more and more clear on what you love. There’s the Rick Rubin book The Creative Act where he talks about the hardest thing is to make things that you love. Getting yourself attuned to what you love is so much harder than that sounds. It sounds like, “Well, why don’t you just make what you love?” It’s like there’s all this noise going on all over the place to block it all out. So, be like, “Wait, what do I love? Let me try to make that.” That’s a skill that I think you hopefully get better at and have to struggle with your whole artistic career.

Since you come from a background where your parents did children’s music, have you ever done children’s music, or wanted to?

I haven’t done a children’s album. We just watched Captain Underpants with my kids last night and I have a song in that movie and I have a song in a Curious George movie, and so there’s a sweetness to writing something simple that children can sing. That is great. And my song “Don’t Give Up on Me,” one of the big reasons that it went big was I did it with an elementary school choir. Something about children singing, “Don’t give up on me” is just so beautiful.

You talked about your mother Kathy on The Masked Singer, and you’ve talked a lot in interviews about your grief when she passed. I’m so sorry for your loss. Do you have any stories about fans going through similar situations who have resonated with what you’ve said about your grief experience?

I think that grief is just an under-discussed topic. I think a lot of people don’t really know what it is or how to talk about it, and a lot of times we just go to a funeral and then move on. But it can be a really sweet door into unbelievable situations. So, the way that I understand grief is, how you keep someone alive in your life is by doing acts of service that you do in honor of them. And that has been such a beautiful part of my life. And so, writing music with my mom in mind, or talking about her, or doing acts of service in her name, has been one of the most fulfilling parts of my life, for sure. … A lot of times I’ll donate in her name. There’s a hospital in Ohio, because of how many times I went to that hospital, there’s a room with her name on it, which is really sweet. And then thinking of her, she was a songwriter as well. I just did a one-man show last year, which was all about grief.

Oh, wow.

It was wild. And there was spoken-word poetry and there were songs and there was a lot of talk about her that was honoring her for a whole tour, which was really special. … I think we’re going to do it again. It’s called Greater Than, and it was a one-man show that was really, really special. What’s so cool about it is there’s different items onstage and then there’s six phones in the audience, and people write down someone they love that has passed. And throughout the show I will take out a name and read it, and then the person will stand up and go to a phone and we’ll have a conversation about the person that’s passed away. Wild, awesome show — deep tears, crying, laughing, singing, everybody going nuts. So, I was finishing that show when I got the call to do The Masked Singer, and I was like, “Honestly, that sounds like a great pivot, like a wild new experience, so let’s go do that.”

I was about to ask being on a fun show like The Masked Singer and getting to wear this crazy costume was good for your mental wellbeing. It sounds it was!

Yes, it was a hard reset on what I was doing.

Going back to that smiley Boogie Woogie costume, as I said, there are some people who think you’re a goody-goody and they don’t like that. But then, of course, there are lots of people who really resonate with that. Have you ever felt pigeonholed, like, “Hey, I’m not just the happy guy all the time”? Or did you ever feel any pressure, like, “OK, I have to write another happy hit”?

Well, my first song that came out that did well was a song called “Keep Your Head Up.” That came from being a street performer and my mom had just died, and I wrote myself a song. So, if it’s grounded in something real, then uplifting music is — I’m not going to curse! — awesome. If it has intention and it’s grounded, then it’s a grounded optimism. I love the sound of that and when I’m in that lane, I don’t care what anybody says. I don’t care. Everybody can screw themselves.

I know you were a busker on Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade before you were famous. You were such a great entertainer on The Masked Singer, and are in general, so I’m wondering if busking honed your performance skills and trained you to win over audiences.

I think of all the art forms, standup comedy has got to be the hardest one, because every couple seconds if there’s not a laugh, it gets so awkward. And I think that street performing is the closest that music gets to that, where you have to just go, “I’m going to shout to try to build a crowd and I’m going to sing, and if you don’t like it, it’s going to be really awkward. Here we go, let’s do it!” And just doing that for eight hours every day will get you to a place where you don’t care that much. You’ve trained yourself that if someone doesn’t like what you’re doing, you’re going to be all right, everything’s fine. And learning that skill was really important for the career that I have, because people are going to like you or they’re not going to like you. One of my favorite things is I’ve done the national anthem, so many times for sports events. I’m like a huge sports fan, got to do the NBA finals, NHL, NFL, college, the World Series. And when you were putting yourself into a place where people [in the crowd] didn’t ask you [to perform] and large numbers are watching you, then I go to my Twitter and I have a text-chain with all my high school basketball team, and I just send the meanest [tweets]. And we just die laughing together about it. So ,you develop a skill to where it doesn’t all go in so deeply. It’s just not that serious.

That’s an important skill to have! And the national anthem is not an easy song to sing. Did you do covers when you were on the Third Street Promenade, or did you do your own songs? And were any covers that you ended up doing on The Masked Singer?

None of the covers made it from there to here, but I do remember there’s something really valuable [that I started out] singing a ton of covers, because you are, every day, looking at the mechanics and singing the mechanics of what makes a great song. So, I was studying a lot. I hadn’t been singing [in my recent career] as many covers as I just did on The Masked Singer, so that opened me up again to when you sing something, you’re like, “That sounds great. Why?” And then you go deep into, “Why is this song so good? Why is this pre-chorus lifting off into the hook this way?” It gets almost scientific about it.

You threw down the gauntlet in your first episode, because you did the Darkness’s “I Believe in a Thing Called Love,” and Justin Hawkins’s voice is so high. And you nailed it!

Yeah, I chose that one because I wanted to come out hard and ridiculous.

It’s pretty cool. What I also think is funny is that Rita Ora later claimed she didn’t know the name of the lead singer of the Darkness, when she was on the U.K. version of the show when he was revealed. She knows his name!

Oh, she knows it. Got it.

I don’t mean this in any kind of shady way, but I don’t think a lot of people necessarily realized you have that crazy range as a singer. Was that something you wanted to sort of flex?

I think also it’s been something I’ve really developed over my career. When I started as a street performer, I didn’t think my voice was very good, and sometimes our weaknesses are very important. I remember when I was street performing, I was like, “It’s not going to be my voice that does this. I’m going to have to write songs. I’m going to need to really figure out how to write songs, because I’m out on this street and I can tell I don’t have the best voice out here.” But over 15 years of singing every day, there was something sweet about going on The Masked Singer and being like, “Oh yeah, my voice is pretty good now! This is going to be fun!” I had that exact thought, literally — almost surprised.

The judges were so complimentary. They guessed you were great vocalists like Darren Criss, Brandon Flowers, Josh Groban, Mika, and Adam Lambert. That must have felt good.

Yeah, just stroking my ego behind a monster mask [laughs]. I loved it!

Since we started off with talking about any kind of stigma about happy songs and how they’re deceptively not easy to write, my last question for you is: What’s the key to writing a good happy song? If there’s someone watching or reading this who’s like, “I want to write the happy anthem of 2025,” what’s your advice?

I think that it has to be true. And that sounds maybe lame, but again, I’m singing, “You gotta keep your head up to myself” when my mom just died. I don’t know why that transfers to then everybody really getting it, but the intention of it is true, therefore that works. So, don’t [try to] write a happy song. Don’t fake it. I think that people can smell bullshit on happy songs way quicker than on sad songs. That’s what I’ll say.

And hey, you cursed after all! [laughs] So, we’ll end it on that note. Congratulations on being, in my mind and in Jenny McCarthy’s mind, the co-winner of The Masked Singer’s lucky Season 13.