The music emulates what happens inside you.
I was just not ready for where it would take me.
“It’s very intense right now,” he says, before cracking a grin.
Chris of Christine and the Queens.Jasa Muller
“It’s always fucking me a bit.”
“Freddie Mercury!”
“Imagine if he just arrived, like,Aargh!”
Chris of Christine and the Queens.Jasa Muller
Then, before its release, Chris came out as trans in a TikTok video.
“It is a long process.”
“MaisI would even go bolder,” he says.
Chris of Christine and the Queens.Jasa Muller
“I’m ready to be a bit surprising.”
He is on his way to meet his team for a rehearsal debrief over tapas.
What convinced you that it was time to revisit it?
Things have evolved slightly, but really the outcasts are still the same.
So if you bring back that piece now, it is still very relevant.
But what I like about the play is that the conversations are imperfect and raw.
The characters are all very layered, good and bad.
During lockdown I looked to the Mike Nichols adaptation.
I needed it to map my brain out.
The record is very raw and was made after the loss of your mother.
Was it a part of your grieving process?
The music emulates what happens inside you, especially if the practice is that personal.
I was just not ready for where it would take me.
The interesting part of this record is that it announced itself from afar.
The music just resonated with those deeper dimensions, and it changed me.
And there were odd coincidences where it felt like this record was weirdly guided.
He wrote to me at such a weird moment I didn’t know he knew about my work.
At the time, I was starting to think of angels as like a sonic sculpture to work on.
So everything felt like it was clicking so strangely.
But the loss was also heartbreak.
It was both grief and heartbreak.
So, a double loss.
You improvised many lyrics while in the recording booth.
How did that add a new dimension to your music?
This is something that has defined my work.
Those songs are precisebecauseI’ve surrendered.
I’ve been studying Marvin Gaye, especially a song called “Is That Enough.”
It’s a precise unfolding.
The voice you hear on all the songs is the first take.
The striking thing about this record is that it arrived consistently.
Every morning, I woke up at around eight or nine, and I did the song.
It was a very intense experience.
It shook me up a bit because I wasn’t sure what was happening.
I felt blessed and a bit terrified because I was like, “What if it never happens again?
Or what if it’s actually the beginning of something new for me?
“I feel like music is a wiser entity than us.
It teaches me where to go.
Do you feel you’ve processed the album with more clarity now?
I think in the moment I was clear and lucid as well.
Madonna plays a character on the record called One Big Eye.
Her work here is unusual outside the box of what featured artists typically do.
How did that collaboration work?
[Laughs] But it was super fast.
When I was writing the songs in the first takes, a voice started to emerge.
I was like, “Who’s that character?”
I named it Big Eye because some representations of angels depict them with thousands of eyes.
I started to find the character very ambivalent.
It could be dystopian, a camera like HAL [of2001: A Space Odyssey].
Or it could be my mom peaking from the other side.
She’s a fantastic, clever actress.
Mike immediately picked up the phone, and I had to pitch it fast.
She was listening on FaceTime, with her piercing blue eyes.
I was like, “you oughta be this all-encompassing voice in the nothingness of the quantum field.
you better be the mom married with the cyborg.
She was like, “You’re crazy.
I’ll do it.”
Do you have any plans to perform the songs together?
But then for some reason, it solidified differently as I’m working [in rehearsals].
I think the more bare and bold, the better.
I would love to work [more] with her.
I would love to paint her one bright color.
Maybe all red, like an Archangel Michael iteration, but you could just see her big blue eyes.
That would be beautiful.
So this is Pride Month.
What do you think the purpose of Pride should be today?
You want me to be super blunt?
I don’t really like the concept of, like, a delineated month.
I would like the pride-ness, the queerness to just be in the conversation.
I feel like Pride Month is just a relief of a few weeks.
But I want that all the time for us.
I want even the question of Pride to be questioned collectively and intersectionally.
I would love all these conversations to bleed into each other.
I feel like we’re scammed by the few things they give us.
We are still minorities.
We are still fighting for our rights.
We are still banned somewhere.
We are still threatened with death.
So it’s a good month, but it’s just a small fire.
We are the ones that need to blow that flame up.
Has your transness changed how you look back on the way your earlier music explored gender?
I think of the “Five Dollars” video, which was inspired byAmerican Gigolo.
Before, I was segmenting a lot.
I think the big shift was that I understood how carefully I was being myself on stage.
And they were calling it a performance it was not performance.
I felt that for me.
And I was explaining it so badly because I was unaware of who I was.
My music has always been saying it.
That’s the beautiful thing about me: I’ve always been there in my art.
I was like, “It’s just a game.”
Oh, no, it was not.
[That recognition] saved my life.
And now I’m just living my truth everywhere.
Paranoia, Angels, True Loveis out June 9.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
