Jake Shears has a good mantra whenever he hits a block in the songwriting process. He asks himself, “What would George Michael do?”
The gregarious co-founder of the Scissor Sisters reveals this secret spirit guide from a studio in California. We are speaking ahead of his appearance at Glastonbury this Saturday, and shortly after the release of his second solo album, Last Man Dancing.
This album is a celebration of pop past and present. It is bursting with infectious hooks and offers up the kind of hip-swaying rhythms that blasted the Scissor Sisters to superstardom in the mid-Noughties. While Last Man Dancing stands comfortably alongside contemporary dance-pop offerings such as Dua Lipa, Jessie Ware and Lizzo, for Shears, it’s George Michael who’s always on his shoulder, guiding him in the right direction.
“He’s always going to be a massive influence on what I do and I don’t think I’m half the singer he was but I absolutely loved him. There’s moments where I get stuck writing the verses and I think, ‘What would George Michael do?’ and just do that. We should put that on a T-shirt.”
Shears – who bubbles with the energy you’d expect from the man who wrote Scissor Sisters hit Take Your Mama – is supporting his new album with a trip to Glastonbury, playing on the Avalon stage on Saturday evening.
Last time he played the festival in 2010 with the Scissor Sisters, the band had a prime slot on the main Pyramid stage and delivered a raucous set with a special guest appearance from Kylie Minogue – who also features on Shears’ new record, on the track Voices. The Australian pop star will not be joining him again at Worthy Farm this time around, though he speaks glowingly of Kylie’s recent mini-renaissance with the hit Padam Padam. “With everything so fractured, it’s so nice when everybody unites under one thing. It’s a fantastic record and I’m so proud of her.”
Shears has other plans for his set. “I’ve been thinking about surprises, but I want the surprise to be how f***ing good my songs are and how I’m still here. I think it’s really important for everything to stand on its own.” Despite being 20 years in the game, Shears takes nothing for granted: “I’m getting back on the Glastonbury stage and that’s something I never thought would happen.”
Aside from his own performance, at Glastonbury this year Shears is most excited to see his friend Elton John’s last ever UK performance (Shears calls John’s house “home away from home”; the pair wrote the musical Tammy Faye together with playwright James Graham). He isn’t getting to the festival until the day of his performance, as he jokes, “I know I can’t risk that Friday night because I know if I get caught up in any sort of party I’m not making the Saturday.”
Shears turns 45 this autumn, and still has years ahead if John, Bruce Springsteen and Tom Jones are anything to go by. But the one-time hedonistic partygoer seems to be feeling the weight of middle age.
“Tina Turner died recently and I realised all my heroes are leaving; all my heroes are turning to stardust. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. I don’t feel my age but I was talking to a buddy recently who’s 50 and he’s like, ‘We’re not going to be able to do this forever. We just have to do it now because it’s not always going to be like this.’ I was thinking about the Scissor Sisters being 20 and it makes you realise nothing stays the same and I guess you just have to accept it.”
The pioneering pop group, whose debut self-titled album released in 2004 was a No 1 hit in the UK and went nine-times platinum, went on a seemingly permanent hiatus in 2012 (bar a charity release in 2017). Shears and the other members are reluctant to engage in talk of a reunion and seem happy to conclude the band with acclaimed single Let’s Have a Kiki, from their fourth and last album Magic Hour, released over a decade ago.
Shears has also been questioning whether the nature of his career is compatible with having a family, admitting that he made sacrifices in his personal life to achieve superstardom: “I look at the landscape of my life and think ‘Am I ever going to have a family?’ I don’t know. I don’t know how I would be able to do that. Having a boyfriend would be the first step and I don’t even know how to achieve that.”
Of course, there are plenty of other anxieties for the LGBTQ+ community at present. Shears, who grew up on San Juan Island in Washington, now lives in the UK but still has a home in New Orleans and both countries seem to be submerged under a moral panic about drag queens, transgressive art and transgender rights.
Shears – who came out as gay at 15 to his parents and saw the Scissor Sisters, who were proudly transgressive and risque with their glam pop sound and raucous live performances, embraced by the mainstream – lays the blame on social media: “I think it’s a lot harder for people to push boundaries because everybody has their own bullhorn. There’s always been haters, there always will be, but now everybody has the ability to shout it off a mountaintop and it’s a big issue. It’s about the way certain viewpoints get amplified and I think that’s a design issue.”
It does also make Shears contemplate if he would still be the same outspoken, vivaciously gay artist if he was coming up as a musician today, where every word and action can be scrutinised and picked apart on social media for infinity. “My big mouth would have gotten me in a lot more trouble,” he smiles, “because I look back to my mid-20s and I could be a real douchebag, but I’ve grown up a lot since then.”
Moving semi-permanently out of the US has also made him see his homeland in a new light. “It’s alarming and strange because you get used to stuff like New Orleans being the murder capital of America. That’s my hometown and it’s the murder capital of the country. I’ve been living daily with the weight of rationalising that stuff in my mind and I think to live there you need a kind of magical thinking. I don’t think that is good for you.”
Worries about the world aside, we return to the more immediate prospect of Glastonbury. Echoing the title of his new album, Shears just wants to be the last man dancing at the biggest party of the summer. His secret that has kept him moving so far is simple: “Passion. If there’s something I have in spades, it’s passion.” Jake Shears’ dance has a few turns around the floor left yet.
