It’s Valentine’s Day, and Margaret Cho is feeling the indie-rock love as she releases her third musical album, the powerpop romp Lucky Gift. The comedy legend is a true music nerd, having collaborated with the likes of Fiona Apple, Tegan and Sara, Grant Lee Phillips, Ben Lee, and Patty Griffin and even once working for her idol David Bowie as his official newsletter-writer in the ‘90s, and over the course of this interview she manages to pepper our conversation with liberal references to Jellyfish, the Hold Steady, the Deftones, GWAR, Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Haysi Fantayzee, Björk, Belle and Sebastian, Bob Mould, the Flaming Lips, Lilith Fair, Oasis’s famous Knebworth concert, K-pop, and the pre-Underworld art-pop band Freur (whose 1983 one-hit-wonder “Doot Doot” gets the cover-song treatment on her new LP).

“I think that once your brand is comedy, people have an assumption that’s what you’ll continue to do in every aspect of your performance. But there’s quite a lot of comedians that are very legitimate musicians, whether that’s Matt Berry, who’s really a musical genius, or Tim Heidecker, who’s so good, or Mae Martin, and of course Steve Martin, whose [bluegrass] stuff is super-serious,” says Cho via Zoom from her Los Angeles home, discussing how more casual fans might be surprised by her encyclopedic musical knowledge and genuine skills. “I like being in the arena of ‘comedians who do serious music.’”

photo: Nick Spanos

Lucky Gift brings the laughs, of course, but as Cho points out, “being funny is a trauma response” and a “coping mechanism,” so, yes, this album is serious stuff. There’s the track “Funny Man,” an ode to the late Robin Williams; “Baked Bread,” a love song for her late friend Gerri Lawlor; two tunes about substance abuse and sobriety (Cho “was an opiate addict for a long time,” but has been clean for the past decade); and most touchingly, “You Can Be You,” inspired by the tragic 2024 suicide of bullied nonbinary teenager Nex Benedict.

“I really love playing [“You Can Be You”] live. I really love getting to talk about it. For me, it’s an opportunity to establish a ‘queer elder’ understanding and a relationship to the younger community. I’m glad to do that,” says Cho, 56. “I think that we need queer elder voices, because there’s a lot of our generation that’s missing from AIDS, so we have a missing rung in the ladder that we have to span over. There’s not sort of the immediate generation; the one that’s sort of 10 or 12 years ahead of me are all gone. And so, I think it’s important for queer people in my age range. We’re in our fifties, and we want to be able to talk about the past and have a sense of optimism. Like, we are in a terrible time now, but we’ve actually been worse off before, fighting a deadly [AIDS] pandemic without the government’s assistance, without any sort of advancement in all rights. So, we have come really far. To remind people of that, I think, really helps.”

Cho feels similarly optimistic about current music, especially music made by queer women, expressing her admiration for recent Grammy-winners Doechii and Chappell Roan. Her bright powerpop may be mainly inspired by the ‘90s, which she says was “a really great time for guitar-driven female voices in rock ‘n’ roll,” but she points out that that decade was also “oddly in a lot of ways so conservative” — for instance, she recalls when she was launching her comedy career, an early manager advised her not to publicly discuss her bisexuality or even mention it in her standup routines. So, she says happily, “There is something right now that’s happening [in music] so much with women that is exciting. … Women are sort of leading the charge for what we’re listening to. We need it. We need it more than ever. We need queer voices more than ever. I love that Chappell Roan is like that — like, that is so queer to win [a Grammy] and talk about health insurance, which is so perfect. … I think that’s what we’re kind of going for: really progressive politics, but also really great music. And so, I’m looking forward to what the future brings.”

In the video above and the wide-ranging Q&A below, Cho geeks out on music and discusses the stories behind some key Lucky Gift tracks. She also discusses, among many other things, doing standup with Sam Rockwell at age 15, how nü-metal killed the 1990s’ “women in rock” trend, supporting trans rights, common misconceptions about bisexuality, her past opiate addiction, and why “Doot Doot” is her favorite song of all time. The interview is a gift that keeps on giving.

LYNDSANITY: Happy Valentine’s Day! And I know what would be the perfect Lucky Gift for the Valentine on anyone’s shopping list…

MARGARET CHO: That’s right! My album is out today and I’m so excited. I’ve been working on this for such a long time. I’m so happy that it’s finally out and for me it is a labor of love. So, it’s perfect that it’s coming out today.

This is your first musical album since American Myth, which came out in 2016. Obviously you always have a lot going on with your film work and your standup, and we had a pandemic in the middle of all that too. But I know how passionate you are about music, so I’m surprised it took you this long to follow up that album. Why so long?

Well, some of the songs were songs that I didn’t put on American Myth. When I make records, kind of what I do is I make a sourdough starter. I leave a little, and then I let it grow. So, there’s a couple of songs that I left a little and then let grow over the last several years. “Funny Man” is one that I actually recorded in 2014, really to celebrate the life of Robin Williams. It’s a big staple that we would play out in the street for my BeRobin project, which was an outreach for people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco. We’d have these big bands go out on the street and play in encampments, and the bands were so epic. Some days we’d have Bob Mould, and other days we’d have Boots Riley. So, Roger Rocha, who I wrote some of the album with, came out and he was the bandleader and we would steal electricity and we would just play to different homeless encampments and people would get food and supplies. And it was really special. But it was to commemorate Robin Williams’s work with Comic Relief from the 1980s, which was his big homeless charity. So, I was happy to do that and I’m glad that this song finally made it on the record.

I assume you were friends with Robin and maybe saw a different side of him. This song is about how a funny person on the outside isn’t always so funny on the inside.

They don’t always feel it. But with people being funny, it’s often overlooked that being funny is a trauma response, because you laugh at something to have overcome it. It’s a coping mechanism. And so, people who have very advanced, sensitive humor oftentimes are coping with a lot of trauma, a lot of pain. I think that’s what he was dealing with. I didn’t know him that well. I had two relationships with him: One was personal, one was parasocial. I knew him from afar as a fan, but I also met him several times, and he owned the comedy club that I lived across the street from when I was a teenager. I would run across the street and he would do these shows and I would have to perform after him for years! It was so torturous to follow Robin Williams as a comedian! So, he taught me a lot. But also, he was just a really special person. I think people don’t talk about him very much because the legacy is hard to contend with — the way that he passed. I find that it’s uncomfortable for people, because you sort of have to bring that up too. But I think that’s sad, because we shouldn’t miss out on the fact that he was such a huge part of entertainment for such a long time. So, I wanted to honor him. I love the song. It’s for all funny guys who never quite feel so funny on the inside, but at the end of the track, there’s a little laughtrack, and that was recorded last year when I was doing with one of my bands, the Red Room Orchestra.

You talked about how being funny, being “on” a lot of the time, is a trauma response. You’ve been open about traumatic things that have happened to you in the past. Is that what comedy has been for you? Because you’re considered one of the great comics of all time, but you have a serious side to you as well.

Yeah, I think that comics are actually much more serious than people realize. Most of the comics I know are very serious people. We are serious about what comedy is. It’s really about finding ways to let light in, finding ways to let hope in, finding ways to let joy in. For me, that’s what it’s always been about. I think I’ve always had a depressive personality and a difficult time coping with the world as it is, and the fact that I have a sense of humor has really helped me. And I think sharing that, being a comedian, helps others as well.

Is that why you turned to comedy in the first place? You said you grew up across the street from Robin Williams’s comedy club. At what age did you do your first public standup routine?

My first sets were around 14. Really young. But I always knew this is what I wanted to do. I just felt it. I would have very vivid dreams as a child of being a comedian onstage, and that’s exactly feels like what it feels like now, which is so odd. I knew that it was really destiny, which is such a strange thing to think about, but that’s really what it was. And so, the feeling of doing it makes me really feel like myself and makes me feel like I’m doing the right thing.

That’s a very gutsy move, to put yourself out there at age 14.

Well, I had a lot of encouragement. I was in a class in school where our teacher would sign us up for open mics. I was part of a duo when I started. It was with Sam Rockwell. Yes, the Academy Award-winning actor who dropped out of comedy and doesn’t do it anymore, but that’s crazy. And there’s footage on YouTube too, where you can see in our sketches when we’re literal children, like 15. He ended up moving to New York with his mom and leaving our school, and so I continued with it.

Did you ever consider making music your primary career?

No… for me, it was like an exciting vacation to go into music, because it was so exotic and so different. And I love rock ‘n’ roll. I’ve always been a part of rock ‘n’ roll shows forever. That to me is a culture that is still very exciting, going to shows. There’s nothing like it; it’s so, so special. I think that starting to pursue music for me became more around 2008, when I was collaborating with people like Fiona Apple and John Brion and Andrew Bird and Tegan and Sara and Grant Lee Phillips and Ben Lee — so many wonderful people around Cho Dependent, my first record.

There’s definitely a definite ‘90s vibe to all of your original music, and in Lucky Gift I hear a bit of Juliana Hatfield, Veruca Salt, Apples in Stereo, Fountains of Wayne, Whip-Smart-era Liz Phair, and a lot of ‘90s powerpop. Am I hearing correctly?

You are! Thank you so much. Now, my goal [in the ‘90s] was to be booked on Lilith Fair. If we could get in a time machine and I could go back and somehow be transported, I would like to play a set in between Joan Osborne and Alanis Morissette. I love the ‘90s, and I think it was a really great time for guitar-driven female voices in rock ‘n’ roll. Like, you’re in a slip-dress, but you’re talking about feminism. I love that juxtaposition.

photo: Nick Spanos

I agree that the ‘90s were such a good time for women in music. There was Lilith Fair, Riot Grrl, and also a lot of co-ed bands fronted by women like No Doubt. Garbage, Veruca Salt, Hole. There was even one year at the Grammys, 1999 when Lauryn Hill won, that all of the Album of the Year nominees were female. We had a good year at the Grammys this year for women, but more in the pop genre. And women are doing very well, but it’s more in the straight-up pop thing. So, what happened to make the tides turn in rock? It felt like a lot of progress in the ‘90s just stopped.

What happened was nü-metal! I think it was the Warped Tour. I think there are some culprits. I think we could look to emo. I love emo, but it was very male-driven. [Women] sort of went away and it got hypermasculine. And then there’s nothing more masculine than nü-metal. It’s like the umlaut is a couple of balls. It’s just so testosterone-driven. And I love nü-metal, I can’t help it, but at the same time, there is such sort of a maleness to it that does not lend itself to women’s voices. I can’t even think of a female nü-metal band, except maybe Evanescence.

Sure, but even Evanescence put a shouty nü-metal dude on their first hit. It seems there’s a nü-metal nostalgia wave happening right now, with Limp Bizkit and Creed touring again, etc., which might be in line with what’s going on right now.

The political sphere. I mean, I don’t know. Music always changes with the times, but there is something right now that’s happening so much with women that is exciting. I love queer pop, whether that is Doechii — I think of Doechii as pop, even though of course she’s hip-hop, but to me it’s very pop and it’s very exciting — as with Chappell Roan, who’s just phenomenal. So, I am excited about music… that women are sort of leading the charge for what we’re listening to.

Me too, because we’re in some crazy times where women’s voices are very needed.

We need it. We need it more than ever. We need queer voices more than ever. I love that Chappell Roan is like that — like, that is so queer to win [a Grammy] and talk about health insurance, which is so perfect. She’s just perfect. I love her. I think that’s what we’re kind of going for: really progressive politics, but also really great music. And so, I’m looking forward to what the future brings.

So, let’s talk about some tracks on Lucky Gift. We’ve discussed the ‘90s so much already that I have to start with “‘90s Sisyphus”!

That is the song that’s about breaking up with the guy that [title track] “Lucky Gift” is about, I mean, it only took five tracks to break up, but we had a good run. It’s the flipside of the optimism of “Lucky Gift” where you’re in this love affair, you’re in a band, you’re playing Knebworth, and you get in a huge argument and you’re going to break up in between the buses. That’s kind of like the vibe of [“‘90s Sisyphus”] — like, we’re tired, we’re playing in a shitty slot, the Deftones are bleeding into our speakers, we can’t hear ourselves above the feedback, and our relationship is over. Actually, it was my attempt at a Hold Steady song. I wanted to replicate the sort of Americana of those keyboards. It’s very Heartbreakers, it’s very kind of E Street Band, but to me it’s a Hold Steady song in the best way. But very ‘90s too.

Was the person that you wrote that song and “Lucky Gift” about a musician?

Yeah, but not really. Not the best. But a good guy.

Oh, you were talking about breaking up between bands’ tour buses, and I didn’t know if that was literal or not.

Well, it’s sort of like we never actually broke up, but that’s how I imagined the relationship should have broken up. That’s the feeling that I was trying to encapsulate. And also, just the strife and exhaustion and elation of being at a rock festival and playing. I was targeting back to when I was playing at Bonnaroo, when Cho Dependent came out. I was on all these different stages with different bands, doing weird collabs. I collaborated with GWAR and Brendan Benson and the Flaming Lips, super-rad and super-random. But I also fighting with this boyfriend at the time, having this argument and breaking up essentially between the buses but also running into GWAR’s dressing room and getting ready to do a show. And they’re all eating Altoids. GWAR eats a lot of Altoids, because it’s so hot inside of their costumes, which are all silicone and rubber and they don’t breathe. They have to eat a lot of mints in order to stay cool from the inside-out.

Did you eat mints when you were in your Poodle costume on The Masked Singer, a show that actually made a lot of mainstream people realize you can actually sing?

I must have. I should have! I was very hot in that costume. It’s really suffocating. So, the only thing that you have is a mint to keep your hopes up.

We were talking about the importance queer voices right now. A more serious song on your album is “You Can Be You.” Tell me about that one.

“You Can Be You” is a song that I wrote for Nex Benedict, who is a non-binary, gender-non-conforming teen from Oklahoma, who unfortunately was really let down by the system, by the teachers, by the staff at the school, by just the entire infrastructure there, by the government of Oklahoma. Really tragic. And they passed away [from suicide after constant school bullying], and even after their death, the press was really just so ugly with the constant misgendering, the constant real denigration of the idea of being different. And so, I wanted to write a song for them that was really for all of these young people who identify as they/them, who identify as gender-non-conforming or trans or non-binary or whatever that is, to have a song for hope — my hope for them, and a statement that they can be themselves. It’s a permission to that. I see them. I want them to be happy. For me, it’s a really emotional song. I loved writing that with Garrison [Starr]. We got together on the day that Nex died and we were like, “We have to write a song about this. This is a really important thing.” Putting it together just really made sense. And then in the recording, I really love bringing in Jordan Katz on the trumpet. I can’t play horns, but I really love when I can afford them. So, he came in and brought in that perfect Belle and Sebastian trumpet, which I think really underscores the emotions in it.

Obviously now what’s going on with trans rights, with Trump quite literally trying to make it that you can’t refer to someone as “they” or that non-binary can be an actual category or be on your passport, I feel this song has taken on more meaning. Have you performed it live before, or plan to?

Yeah, I’ve been performing it live a lot, and I think it’s more important than ever. Trans people have always existed, and there’s always been a place for trans lives, trans identity. It’s just always existed. And for this administration to outlaw it, it really doesn’t make any sense. It doesn’t mean anything either, because it’s not going to change the fact that they’re in existence, that they’re here, we’re here. And so, it’s important to align with the trans community, to support the trans community, to listen to the trans community as much as possible. So, I really love playing the song live. I really love getting to talk about it. For me, it’s an opportunity to establish a “queer elder” understanding and a relationship to the younger community. I’m glad to do that.

Is that a responsibility or title? Do you feel that you’re a queer elder, here to educate the youngsters about LGBTQ+ history? For instance, a lot of kids don’t even  realize what a big deal AIDS was in the ‘80s and ‘90s…

Yes. I think it’s really important, and I really love doing that. I think that we need queer elder voices, because there’s a lot of our generation that’s missing from AIDS, so we have a missing rung in the ladder that we have to span over. There’s not sort of the immediate generation; the one that’s sort of 10 or 12 years ahead of me are all gone. And so, I think it’s important for queer people in my age range. We’re in our fifties, and we want to be able to talk about the past and have a sense of optimism. Like, we are in a terrible time now, but we’ve actually been worse off before, fighting a deadly pandemic without the government’s assistance, without any sort of advancement in all rights. So, we have come really far. To remind people of that, I think, really helps.

The Lucky Gift track “Waterside” is a story-song, obviously, but I don’t know if it’s based on a real person or not. It’s about being gay in the 1950s, a time when being openly gay was actually illegal in America. Tell me about that song.

That’s my attempt at a Jellyfish song. I wanted it to sound like a Jellyfish song. I love them so much. But also, the song is about a fictionalized gay movie star, a beautiful young man who’s coming from England who is gay but is in the closet. He has to buy a house in Hollywood, and he’s trying to figure out who’s going to be his beard. So, he decides to marry his realtor. That’s what it’s all about. He’s going to buy a house in Hancock Park. He’s going to marry the realtor who’s going to be his beard. It’s all about, “I’m going to have to hide my identity in the facade of this house, in the facade of this happy life and playing the character of a straight man.” I just love Todd Haynes movies as well, so this song is really all of Todd Haynes’s movies wrapped into one, whether that’s Carol or Far From Heaven. For me, [Haynes is] the ultimate purveyor of gay longing, so I wanted to do a song that sort of was speaking to that.

I don’t know if it was based on a composite of closeted actors. Rock Hudson is the obvious person that comes to mind. But what made you want to do a song about that era? As you mentioned just now, were you trying to make some commentary about how, as bad as things can be now, things have progressed?

Yes, because they’ve been so much worse. And also, there’s just so many stories that we don’t know about, because we had this historical view that just does not tell the truth of everything that happened. We are not even sure who was closeted back then. We don’t know. There are so many stories we’ll never know. I would love to see all of the truth come out. Maybe we’ll never hear it, maybe we’ll never see it, but I can tell my own story.

When you were starting your career, but were you ever advised not to talk about your sexuality, to keep on the down-low?

Oh, yes. In the early ‘90s it was really, “Just don’t talk about it. Just don’t refer to it.” I was told by early management, “Don’t make it a part of your identity or your comedy.” You’re really sort of dealing in euphemisms then, because everybody kind of knows as well. But also, being bisexual, that’s another layer to it too, because then you had the option of opting out of this idea, like, “Oh, maybe it’s something that it’s very European,” like a creature from another planet or something like that. But yeah, the ‘90s oddly in a lot of ways was so conservative. We were making a lot of strides in some areas, but then in others really not.

Did you take that early advice at the time and basically be “don’t ask, don’t tell,” or at what point did you become more open about your sexuality publicly?

I think it was hard to [not discuss it], because just so much of my life is about my comedy and vice versa, so there was no real way to hide it. And I always wanted to talk about it. I always wanted to talk about gay things. I wanted to talk about gay life, and that’s something that I never really shied away from. I don’t even know exactly when “coming out” was a thing. It’s weird because when you’re bisexual, you coming out is almost like less of an event, because you are not one way or the other all the way. So, people don’t regard it. And then especially women too, our sexuality, if you’re in that category of being bisexual, there is an in/out sort of thing. I don’t know. It’s weird.

There’s also a gross sexualization of bisexual women by straight men who think, “Oh, she likes girls too? Yay, threesome time!” And then there some people who feel like bisexuality is sort of a cop-out, like you’re supposed to choose a side and bisexuality is just training wheels to be gay.

And then there’s also a long history of people who have said that they were bisexual, but they were fucking totally gay! There’s people that said it to soften the blow of gayness.

Or maybe because they were still figuring it out.

Yeah, true. So, that also is one of the misconceptions. We’re not fully accepted by either side, whether that’s the mainstream heteronormative society or the gay society at large. You don’t have full acceptance from either, so it’s a strange place to be.

Do you feel that has changed, improved, progressed?

I think yeah, especially with Gen Z who really take every relationship as sort of standalones — each relationship sort defines them, as opposed to, “Let’s look at this collective sexuality.” … You have this sense of people can be fluid and also queer.

Absolutely. So, we’ve talked about the ‘90s and the ‘50s, but now let’s get to the ‘80s. I must ask about you Lucky Gift cover of Freur’s “Doot Doot.” You’ve said it’s your favorite song of all time, which is a big deal because you’re a huge lover of all types of music.

It’s literally my favorite song of all time. I love that song. It’s often thought of as a novelty track because of the pronunciation of the name of the band. And then, have you ever watched the music video? They look so strange. They look like clownfish. They’re like, if you took Sigue Sigue Sputnik and crossed them over with Haysi Fantayzee. It’s very glam, but there’s also something organic. It’s not out of the realm of Björk’s latest album, very strange and exotic, with extinct birdsong kind of sounds. I love how the original recording sounds so organic, but it’s also all synthesizers. They managed to be the ghost in the machine. They are not robots anymore. They made organic, earthy sounds come out of computers. And I love them. I think melodically it’s a genius song, and I’m so grateful that I got to do a cover of it.

How did you make it your own? It sounds like you maybe added lyrics to it or changed some lyrics?

I didn’t change any lyrics, but I overlaid a kind of… I don’t know if it’s scatting, but it’s like my beat poetry, just talking to the birds outside of the window and trying to get them to move to do my bidding. It’s sort just a little talk-through to add. But I just think it’s a perfect song. … That’s another one that I recorded with Roger in 2014. Actually, we went back and added a little more texture to it in 2024 to finish it for this record. I’ve always wanted to cover it, it’s just something that I just never really thought, “Oh, when would this make sense?” But this did here.

There are two other original songs that are more serious side lyrically, “Melinda” and “Wheels of Gold,” which are both about sobriety or addiction. I’d love for you to open up about what inspired those songs.

“Wheels of Gold” is just about being dopesick. I was an opiate addict for a long time, and I think that when you have that in your history, the way that the drug works in your system of when you’re sick and then when you’re well, it’s like the difference between a major chord and a minor chord. It’s like, everything is OK/everything is really not OK. That song to me is about being sick and getting well and being sick and getting well. And so, I wrote that for the dope fiends, but it’s also one of the songs for [actress] Gerri [Lawlor, who died in 2019], who the album is dedicated to, and who the song “Baked Bread” is about. She actually sang on that track as well. It’s great to have her voice sort of in the texture of the song. For me. She was somebody that I collaborated with for years, and so I’m really grateful to have her sort of ghost in the record. And then “Melinda” is all about recovery and being in these communities where we are in sobriety and we all come together to talk about what’s going on. All of my years in these communities… the song is a tribute to all these people that I’ve met along the way.

You’ve been open about your sobriety, but I guess I never knew exactly what you were addicted to. When you say opiates, do you mean prescription painkillers?

All, anything, whether that’s OxyContin to heroin. I didn’t get onto fentanyl; I was just on the verge of that. I’m sort of sad I missed it, but I’m glad I did. It’s probably a good thing. I never became a full-blown intravenous drug user just because I never actually had to resort to that; I was able to sort of get as much of whatever I could. But I look at all those drugs as really the same chemically. They’re the same when you break them down. Socially it’s different when you have people who are sort of pill addicts and those who are intravenous drug users. There’s sort of that divide. But to me, chemically, it’s the exact same thing.

You’ve been sober for almost 10 years. I don’t know if you tried to get sober before, because for a lot of people it doesn’t stick with the first attempt. But what made it stick for 10 years?

I just reached the end. My addiction was so bad that there was no way up from there. There’s no way that I could continue with it. I realized it’s not sustainable. And I think that now I experience a kind of sobriety that requires also a lot of work to it. I have a really strong meditation practice. I have a huge community of other people who do this with me, so I’m really lucky in that regard. But I’m more involved with my sobriety than I ever have been. Also, I am 56, so I don’t have a lot of time to mess around with it. With the drugs nowadays, you just can’t.

Since this record is coming out on Valentine’s Day, the last song I’ll ask about is “Boyfriend From China.” It has a very unique perspective.

Thank you. I wrote it for when Joel Kim Booster and Bowen Yang are doing fashion shows in Shanghai for Rick Owens, that they’re going to play that track blasting loud as they walk down the runway. It’s for beautiful Chinese [male] models. The beautiful models that I see on [Chinese social media platform] Douyin, or on RedNote when we were on it for one day. My inspiration is when John Varvatos took over the old CBGB space. Rock and fashion collide. It’s for Asian American models and Asian models who are walking the runway in male fashion shows in China.

I love the idea of it, because I remember reading a few years ago that Asian men got the fewest swipes on dating apps like Tinder, even among Asian women — that they had trouble with online dating because they were supposedly considered the least desirable demographic. So, I love a song that’s celebrating the beauty and sex appeal of an Asian man that you wish could be your dream boyfriend.

Yeah, they’re so gorgeous that they’re out of reach. That’s what I feel like when I see some of these Asian models or the K-drama heartthrobs or K-pop guys. They’re so beautiful. They’re out of reach. But I love that about them too.

The Tinder study I was citing was seven years ago. Do you feel that has changed too? You mentioned K-pop, and all the K-pop boy bands are the ultimate global heartthrobs now, among women and girls from all walks of life. That’s a cool thing to see.

Yeah, it’s beautiful. I think it’s really changed. I think it’s really shifted the way that now Asian men’s sexuality is really adored and applauded and thirsted. We always just wanted them to thirst, and they thirst! I love that.

This Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity. Watch our entire conversation in the video at the top of this article.

Strolling through the aisles of Hollywood’s Record Parlour store, sifting through bins crammed with more than 50,000 vintage vinyl albums, comedian/musician/TV host/rabid music fan Margaret Cho heads for the comedy section and excitedly grabs a copy of 1983’s What Becomes a Semi-Legend Most, by her comic idol and Fashion Police predecessor, Joan Rivers.

“This is the best. This is a classic. A classic!” Cho exclaims, clutching the album to her bosom. “This should belong in any comedy fan’s arsenal. This is very, very important and very influential. She was a huge inspiration. And then she became my friend, my mentor, and was always there for me — like if I had a bad night or a bad show or something. She was always very, very supportive.”

Some might be surprised to find out that barbed-tongued Rivers, who took no prisoners when it came to her comedy and harsh fashion critiques, was such a sweet mother figure in real life. But Cho got to see a softer side of Rivers, who passed away in 2014.

“It was a healing force that she had, this incredible softness to her that people just don’t really understand,” Cho recalls fondly. “People sort of think of her as hard and mean — this kind of very cruel, biting tongue. But she was so gentle and loving and warm. She was so generous to me. She would do absolutely anything I asked. She was always just incredible.”

Cho — who cites her childhood “imaginary friends” the Go-Go’s as the main musical influence that “changed the way I thought about feminism … they gave you confidence to do whatever you wanted to in life” — was up for a Best Comedy Album Grammy this year for her second full-length release, American Myth. Other nominees included fellow modern-day female comic trailblazers Tig Notaro and Amy Schumer, and Cho tells Yahoo Music, “I do think that the comedy industry has become much more female-centric. [Rolling Stone just put out] ‘The 50 Best Standup Comedians of All Time’ list, and Wanda Sykes and I were on it, along with a lot of other great, incredible women — which is really important.”

Cho didn’t win the Grammy, but since she hosted the Grammy Awards’ pre-telecast ceremony, she was able to give her acceptance speech anyway. It consisted of three words: “F*** Donald Trump!” And she says she “would love to do a political album” someday. “The time for it is now, certainly,” asserts Cho. “What I noticed growing up is that rock ’n’ roll really flourishes during difficult times. I was in the ’80s going to tons of ‘Rock Against Reagan’ shows, where you were seeing the Dead Kennedys, Flipper, Black Flag. And then later on, there was a lot of punk-rock stuff, like grunge was happening during the first President Bush. And during the second Bush, we saw more of a rise of hip-hop. So I feel like music is getting more politicized, especially last year, with the entire Black Lives Matter movement being really pushed up by musicians like Kendrick Lamar. So I would love to do a protest record, but also in the theme of great mighty protest songs from the ’60s.”

Take a journey through the record crates with Margaret’s vinyl shopping list, in which she reveals the other strong women, besides Joan Rivers and the Go-Go’s, who have rocked her world (Diana Ross, Juliana Hatfield, Tegan and Sara, the Human League, the Divinyls); her affection for other late legends (David Bowie, Prince, George Michael); that time Lady Gaga and Katy Perry opened for her in concert; and the fashion inspo she has taken from Marc Bolan and Bananarama.

The Go-Go’s, Beauty and the Beat

“These girls were my imaginary friends. I didn’t have a lot of friends in school. But when I got home and I could put this record on, I had friends. It showed me that women could rock out. This is the first concert I ever went to … it was like what I imagine what a Taylor Swift show would be today. Or even, let’s say, a Spice Girls show.

“This record, I mean, it changed everything. It really changed the way that I thought about rock ’n’ roll. It changed the way I even thought about feminism, you know? They were the first big girl group who played their own instruments, wrote their own songs.

“The Go-Go’s used to live at an apartment complex in L.A. they called Disgraceland — making ice cubes out of their own pee, throwing them at guys they didn’t like. This is a whole punk-rock legacy. The average bear would not necessarily know that they were rock stars from the very get-go, you know. But Led Zeppelin has nothing on them. Nor does Mötley Crüe. These girls were decadent. They lived really hard and were around really intensely male scenes, and still held their own.

“They gave you confidence to do whatever you wanted to in life — that if you wanted to go into this field that was male-dominated, it gave us all permission to do this and do our dream the way we wanted. And for that, I will be eternally grateful to the Go-Go’s.”

Wham!, Fantastic, and George Michael, Faith

“I love Andrew Ridgeley and of course, the mighty, mighty George Michael. The gorgeousness of this guy. It’s crazy how beautiful he was, how beautiful his voice was. [On Fantastic], they had this weird kind of shouty thing, kind of almost like a 1950s-James Dean look, but their songs were almost what we now know as hip-hop. There was a kind of a hip-hop fusion, melding genres. It’s very electric and poppy, but also there’s a soul element to it.

“My favorite George Michael song has gotta be ‘Father Figure.’ And I love ‘Freedom,’ I love ‘Too Funky’ — all of these songs that came out of a lot of angst. ‘I Want Your Sex,’ which I loved, when he was trying to be straight, when he had the Asian girl in the video, his girlfriend. Usually I think when you have an Asian girlfriend, that’s the last stop to gay. I’m serious! So many guys that I’ve been with have become gay!

“I remember, it was 1992 or something, and I had just done a movie. And I was at the premiere, and George Michael was there. I saw him from across the room. He saw me, because he had just seen me in the movie. And we had this moment of, like, looking at each other. And we started walking towards each other. And then somebody grabbed him and whisked him away. And I never got to meet him. I’ve met a lot of my heroes, like a lot of people I really, really admire and love. But I never got to meet him.”

Prince, Sign o’ the Times

“I’m actually in a Prince cover band called the Purple Ones. They’re so hard, these songs, like ‘Get Off,’ which is the hardest song to sing. I can’t even do it now, I’m so out of practice. I just can’t even say how much I love this record, Sign o’ the Times. I mean, this has got so many great songs, like ‘Ballad of Dorothy Parker,’ which is my second-favorite Prince song. My very, very favorite Prince song is off of 1999, it’s called ‘International Lover.’ I don’t do that one, but I do ‘17 Days’ and I do ‘Darling Nikki.’

“I never got to meet Prince either, because I was too afraid. I was always so intimidated when he was in the room. The last time I saw him was at the Golden Globes. I looked out in the audience and I saw him, and he had the big natural [hair] and his glasses, the third-eye glasses. And then I was backstage with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, and he came around the side, and he was talking to them. I was so scared, I couldn’t say anything. I was so intimidated. I could have spoken to him. I just didn’t, out of sheer terror.

“I don’t even know what I’d say if I meant George Michael or Prince. It’s almost like too much to put into words. I think, just the way that they made me feel, the way that they helped me out, you know? And also the way that they colored the rest of my existence — through their voices, through their songs, their sound. I think my life became so much richer for their work.”

David Bowie, Best of Bowie

“I love David Bowie. I was able to meet him because I wrote his press releases. It wasn’t actually a press release; I had written blog posts all about David Bowie and his life and what he meant to me, and I had put them up on my blog. He didn’t like doing press, so for the Reality tour, he would take parts of my blog and just send them out, because he really loved it. So he invited me to come to a bunch of shows. He was such a great, beautiful man. We took pictures together and I was crying. This was before selfies.

“The most meaningful Bowie song is ‘Life on Mars,’ I think, because that’s a song that has been with me ever since I was a teenager. I think it’s just so beautiful, so majestic. It shows off the piano at its best. [I’ve covered] ‘Moonage Daydream,’ which is a great one, because it’s all over the place: ‘I’m an alligator, I’m a mama-papa coming for yooooou.’ You get this crazy alien thing happening. That’s a good song for me to cover; I actually have a similar register as him, so I can do some of his songs OK. So that’s one that I really love.”

Billy Joel, Glass Houses

“This is an incredible album. This is where Billy Joel was trying to break out — as you can see from the cover, he’s trying to break out — of sort of the ‘Piano Man’ ballad troubadour. He was gonna go into this very rock ’n’ roll thing. … You know, I think he was battling a lot with depression. I look back at this and I go, ‘Oh, this is a bipolar record.’ I don’t know if he is bipolar, but this is what it sounds like to me. Like it’s sort of got all of this obsessive sexuality. Like on ‘All for Leyna,’ he is so in love with this girl and he’s gonna stalk her, and he doesn’t care about how he’s doing in school or what anybody thinks; he just wants to be with Leyna. ‘Sometimes a Fantasy,’ I remember the video — it was him basically obscene-phone-calling this woman and her getting into it at the end.

“I remember getting this album and thinking, ‘Wow, like I understand. I understand music.’ I was probably 8. Half of my family live in Toronto, so I was there for the summer, and it was real trippy because it was like all these Korean kids speaking French. And we played this record to death, we just loved it so much. I even bought the complete sessions. This is one of those records where every song is perfectly curated. When I make albums now, I try to lay them out the way somebody would do like if they were putting it out in the ’70s.”

T. Rex, Tanx

“Marc Bolan from T. Rex, Tyrannosaurus Rex — he’s incredible. He was just such a beautiful man, so stylish. I love his hair. [Tyrannosaurus Rex band member] Steve Took was so glam too. He was so glam-rock that he died choking on a cherry pit. That’s true! He choked on a cherry pit and died, which is the most glam-rock way to go. I mean, it’s like the flip side of Mama Cass and the ham sandwich.

“I get a lot of fashion ideas from Marc Bolan. He had a television show on the BBC, and on the show there’s this one part where he’s actually onstage with David Bowie, and he’s so glam-rock, and then he falls offstage and disappears. It’s so funny, I love it! [The show] had these weird dancers, like the ‘Marc Bolan Dancers’ — they were almost like a precursor to the Solid Gold Dancers, but a little more tame and not as sexual, not as feline. But that’s a great show for fashion.”

Tegan and Sara, The Con

“This is my breakup soundtrack. I like the early stuff, and their later stuff too — but I love the album that has ‘Nineteen.’ It’s a healing song. That song has ibuprofen in it. I really think it does.”

The Human League, Dare/Fascination!

“I’m obsessed with the Human League. Like, I am crazy about them, because they do this weird thing where they have the girls establish a beat. All of their songs have these very strange, kind of somber tones, set by these girls, and then there’s this crazy, soaring male vocal on top. Phil Oakey and the Human League had been around for a long time, but they didn’t get to where they are until they had the two girls. The girls really brought them into another territory, and then they became so successful relatively overnight with this new formation of the band.

“Their makeup is so good. In the ‘Mirror Man’ video, you see them jooshing up their hair and their makeup, their little short haircuts. They’ve really got this Princess Diana thing going on, which is so fabulous. They all come up onstage with their fur coats and then they take them off, and they have their synthesizers sort of in a circle. It’s just so ’80s, and so cool.”

The Tubes, The Completion Backward Principle

“This is art rock. This is San Francisco rock, I think, at its best. You know, a lot of people say the San Francisco sound is Janis Joplin or Jefferson Airplane or the Grateful Dead. And all that is very important, of course. But I love the Tubes. Their sound is so clean and so not like the sort of prog-rock beginnings that they had. This is where they really shifted into high new-wave gear. Their sound is just so synthetic, in the very best way. Everything about this is curated so beautifully.

“They were super-weird. The closest band comparison would be when Peter Gabriel was still in Genesis. They were super-weird. They were sort of in the same league as the Residents, who are also from San Francisco. Very strange, very orchestral, not so pleasing to the ear, but I love this record. I actually have this on cassette and on vinyl.”

Divinyls, Divinyls

“It was really sad when [lead singer] Christina Amphlett died. The day she died, I was in Perth, Australia. The Divinyls are a very, very iconic, very important Australian band. Before I came out [onstage], I blasted ‘I Touch Myself,’ and people were screaming and crying and shouting out. It was phenomenal.”

Megadeth, Dystopia

“My favorite thing of the entire day hosting the Grammys pre-telecast this year was presenting Best Metal Album to Megadeth. This is their 13th nomination in this category, and they very much were the Susan Lucci of metal. And they were so excited. I know Dave Mustaine, and I know that this was something he had really wanted. And this is something they really deserved.”

Lady Gaga, The Fame

“I think I would love to sing karaoke with Lady Gaga. I think she’s great. I just think she’s an amazing singer, and she’s kind of fun. She’s in a weird sort of music box; she can do anything. I haven’t met her before, but you know, I did a show, and Katy Perry and Lady Gaga both opened for me. I was the headliner, oddly. This was many, many years ago, of course.”

Roxy Music, Roxy Music

“The one song that is my anthem is probably ‘Virginia Plain.’ I love that song. There’s something about it that is just so quirky and so interesting. I think of all the songs, I’ve listened to that song more than anything else. Bryan Ferry is a very nice man, too. I met him [backstage at a concert] … and he was so beautiful, just like you think he’s gonna be, just this majestic guy with his tuxedo tie untied, beautiful. I love him.”

Diana Ross, The Greatest

“Diana Ross is an icon. People forget all of her accomplishments. Like, you think about the Supremes, but there’s so much more. So much disco. So much rock ’n’ roll, actually. So much soul, so much R&B. She’s her own genre in a lot of ways. She’s also such a movie star. Her image and everything is so fabulous.”

M, New York · London · Paris · Munich

“This is pop, pop, pop music. It’s sort of in the vein of the Buggles’ ‘Video Killed the Radio Star.’ This is like when we were listening to synthesizers for the first time. This was around the same time as Tubeway Army and Gary Numan. So there was like this weird, robotic, sonic thing, like, ‘We’re gonna show our love of these weird giant computers and cars’ and all this stuff.”

Information Society, Information Society

“This is interesting, because this is when the ’80s were starting to fade into the ’90s. And so this is sort of like where they were using sampling, they were programming, using synthesizers, but they were much more aggressive-sounding. So you had a lot of these percussive textures that now you understand. This is a very influential band.”

Malcolm McLaren, Fans

“Malcolm McLaren, of course, is a very famous manager, a sort of impresario of the Sex Pistols and Adam and the Ants, Bow Wow Wow. This was opera, but it was also, I think, the very beginnings of electronica. I think the children of this record probably would be what Underworld does. And also, that horrible Enigma song. It’s like a Gregorian chant, but they turn it into some weird sex music, very ’80s sex music. This is what started all of that. And then the father to this would be ‘A Fifth of Beethoven,’ when they disco’d Beethoven up. But this is great. I love Malcolm’s track ‘Madam Butterfly’; it’s probably the one song that was used most during fashion shows in the ’80s and ’90s.”

The Belle Stars, The Belle Stars; Bananarama, Deep Sea Skiving; and Scandal, The Warrior

“I love the ’80s. Like, I love Scandal, with Patty Smyth. They really have that look of American Apparel: off the shoulder, a sweatshirt dress with a belt, leggings, pointy, pointy heels. It’s a very, very good look.

“I also love the way that the Belle Stars dressed. They were very New Romantic, like when Bananarama was New Romantic, that sort of Deep Sea Skiving look with the crazy hair and the big black hat and the paper-bag jeans and moccasins. The Belle Stars were like that, but amped up. They almost looked like they could be Prince protégés, but mixed with New Romantic.

“You know, I still do a huge giant hat. I’ll wear it towards the back, like Boy George, sometimes with another hat under it. Maybe a scarf and then a hat. It’s very Pete Burns, who I loved. I loved the eye patch. I would wear an eye patch, but it makes me have a headache. I also love the lace-over-the-eye look, like Prince Be in P.M. Dawn.”

The Afghan Whigs, Gentlemen; Blake Babies, Sunburn; The Lemonheads, It’s a Shame About Ray; Sugar, Copper Blue; and Failure, Fantastic Planet

“I am such a huge fan of bands like Blake Babies, Juliana Hatfield — all of Juliana Hatfield’s bands. I love the Lemonheads. I love Sugar. I was for a long time following the Afghan Whigs on tour, and I was also following Failure on tour. The ’90s to me were so important. The music at that point was so loud! Like, I feel I got the most of my hearing damage then — I can trace it back to a 311 show that I went to. [Laughs] And I went to so many Afghan Whigs shows and blew out my ears.”

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.

Sitting at Yahoo Music’s studio to perform two acoustic songs with her musical partner Garrison Starr, fearless comedienne, pop-culture provocateur, and all-around badass Margaret Cho is serving ‘90s realness — and not just because her surprisingly serious songs and flowy tunic wouldn’t seem out of place on a classic Lilith Fair lineup. She also frequently peppers her conversation with enthusiastic references to Evan Dando, Superchunk, Fiona Apple, Kathleen Hanna, Linda Perry, Courtney Love, the Gits, and Kim Gordon’s now-defunct X-Girl fashion line. And when discussing her new album, American Myth, she says, “I think a lot of my music is if Juliana Hatfield. Like, time-machine Juliana Hatfield. I want to be like time-machine Belly or time-machine Breeders. That’s my genre of music, very sort of ‘90s, maybe like 4AD.”

One standout ‘90s reference on the album, Cho’s late friend Anna Nicole Smith, inspired not only the album’s name, but also one of its most unexpectedly poignant tracks. “The album title comes from [a line in] the song ‘Anna Nicole’: ‘She tasted like pickles and American myth,’” says Cho. “The song was based on a true story of me going to her house and making out with her, and she tasted like pickles. We had a great time, and it was weird, because I understand all of the addictions that she had and I had the same ones, and so I understood her struggle kind of from the inside. And so the song is really in the tradition of ‘Candle in the Wind.’ It was weird when I was told that she died. I immediately burst into tears; it was such a hugely emotional thing. So then I wrote the song, and it just was healing for me to do, just as a friend and as a fan, and sort of to commemorate her in a more treasured light — as opposed to this idea of her being a trainwreck.

“There’s that American myth that some people are too beautiful to survive, like ‘Only the Good Die Young,’ the Billy Joel song — but it’s also Marilyn Monroe and James Dean and the ‘27 Club’ of musicians who died at 27. There’s this idea that there’s something fragile in these people that’s too perfect for this world. And I sort of look at [Anna] as that. And the album addresses a lot of different kinds of grief and death and loss, and so this seemed to be sort of a mythological thing. So it was the right thing to do. American Myth was the right title.”

Related: Margaret Cho Interviews Andra Day

Obviously, Cho’s emotionally bloodletting, demon-exorcising album is hardly typical, Weird Al-esque comedy fare. “It’s really about healing, and in a way, songs can get you to a place of feeling good that no other form of art can,” Cho explains. “There’s something that a song can do that’s really pretty magical. It cuts through explanations, exposition, it cuts through biases, it cuts through triggers, whatever — it cuts through to the heart of the matter.”

For instance, there’s “Come With Me,” which deals with sex workers’ rights, inspired by Cho’s own past as a phone-sex operator and her observations of street-walking male prostitutes during a recent trip to El Paso. (“I think there’s so much sadness and heartache and pain in that world of sex work, but when you break it down, it’s like, everybody’s still a child. People have these judgments about sex workers, but really, they’re still a child that needs to be taken care of,” she explains.) Another anthemic track, “Fat P—y,” is “about fat pride and to really embrace it and feel really good. The ‘90s was a great time for feminism, but also not, because the ‘90s was this time where we were Riot Grrls and there was revolution, but there was also the emergence of ‘heroin chic.’ Everybody was so thin, and so you felt like you had to be feminist, but because you couldn’t eat any food, it was really hard to live! It was really hard to stay awake for 120 Minutes when you couldn’t eat anything!… It was like, ‘I do want to find Mia Zapata’s killer, but I’m so hungry!’ Feminism taught us so much — but they were the thinnest feminists! We were not allowed to be fat! So I never had a good time in that ‘revolution.’”

Another song on American Myth, “Ron’s Got a DUI,” may seem lighthearted upon first listen, but it’s really about “all the older gay men I knew in my life that really showed me so much about the world. And for me, being somebody who was abused by men, to finally trust a man, it was a big deal. Gay men in my life really showed me how to love men and trust men, and it’s a huge gift… There’s just a lot of healing that I got from gay men, in terms of my relationships with men.”

And that brings us to the American Myth tune that’s likely to get the most attention, and is the most classically Riot Grrlish in feel: the white-hot fury of “I Want to Kill My Rapist.” The shocking song was inspired by the horrific sexual abuse Cho suffered between the ages of 5 and 12 at the hands of a family “friend” and by her multiple experiences of being raped as a teenager.

“People have been told you have to forgive to get to healing, and I honestly don’t really believe in forgiveness, because I think that the crime of rape is unforgivable,” Cho says bluntly. “I don’t care to forgive, and I don’t want to take the high road; I don’t want to be the better person. I’m fine with the resentment. I’m sure that a lot of people heal in their own way, but my feeling is, I like cathartic rage — I want to cauterize the wound, as opposed to any other method.”

In a Cosby-scandalized age when music stars like Kesha, Lady Gaga, Madonna, the Runaways’ Jackie Fox, and Chrissie Hynde are all speaking frankly about rape, “I Want to Kill My Rapist” is a powerful, if controversial, anthem for survivors. “I had been talking about [my abuse for years], but nobody really cared… I couldn’t figure how to talk about it but I kept trying,” says Cho. “I talked about it in my book, I talked about it before — and it’s an open conversation that’s been going on with my family for 30-plus years. So it’s something that I’m used to talking about, but for some reason it just never really caught on, I guess because people were still really uncomfortable with dealing with that kind of subject. So now we’re much more able to come forward.

“I thought that Lady Gaga was so powerful at the Oscars… It’s a very big deal for somebody to come forward, and so is Kesha. Kesha is very important to this conversation, in the way of like, how a survivor is ‘supposed’ to behave and the court not acknowledging that of course she’s going to try to protect her alleged abuser [Dr. Luke], because that’s another part of the process of getting to the light of being a survivor. So it’s a very hard thing that we need to know more about, so people should talk about it more.”

Now in her music, Cho can tackle this topic, and other serious subjects, in a way she couldn’t via her traditional comedy routines. “That’s what I tend to do with my music,” she says. “It’s very hard to do that in stand-up comedy, you know? It’s very hard to talk about wanting to kill your rapist in stand-up comedy. But in rock ‘n’ roll, it’s very easy… I think music is good to address things. You know, you have the tradition in Americana of murder ballads and everything; you have a lot of catharsis even in very early, early music in America, and there’s always been this sort of fascination with darkness with music. And I love metal and I love Goth and I love all these different genres that are pretty intensely dark that talked about things we would never talk about in life — but that’s always been very, sort of essential to rock. In rock, you address things that you can’t really talk about, but you can really sing about.”

Margaret’s Riot Grrl predecessors would be proud.

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.