Journalists, novelists, and comics writers have all joined the recent newsletter renaissance—along with, more unexpectedly, musicians. Patti Smith, Jeff Tweedy and Neko Case—these are all big-name musicians who have all launched Substack newsletters more recently than they’ve released albums. The musician newsletter genre favors episodic recordings, old demos, and other reflections. But Mike Hadreas—best known for his critically acclaimed, alternatingly volcanic and intimate rock and pop music under the name Perfume Genius—is doing things a bit differently.
Although Hadreas’ Substack promises “unreleased recordings, videos I've made for my songs through online deep dives, [and] things left behind as my projects changed shape,” its most enthusiastically received entries have been absolutely none of these things. Instead, what’s gotten the most attention is his uproariously bizarre essays, and particularly the unsubtly sexual fan fiction he writes.
The dark fantasy drama Supernatural, which peaked during the mid-aughts but only ended just last year, is a recurring focus: Two of Hadreas' most bizarre newsletters detailed surreal, mildly horrific, deeply fetish-like sexual acts involving two of the series’ main actors. And these fan-fiction deep-dives came after the newsletters where Hadreas used somewhat inexplicable stock photos to write experimental fiction pieces about, in one case, “spitting a little mist out. … Guys are into it, women too.” None of this is out of character for Hadreas, whose surreal, absurd Twitter—sample: this weird inspirational advice and this photo of his obviously fake alien daughter—has garnered him nearly 1 million followers.
Just as interesting, though, is that Hadreas does occasionally follow through on his initial promise. In August, he made headlines after sharing his “I Will Survive” cover in a newsletter. It all adds up to a portrait of all sides of Hadreas: There’s his playfully deviant writing, his extractions of new meaning from classic hits, and—as with Tweedy’s newsletter—glimpses into the early stages of his creative process. Hadreas spoke with GQ about how his newsletter helps him get back to his roots, how his fans influence his creative choices, and where exactly his most unhinged writing comes from.
Since you told me you were working on music before you hopped on here, I should ask, what's the status of potential new Perfume Genius music?
I'm writing for someone else for a show. I don't know how much I can talk about it. It's not my project. I haven't been writing a lot, honestly. I'm actually really happy about this chance to be forced to write or have some sort of fire under my belly, because I've had fire under my belly for like a year, but not to write, just to – I don't even know what for.
If I had to guess, the fire under your belly might be coming out as the beautiful, debaucherous insanity of your Substack. What’s behind these stories?
I don't know what the math is, honestly. I wrote a lot of stories, and I was just Googling things, and I would use a picture as a prompt to write. I've had a picture of a girl on a bunch of garbage, and so I was writing about that. I had a lot of things that were getting me going.
But then, the first time a sentence came first and not a picture was [the idea] that I've had sex with every single person that's ever worked on the show Supernatural. And that had a big scope to it, you know? I don't know why that struck me. I’ve watched the show, but I don't know anything about fan fiction.
After I posted the first story, everybody was [telling] me what kind of fan fiction it was. I didn't even know if someone ingests you, that's a thing and has a name. Did you know that?
I had no idea.
That's called vore, I think.
To what extent do you reckon with the notion of believability as you write?
I just follow what makes me laugh the hardest or feel the most intensely. Knowing that a bunch of people are gonna think this is in earnest and that I'm doing this because I'm so turned on by the idea...is really funny to me. But still, it's a portal for some serious ideas sometimes. I've put a lot of attention into writing it. I like all those things existing at once and being sort of confusing.
Did you think that your fans would love reading your fan fiction as much as you enjoy creating it?
Well, I had no idea. Doubling down and doing it again, I wrote another one, and it was like three times as long. I'll probably do it again. I'm sort of like that. I almost get off on it not working. I kind of get off on it changing into something that's embarrassing, or if people thought I was joking at first, now they're really unsure. Maybe it's a weird power I'm wielding.
To me, that all sounds like a natural extension of your unhinged Twitter presence.
There's always been two main modes of me sort of processing and dealing with everything. Sometimes, I'm very serious. In my music, I'm pretty dead serious when I'm writing it. I feel smarter and kinder and more present, but other times, I'm just sort of laughing.
Sometimes, the same experience that may be seemingly tragic, I can laugh about on one day, and then the other day, I feel like I really need to process it into a long, drawn-out emotional thing. Those exist really close together for me. Sometimes, I don't even know which is which. When I was writing the last long story, [it] was making me laugh, but every once in a while I was like, "Oh, I'm kinda showing my ass in this too, because I keep talking about the same shit over and over."
Would you be writing these longer fan-fiction and absurdist essays if you didn't have a public channel for them?
The public channel has always been important. When I was coming up, I had alternate Myspace accounts. In the beginning, when I first wrote the songs that ended up being my first record, I was also doing sketches where I dressed up as characters and [did] long improvisations in front of the camera. I posted those online before I posted any of my music, and then I took them down when people started listening to my music because it didn't make sense together.
Why was now the right time to start your newsletter?
I've been in the same cycle for a decade now, where I make a record and I make a video for it, I make the art around it, and then I tour for a year and a half, and then when I'm done, I...do it again. It's the same thing over and over. I couldn't get the energy up to start a project like that in quarantine or this last year. I really missed when I would make things just to make them and share them right away and not worry too much about what it means or what it is.
Not that I wasn't putting energy and effort into it. Sometimes, I put even more [effort in] because the pressures are different, but I just missed making things. When I [don’t] have that, I just end up cannibalizing myself. The stuff doesn't go anywhere, and then it starts eating at me. I needed somewhere for that energy to go.
Recently, you made headlines with your "I Will Survive" cover that you posted on your newsletter. What do you see as the balance between the playfully grotesque things you write and more traditionally musical things?
I like how they season each other. I've always liked all that, and a lot of it is covering myself because I never wanted to go too far into something until it's just for me or until it's just for the sake of it. I mean, it's all indulgent, but maybe I want to limit it, and so if I keep some goofy shit in there, maybe not in the song but right after the song in a different project, then they can influence each other.
I hear you saying that no matter whether it's something absurdist or more concretely musical, it's just you, and that’s the joy of it for you.
Yeah, but also, I'm not gonna be reading it or listening to it afterward, so I have to make sure that it's me, but everybody else has to...hopefully like it, so I need to remember that too. Sometimes, if you're making things just for yourself, that can be a portal to something that really connects, but there's a balance where it becomes really just for you, and you're not the one listening to it at the end.
It sounds like, in a lot of ways, this is you getting back to your roots, just in a way that we haven't really seen publicly before.
I think so, yeah. And I think my Twitter kinda loosened me up...maybe people can handle some goofy shit along with the music and not have those things cancel each other out, because I used to be really terrified of that, because I am very serious about the music. I don't have a sense of humor about the music at all.
It's funny to hear you say that, because it feels like your Twitter is part and parcel of the music, even though there's no thematic overlap.
I'll take that. That makes me feel good. Sometimes I worry, because this is all I've got going on right now. I don't have a backup plan. I sometimes wonder if I should put more specific energies into something, but then I just kind of end up doing whatever. But it's working so far.
