It has been six or so weeks since Toby, Jake Shears’s beloved 15-and-a-half-year-old border terrier, died. “It has been a rough time,” Shears says from his new London pad. (After prolonged stints in LA and New York, home, for the foreseeable, is England.) “We moved here together, and now there’s a big hole in my life. Toby’s death made me realise how much of a balm he was: if I was stressed, sticking my face in his fur always made me feel better.”
Work has helped this Scissor Sister turned solo singer through the grief. There is plenty to distract him. His new album, Last Man Dancing, has just been released; there’s a new podcast incoming, too. Plus two original musicals at different stages of development, DJ gigs, a weekly radio show, and that book he really keeps meaning to finish writing. “All that takes up space,” Shears assures me, “but I still spend time thinking about Toby. I light a candle for him every night; I sleep with his bear in my bed. I can’t believe he’s gone, to be honest.”
That’s not to say Shears, dressed in a crisp black graphic T-shirt and with freshly dyed auburn hair, is downbeat or drab. It’s just he seems particularly reflective, conscious of circumstances shifting. “I’m going to be 45 soon,” he says. “I used to love to go out and dance at gay parties. But now maybe it’s a different thing. I feel older. Ageing out of a certain time in my life, going into another phase and thinking about what it means? It’s on my mind a lot.”
For now, he still longs for the feeling only dancefloors and parties offer him. A self-defined “diehard Libra”, hosting is a love language. “I get it from my mother,” he says. “Meet her, and you unlock me completely.” Back when he lived in New York, the parties he threw were legendary. Police raided his Tribeca home at least once to shut down festivities. “Yes,” he accepts, “Mom and I might have different approaches.” During Covid, he missed these parties profoundly. So back in New Orleans, where Shears still has a place, he started to throw open-invite celebrations after the lockdowns lifted. Then a move to London presented itself. He wanted to be close to new UK-based management. And the Tammy Faye musical he was co-writing with old friend Elton John looked to be taking off, years after they started on it. John wrote the music, Shears looked after lyrics. Late last year, it premiered in London, to critical raves and two Olivier wins. “It’s one of the highlights of my life,” he proudly says, “to have a body of work we’ve made together. It feels like a gift, and one I’ve taken seriously.”
The pair go back some way. “I’ve been living on and off in Elton’s Holland Park home when I’ve been in London for 20 years or so,” Shears says. “There’s a little bedroom on the second floor at the front of the house that is always going to feel like home to me.” When he arrived in the city this time, it’s where he first headed. “It’s always felt like a comforting and safe cocoon,” Shears says. “Elton’s a father figure to me in many ways; I want him to be proud of me. There are some weeks where we talk every morning. Leaving there was bittersweet … ” Again, his mind is drawn to endings and transitions.
For the most part, the move has made perfect sense. But the capital’s gay scene isn’t quite how Shears remembers it. “So many of the bars are gone,” he says. “Smaller dancefloors have been taken over by straight people or have disappeared. Gay bars feel like gay-themed bars. But I still desire … ” He drifts off for a moment. “I want to be dancing, but bigger parties have taken over. It doesn’t satisfy me – an intimacy is missing from nightlife. The only way to replace that is to do it yourself. That’s where my head was at with this record.”
Enter Last Man Dancing, an ode to house-party hedonism. On first listen, the new record is upbeat, lots of dancefloor fillers. There are nods to glam rock, acid house, Italo and pure disco; features come from the likes of Kylie Minogue and exuberant New Orleans rapper Big Freedia, alongside an unexpected turn from Jane Fonda. Toward the album’s close, it picks up pace. “The end was an exercise in trying to make a cinematic,” Shears says. “Think James Bond meets Batman Forever in a U2 early-90s closing credits crescendo explosion. If I were to DJ for you at 3am, this is exactly what the set would sound like.”
Having made his name as the Scissor Sisters’ frontman, this isn’t a major departure from well-trodden territory. The five-piece pop-rock band was born in New York’s queer nightlife scene, before finding international acclaim with their 2004 self-titled debut album. In particular, the band found support from British audiences. Scissor Sisters pushed boundaries with their mainstream success: their music, aesthetic and dynamic was proudly and explicitly queer. Take Your Mama, for instance, is a song about a gay man taking his mother out on the nightlife scene. At the time, it was radical. If there was pushback, Shears rarely noticed it. A luxury, he’s aware, today’s queer artistic crop aren’t afforded.
“There might have been hate mail for me wearing a shoulderless, backless one-piece on Saturday Night Live,” Shears says, “but the key there is mail, maybe email, too. If there was huge backlash to what we were doing, social media didn’t show it to us.” Today, he reckons, artists such as Sam Smith are far more exposed. ‘I’m very thankful to have been able to do what we did then. When I look at so many of these amazing queer stars, and what they have to face? It’s a lot tougher.”
Still, when it comes to the industry – and the media, too – Shears hopes we’ve taken steps forward. “There was a way of speaking about what we were doing that was really demeaning at times,” he recalls. “There’d be a lot of focus on ‘campness’ and how apparently effeminate I was. I sat with Gore Vidal once, a month before he died, and he told me camp is just another word used for someone who has no talent. I think there’s some truth to that. It would make me prickle.” That, he hopes, wouldn’t happen now. “But even though the world wasn’t as progressive 20 years ago, we’re now forced to look at and hear from those who’ve not progressed more than ever.
“You can hypothesise about what we did, sure. But above all else,” Shears says of his band, “we threw a good party. It’s what I still aspire to. Showing people a great time is what I was put on this Earth to do. Not forcing fun, but conjuring it.”
Later this year, his new podcast, Queer the Music, spotlighting pioneering LGBTQ+ artists, should appear. “At times like this when I’m putting out records,” he says, “and people say I’ve been a trailblazer, I feel like saying there were plenty of people before me who also did that. Plenty who’ve come after me, too.” Through the series, he hopes to explore and document these legacies. “It’s my history,” he adds, “ the shoulders I stand on, and I don’t think all those stories have been properly told.” Queer musicians past were less able to freely express themselves, he suggests, or not heard holistically. Again, there’s this sense Shears is preoccupied by time’s relentlessly fleeting nature.
Culture constantly shifts; shows come and go. Homes, too. All dogs die, eventually. Shears knows better than most how to keep a party going, but at some point, the night is over. Maybe, I suggest, Last Man Dancing is his way of preserving a Jake Shears party for posterity; the temporary made permanent. He nods in agreement. “I wish things didn’t feel so transient sometimes,” he says. “It’s why I love making records, having something tangible to show for what I do. Musicals and gigs, they’re ephemeral. An album exists for ever.”
Last Man Dancing is out now.
