Since the release of his debut album Learning back in 2010, Perfume Genius has been carving out his own lane in alternative pop, sharing a distinctive visual world around him as he goes. Though his vision has evolved from microwaved paper towels and found-photograph collage into high fashion photography and surrealist soap opera-styled music videos over the years, Mike Hadreas’ distinctive voice, and wry sense of humour, underpins it all.
Ahead of the release of new album Glory, on March 28, the musician took us on a deep-dive through his key eras. 'I'm not sacred about genre, or a thing needing to relate to the last thing, or my music making sense in that way,' explains Hadreas. 'I feel like it all comes from the same place. That’s where the cohesion is, especially because my voice always sounds crazy. Whatever I'm singing on, it's gonna sound like me.'
Learning (2010)
Perfume Genius’ DIY-styled debut album Learning was born out of a substantial shift in Mike Hadreas’ life – after spending his early twenties partying his way around Brooklyn, the musician moved back to his mum’s place, aged 25, to get clean. Recorded at home in Seattle in the aftermath, Learning is a raw, insightful, and confronting record, staring down many of Hadreas’ biggest demons, and building something new and healing out of the rubble.
On the sleeve, a sepia portrait of Perfume Genius has been stabbed repeatedly with blunt biro pens, and a blurred puddle of spilled water has devoured his entire face. 'I was really into paper towels, for some reason,' he laughs. For the cover, Hadreas experimented with using wet paper towels as a kind of second skin, letting watercolour paint bleed through them, and putting them in the microwave until they dried to a leathery crisp. He also included a sprinkling of his own hair. 'I look back on it now, and I don't regret any of my decisions, but it’s a little gnarlier than I remember. I remember feeling very pretty, and including this gnarliness, but I mean… those are full-on pubes in there! It’s very angsty in a way I don’t feel fully connected to anymore.'
The idea of putting on a mask or a second skin dominated Learning; in the visuals for 'Gay Angel', a glimmering figure peels off a pastel pink skin to reveal a black zentai suit. 'I loved fetish videos [at the time] because I loved seeing how into things people were! I was attracted to people knowing exactly what they wanted, and found it really pure, sweet, and innocent, in a way. I loved how I could put a song along with that kind of footage, and it would immediately season it and make it feel more reverent, or creepy.'
Put Your Back N 2 It (2012)
Soggy paper towels return for an encore on the cover of Perfume Genius’ breakthrough second album Put Your Back N 2 It, obscuring the heads of several figures in a black and white group shot. The image, which appears to show a high school swimming squad posing for a team photo, is taken from a yearbook Hadreas found in a thrift store. 'I didn't really think about it too hard,' he says. Keen to make artwork that felt solitary and self-sufficient in a similar way to his earliest work, 'I just started collecting all the things in my house that I thought could spark an idea: rolls of paper towels, yearbooks and the paint. It was pretty crafty. I think it just felt like me.'
For the music video for Hood, Hadreas co-starred opposite the gay porn performer Arpad Miklos, who sadly died in 2013; in the visual, Miklos cradles Hadreas, gently brushes his hair, and carefully applies lipstick. Despite being an incredibly tender video, totally lacking in any overtly sexual content, some labelled it as controversial anyway, and YouTube even banned a ten-second teaser 'because it wasn't family friendly. It’s really strange, because that video, to me, is very sweet,' Hadreas says. 'The ad clip was just us embracing: that's it. This was the first time where I could tell that my work could be provocative, potentially. I knew other people were going to watch it, and that some people might not like it because it’s very gay.'
On standout track 'Dark Parts', meanwhile, Hadreas enlisted his family for the music video. The song is a letter to Hadreas’ mum, who stars alongside Mike, and her beloved chihuahuas; 'I will take the dark part of your heart into my heart,' he sings, dissolving the shroud of shame around sexual abuse. 'My mom's also a big part of the music because I was living with her, and she let me make music in her house,' he says. 'That video is very sweet. My brother is in there, in this zentai suit; you can barely see him, he almost looks like a ghost. My step-dad is in it too.' Though 'Dark Parts' is still very DIY, and rooted in the cornerstones of Hadreas’ actual life, 'it kind of feels like a progression,' he says. Though it’s based on his real family and home life, it’s also 'turning into a grander thing,' Hadreas adds. 'It’s shot really well, and there was some production value. I was able to share more information; I didn't have to figure out how to do it on my own anymore. I love that song.'
Too Bright (2014)
While Put Your Back N 2 It represented a creative step up, Too Bright kick-started a whole new chapter for Perfume Genius; one that was brighter, bolder, and far more conceptual. On the cover, Hadreas wears a tight gold vest with slicked-back hair, glancing off camera with a steely expression. The portrait is by Luke Gilford, whose photography documents queer rodeos and homoerotically-charged locker rooms. Hadreas first met the photographer during a press shoot for his previous album, and the pair stayed in touch.
'I wanted it to be really glossy and defiant and strong, but without sacrificing this gayness or femininity,' Hadreas says, of the Too Bright era, 'or what people would think represents fragility, you know? I wanted all of that stuff to be intact, but come across as very severe, and non-traditional; really strong, but in a way that is harder for people to categorise.'
'When I did a lot of interviews when I first started, everybody would talk about how little I was! I remember reading one article that said I looked like I was going to cry,' he says. 'I was actually having a good time in that interview! I think that made me feel very defiant, at that time. I was like, I can be all of those things at once. It’s not like a debit credit system, you can be soft, fragile, and strong, 100 per cent, at the exact same time. That’s what I wanted, to include all of these things at once.'
Perhaps the biggest step-up of all from this era is the music video for 'Queen', directed by Perfume Genius’ long-term collaborator Cody Critcheloe, also known as SSION. The artist and director has collaborated with the likes of Robyn, Peaches, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Kylie Minogue, and frequently works with Hadreas. Originally, Hadreas wanted the entire video to take place inside a corporate boardroom, where his character goads and picks on a bunch of suited businessmen, but Critcheloe offered up the surrealist final dreamscape, filled with a barrage of papier maché lobsters, Elvis impersonators, and leaping cheerleaders.
Up until this point, Hadreas had only really filmed lower-budget, one-shot music videos; this felt far more ambitious. 'We shot it over three insane days in Kansas City,' he says. 'I love Cody, and feel such a kinship with him. We laugh, and laugh all the time, and we’re just excited about everything. He comes from this place of wanting to feel, and wanting things to be amazing.'
No Shape (2017)
No Shape album cover, shot by Inez & Vinoodh
Continuing in the same maximalist direction, 2017’s No Shape took a theatrical veer into the sublime, Hadreas singing about transcending the limits of his own physical body and transforming into something floating otherworldly. At the same time, though, these are also some of his most grounded lyrics, with many of this record’s songs rooted in his own life, and the warmth and safety that love and domesticity brings him. 'Did you notice we sleep through the night?,” he sings to his partner, on closing track Alan. 'Did you notice, babe, everything is alright?'
'I'm proud of that era, because it has all of the things I wanted,' he says. 'There’s this sort of fantasy, never-ending story, or dream. But it somehow also feels rooted… and it’s a disconnect that I like. A lot of the record is about trying to transcend and go to some alternate timeline or place, but then a lot of the songs are also just about Alan, and my life. I like all of those things existing at the same time.'
Perfume Genius shot by Inez & Vinoodh
In many of the accompanying visuals, Hadreas often plays with the boundary between real and artificial; in the fantastical video for 'Slip Away', he and his co-star, choreographer Teresa 'Toogie' Barcelo, run through billowing curtains and stage sets in pursuit of new worlds. Many of the press shots of that era incorporate stage backdrops, while the album sleeve itself has the air of a classical painting.
Hadreas teamed up with the Dutch fashion photography duo Inez and Vinoodh for the album cover. Though the final image he chose does not reveal the full backdrop, it still feels flat and artificial; 'I'm not fully immersed in it,' he says. Rather than more traditional portraits where he is facing the camera, Hadreas preferred the blurrier final shot, his face hidden and facing away from the camera. 'I liked that my body position was off, and that the pants were ripped – they weren’t supposed to be, it happened as we were shooting. I tend to like the second before the camera points down, and is about to turn off. The in-between moment, right before it ends. Inez and Vinoodh shot that cover, and it was a huge production, they had a movement director on a megaphone saying: ‘move!’ and ‘twirl!’. I loved him. Asking them to shoot the cover was a big reach, because they are really major. I was like, you know what, let’s just go for it!”
Set My Heart on Fire Immediately (2020)
Between No Shape and his next record, Perfume Genius worked with choreographer Kate Wallich on 2019’s dance piece The Sun Still Burns Here, writing multiple pieces of music for the collaboration. Ultimately, these tracks ended up on 2022’s Ugly Season – the sister album housing his score for The Sun Still Burns Here – but movement, physicality and dancing also heavily influenced 2020’s studio album Set My Heart on Fire Immediately. For 'On The Floor’'s music video, directed by Hadreas himself, Perfume Genius worked with movement director Tate Justas on a stunningly executed dance routine that satirises masculine tropes, and sees Hadreas sparring with a mirror of himself in the dirt. In press shots for the record, Hadreas poses on Harley Davidsons, wields hammers and artful smudges of grime with a curled lip.
'I was thinking about embodying archetypes in a void space,' Hadreas says. 'A lot of the reference pictures were like… Ripley from Alien, it was about embodying masculine archetypes but maybe not what people would traditionally pick.' The French fashion photographer Camille Vivier shot the cover, and the collaborators wanted to evoke 'an eerie sense of nostalgia that you can’t really place.'
As much as Hadreas set out to subvert classic, all-American images, 'it was also fun to just straight-up do it, too, and not think about all of that,' he says. 'To just be like, well, what if I put that on, or tried that on. But because I'm me, there’s no way around having that extra information. And you know what, I was kind of getting off on playing with all of those things, and thinking of [identity] more as something that could be played with, instead of being something that I either am, or I’m not. The older I get, the less fixed those things feel... they just feel fake, and made up, and something that you can play with, that you can put on and take off.'
Glory (2025)
On occasion, Hadras says that he feels duty-bound to warn his mum ahead of releasing particular music videos, and issued one such heads-up before releasing the visual for 'No Front Teeth'. Unsurprising, given that it features frenzied waffle-making sessions, a brilliantly nonsensical shot of Hadreas’ partner Alan shaving his chest, a highly NSFW sex scene with guest star Aldous Harding, and an incredibly shocking ending that sends Perfume Genius spiralling into a blue-tinged afterlife. 'When I sent all my ideas to Cody [Critchloe, the video’s director] about what the world could be like for the record, all of my references were scenes from movies. It was all energetic, and a lot of the scenes are about the power dynamics between two people. I didn't want to serve, at all. I wanted it to be like anti-serving,' he laughs, of 'No Front Teeth', 'but you know, that being the serve”
'It was exhausting,' he says, of the three-day shoot, 'and really wild. We're old, and nobody does drugs anymore,' he laughs, 'so it was like even more taxing to stay up and try to go to a deranged place without doing what everybody used to do to get there very easily.' Still, they managed to whip up plenty of hysteria anyway, by playing Tori Amos and an Ave Maria remix over and over again. 'Everybody was completely demented at the end, and that's what I love, you know? That video has everything. There are some really earnest, sweet moments, and then there's some campy, silly, absurd nonsense. It's sexual, but all the dynamics are a little off.'
The strange freeze-frame portrait on the album cover, Hadreas says, was 'off the cuff and in the moment.' A mysterious figure stands still in the garden, gazing in through wide, floor-to-ceiling windows, while Hadreas is sprawled, contorted, across the studio floor. 'I like how it looks: it could be a dance, or it could be that I’m sick, and there’s something wrong with me. That was the thing that felt riskiest about that photoshoot, it could go any way; we were trying to capture something in the moment, with all of these little easter eggs. One of the paintings, I made. There’s a little piece of Italian flag in there, with no reasoning behind it, it’s just absurd, and we were dying laughing about how it was in everything, but also very serious about how it had to be. Those kinds of things can turn out in lots of different ways. But when we got the pictures back, it felt like a snapshot, almost like a still from a movie. There’s a before and after. It feels like the music, in that it’s earnest and personal, but with absurdity and dramatics, and performance. They’re all allowed to exist at the same time: the meaningful, and the meaningless. Those pictures feel like I'm explaining the way I feel, without having to pull one thread of it.'
Glory, by Perfume Genius is out on March 28 via Matador Records.
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