GAYLETTER

The adorable London-based queer electronic musician and vocalist Billy Lloyd, is visiting NYC for a few days looking for nice Tinder dates — just kidding — well he’s not here just for that… While in New York he’s gonna be putting on an amazing show on January 3rd at Joe’s Pub. We had a chance to chat with the artist about his music, his social media, gender identity and of course the best approach to taking him to bed.

You’re living in London now? Yes, since June. Before that I spent three years in Leeds. I did a degree in popular music.

Popular music? Yes, they don’t exist at many places, but they do exist.

Does that mean people are writing papers on Lady Gaga and Adele? Yeah, kind of. I went to conservatoire, so it’s very practical based.

What’s the difference between a conservatoire and a conservatory? I don’t think there is one. You say ‘conservatoire’ if you’re trying to sound extra fancy. It was mostly writing and performing music. I think I wrote three essays in the the entire three years I was there.

What were the essays? One was on feminism in music, and the other was an extended evaluation of an event that I put on in Leeds.

You have a series of videos for the singles on your EP that feature you introducing each song. For the single ‘Mirrors’ you talk about identity; an obsession with looking perfect; confronting yourself in the mirror; the difference between who you see and the idea of yourself. For many people these days there’s the distance between the socially constructed self on Facebook versus the person you see in the mirror everyday. As a performer your press imagery is so perfected and idealized and highly aestheticized, tell me about the contrast of you getting out of bed in the morning versus your lovely press images. That’s definitely where it comes from. As I started to create more images of myself that had studio lighting, and I was wearing tons and tons of makeup. I was heavily styled. You’re deleting all the pictures where you look crap. Starting to see more and more of those images and putting them out on social media, you start to think that you look like that all the time. It becomes uncomfortable and a jarring experience when you look in the mirror, and you don’t have studio lighting on you.

Growing up in a town of 400 people in the middle of England, how did access to the internet impact your development? I think it’s what made me the person that I am. I have the Internet entirely to thank for that. I didn’t really have any friends that lived in my town. Most of my ways of interacting with my friends was through the Internet. I remember when I was about 14 I had a Tumblr blog where I was able to be out as gay. I used a fake name and was able to talk about all my issues. Like most other people in small towns I was bullied, but I didn’t have a particularly hard upbringing. The Internet gave me a place where I could make friends, friends that I still have now. Some of my closest friends were people who also had blogs and connected with me. Since they’ve stayed my friends through revealing who I am.

Was that the name of the blog? Anonymous Gay Teen? No. That would be perhaps a bit corny, but I went from being essentially an anonymous gay teen to being myself. The blog has now transformed to my outlet as Billy Lloyd, more of a mood board and an output of that part of me.

Were you Billy Lloyd in your anonymous gay teen phase? No. That was a different name. I think it was John something. It was very…

John Smith or something. Yes, completely nondescript. So obviously a fake name. Certainly it facilitated my ability to be comfortable with myself and my discovery of my own gender identity and sexuality.

How do you identify your gender identity now? Essentially queer. I like the term gender queer. I like queer as a catch-all term for both my sexuality and my gender because it suggests that there are lots of blood lines and everything is free. I think the internet is entirely to thank… to blame… to thank.

I’m thinking about your song ‘Whatever’ which you describe as dealing with the gap between political awareness and the actions that one might take to address a particular issue. One of the lyrics goes, “It’s not real if we see it through the glass screen.” You have just talked about having this mediated experience vis-a-vis the internet that was very helpful in terms of forming your identity and not feeling isolated, but “Whatever” paints a more skeptical view of our hyper-mediated culture. I’m curious to know more about the song, this tension between the utopian possibilities available in our inter-connected world versus the apathy it can engender. Essentially the song is a comment on where we are now in terms of cultural apathy. One way that I’ve seen it manifest itself is on Tumblr: these posts will go around with petitions to sign. They’ll have a 100,000 reblogs, but they’ll only have 20,000 signatures on the petition. People will happily click reblog.

They’ll broadcast it, but they won’t take the extra 20 seconds it might take to sign the petition. Yeah, because you might have to sign up or something, and it will take you away from scrolling through Tumblr and looking at pictures of cats. That’s a really good summary of the situation we’re in. We’re quite keen to appear as activists, and we’re aware of the power of social media. We’re trying to utilize it but not in an active way at all. We’ll post about things that are bad, but we won’t do anything about the things that are bad in anyway real way. I use Twitter and Tumblr to broadcast other voices and raise issues, and I wonder if I am just doing that to get social cache? Really it should be about the issue, but there is a small value to broadcasting information through social media. It’s a way of bringing attention to issues and expanding awareness.

I think there’s a desensitization that happens. I grew up before the internet. The amount of information that I have to deal with on a daily basis now…! Computers are supposed to make your life easier, but what one person is expected to be able to do now versus what one was expected to do in the analog age. It’s a blessing and a curse! I could not do what I do as an independent curator, producer and artist manager without it. 30 years ago I would have had to have an office of four — at least! So in one sense it’s liberating because someone who is doing something kind of niche and alternative can have a presence and a ‘storefront’ and do their thing in a way that would have required an entire office. Yes, exactly. In October I went to Russia and did a show there. It was a great show. For an independent artist — at the time I didn’t even have a manager — to have a successful show in another country pre the internet would have been virtually impossible. So I think that’s really exciting about the internet.

Did the show come about because you connected with people via Tumblr? Actually through YouTube. I did a cover of Patrick Wolf‘s ‘Vulture,’ and put it on YouTube. The person who is now my manager, Ennie Vicious, who lives in Moscow, she’s done some work with Patrick, and she’s a very big fan of Patrick and found my cover and through that discovered the rest of my work. She contacted me and said “Hey, let’s do a show in Moscow!” which, looking back on it, was a bit of a gamble because she could essentially have been anyone, but we talked a lot and got on very well. They flew me over, and she has very good links in Moscow. We did a bunch of promo for it, mostly through the internet. It was a crazy weekend. I literally just went for the weekend. I obviously went to the Kremlin and Red Square to hold up the rainbow flag. The minute she said I was definitely going to Moscow I knew that was something I wanted to do. It was quite a scary experience actually because you don’t know what’s going to happen.

What was the reaction? Were there any police? Was there any reaction, or did it just go by unnoticed It didn’t go by unnoticed. People were taking pictures of us. I didn’t know it at the time because I don’t speak Russian, but people were shouting offensive things at us. The police were right behind us, but I guess they didn’t care.

You weren’t arrested for promoting homosexuality? No. It’s not actually illegal to promote homosexuality. It’s just illegal to promote homosexuality to people under 18, so the venue was 18 and over. There was nothing technically illegal. Everyone that I came in contact with was loving and wonderful, and most of the audience identified on the LGBT spectrum which made me really happy. That was part of the point of me going to Moscow. As a result of those laws there are more kids out of their homes for being gay, more pressure on people to not be gay or queer. We did a meet and greet after the show, and it was lovely. I had several conversations with people about my music, about what songs like ‘Normal’ meant to them. That was really special since that’s one of largest parts of why I make music.

Your song ‘Fake‘ touches on a topic that may be familiar to GAYLETTER readers — the one night stand! In your introduction to the song you talk about the recognition of your need for human touch and a sense of love, but you’re only able to play that part in the moment. There’s an interesting level of self-awareness there. Tell me more about the song… The themes your dealing with. I like to analyze my actions and what I’m going through from a removed perspective. When I find something interesting I become obsessed with every aspect. Usually there’s a moral dilemma or some kind of conflict. With the EP I was trying to examine who we are as a culture, who I am. That’s obviously a large undertaking, so it became more specific, more niche. With ‘Fake’ I’m looking at one night stands and the way they are just weird interactions when you look at them objectively. It’s not in our human nature to act that way with strangers in any other circumstance. For example, if a stranger sat next to you on the subway you don’t act as though they’re a family member and you love them.

Cuddling up to them, stroking their thigh… Yeah, we’ve very removed in every other part of our lives. Then when it’s a one night stand we’re cuddling and kissing and your bodies are doing things you’d never dream of doing with someone you know nothing about. I wrote it in a space where I was having quite a lot of casual sex, but not really because I liked sex that much, but because I really craved for affection and the aftermath of it was kind of what I enjoyed more. I think people have one night stands because they want to be someone else for a while. If you’re messaging someone and you’re talking to them and they’re going to come over in a half hour and you’re going to spend a couple of hours exploring each other, you can be anything you want to be, and they don’t have to meet your friends or your parents or know about your history or know that you work a shitty job or anything like that. That’s interesting as well because you can construct this encounter, and take whatever it is that you want and get whatever it is that you need to get from it. It’s quite a unique type of encounter.

The way you talk about it it seems almost utopian. What’s dystopian about it, what’s the down side It’s ultimately  — at least from my perspective, I’m having these encounters to get affection or to feel like I’m loved or something, ultimately they probably don’t care about you.

I know you’re here with your family, so I don’t know how many one night stands you’ll be having, but if GAYLETTER readers want to try their luck at finding you in virtual space are they more likely to find you on Grindr, Scruff or Tindr? Probably Tindr.

Tindr! You do have a romantic streak. I like it because it’s more to the point. You either like someone or you don’t, and if that person doesn’t like you as well you can’t talk to them. So you know exactly who’s interested in you. Though nearly every person I have worked with creatively I’ve met on Grindr. The two directors I’ve worked with and the photographer. The guy who has filmed most of my videos and has done most of the photography that you’ve seen, and the guy who filmed my very first video, I met them both on Grindr.

Was there a one night stand involved? No there wasn’t. I have a semi-rule with myself: anyone I work with professionally I don’t want to go there because it gets very complex.

You should read some rock and roll history. Yeah, I’m completely outing myself as the least rock and roll person in the world, but I like Tindr. It gives you a nice ego boost when you’re like, ‘That guy is hot,’ and then they like you back.

I guess it’s kind of rote, like playing solitaire. I’m just wondering why I don’t feel more of a sense of rejection when I like someone, and they haven’t liked me back. I guess you can always assume they haven’t seen your profile. Yeah, that’s what I tell myself. They haven’t seen my profile, or they just accidentally swiped me no.

Yeah, I’ve done that. It’s easy to do. Yeah, it’s easy to do. That’s what I tell myself.

Alright, well, if Tindr is looking for a UK spokesperson, we’ll send them your way…

Click here to get tickets for his show at Joe’s Pub. 

Like his Facebook page for updates and upcoming performances.