For much of 2022, Mike Hadreas has taken Perfume Genius back out on the road, belatedly supporting not only his great 2020 album Set My Heart On Fire Immediately but also its successor, this year’s Ugly Season. (The latter was drawn from music Hadreas originally worked on to accompany Kate Wallich’s dance piece The Sun Still Burns Here.) But as much as Hadreas may claim to be clueless about pop culture, he’s often got his finger on the pulse, or at least some thoughts on the year’s detritus. So, just as we did way back in 2017, we caught up with Hadreas and asked him to review the year.

I’ll give you a softball to start. Was there any music you were particularly into this year?

MIKE HADREAS: I really liked the Alex G album, and the Angel Olsen album. Really beautiful. I listened to those albums a lot.

Did you follow the whole “Running Up That Hill” revival?

HADREAS: I knew it happened. I heard a cover of it yesterday in a store. It’s such a good song, that a cover of it is just going to be good by default, in some ways. But I also knew that cover only happened [because of the show] — it was a pop cover with like modern pop female accent.

There was one like that from a few years ago by Meg Myers. I feel like some fans were celebrating the Kate Bush renaissance, but you’re always going to have people who feel ownership of something and look at this kind of moment with skepticism or something.

HADREAS: I tend to not be super sacred about that kind of thing. It didn’t change my relationship with it, but it seems to change other people’s relationship with it. If it gets more people into her, you know what I mean? I remember when I listened to Liz Phair for the first time when I was 13, it shifted how I thought about music and it shifted my direction and the things I was into. Maybe [Kate Bush on Stranger Things] will do something. Maybe she’ll make some money. I’m sure she already has enough money.

Speaking of the pop world, are you a Taylor Swift fan?

HADREAS: [Stares skeptically, pauses, laughs.]

That look, jeez.

HADREAS: Um… [Laughs.] Um, no. They’re going to do something to me right? At the same time, I understand why people are really into it. It’s just not for me. All of it passes me over. The only thing that’s constantly in my sphere is everybody else’s reaction to it.

How about TV, did you get caught up in The White Lotus or The Rehearsal?

HADREAS: There’s this show called The Responder, a BBC show with Martin Freeman. We just finished that and it was really good. I like that little guy. White Lotus is good, but there’s a couple storylines where I think they should just focus on the other ones. I don’t want to hear about one of their singing careers. What other shows were on TV?

The Bear was a big one.

HADREAS: I tried that one for a couple episodes. My boyfriend is really neurotic, and when we watch Uncut Gems he’s not anxious at all. But me, my frequency is really off when I’m watching that show. Like when a dog hears that audio. I’m at the fence and it’s really stressful. That show gave me that energy. I don’t want to be stressed out in a restaurant. I’m watching Gilmore Girls for the first time. During COVID, I watched every episode of Charmed, which is like 400 episodes.

Did you see any movies that stood out to you, like the grunge Batman or the new Top Gun?

HADREAS: I feel like I’m such a hater this time. I walked out of the Elvis movie. They were doing the spinning newspaper headlines in Elvis in the first 10 minutes and I was like “I can’t,” and I left. It was too stressful. It wasn’t because I hated it so much, it’s just because I knew I could do something else I would enjoy more. [Laughs.]

Did you follow the Don’t Worry Darling rollout drama?

HADREAS: That was really intense. [Harry Styles] spit, too? [Laughs.] But like really slow, just leaned over and let spit out. Not forceful spit. A slow loogie that fell out onto [Chris Pine] in public. Why would he ever do that?

I mean he claims he didn’t, but of course he would claim that.

HADREAS: I haven’t seen the movie. I feel like I’ve seen it, but I definitely haven’t. I loved Tár. It was heavy on my mind for a long time. It still is. Triangle Of Sadness was a fun movie. I don’t know if they were intending it to be fun but it was really entertaining.

My editor sent me a list of topics he collected over the year and one was phrased: “The Queen had her Platinum Jubilee, and then was unalived.” Do you have any emotional attachment to the British monarchy?

HADREAS: [Laughs] No, man, I found it really bizarre! I have zero connection to it. If anything I have an un-connection to it, an aversion to it. It was really bizarre to me, the people who were being affected by it who were American. Maybe it’s generational. Maybe they were just a bit more fucked up of a person. [Laughs.] I found it really strange.

Did you see that the M&M characters were redesigned to be more “inclusive,” and they made the green one less sexy?

HADREAS: How’s that more inclusive? To have less sexy people?

Well, I think it was supposed to be less gendered. The orange one admits he has anxiety problems.

HADREAS: Oh lord.

They’ve changed the relationship between the women M&Ms to gesture towards women supporting each other instead of competing with each other.

HADREAS: I like that, but I think they should have little titties. Little pubic mounds. They can have multiple in all configurations, or, I don’t know. But definitely titties. Any kind of sensual mound.

Did you Juul, like are you invested in the FDA ban?

HADREAS: I’ve been off nicotine in all forms for maybe a year now. I was doing lozenges and the patch. I had smoked for a long time and then I vaped the big car battery. This was years ago. The huge thing you had to clutch with almost two hands. The Juul seem so slight. My friends that are a lot younger than me are very addicted to it, but it’s very normal, especially for the high amount of nicotine that’s in it. And they’re all on Adderall too. Well I’m actually speaking of one specific person. [Laughs] But she’s young and represents all young people to me.

Were you watching the Oscars when Will Smith punched Chris Rock?

HADREAS: Of course “don’t slap somebody on TV,” there’s other ways to do it. But the reaction to it? It was really heinous. Very over-the-top and fueled by something a little more sinister underneath, in my opinion. The venom about that slap was icky. The way people were describing it, they weren’t aware of it, which made it even ickier.

You’re talking about the racial undercurrent vs. if it had been a white guy.

HADREAS: Yeah. Also — I don’t know, at least something happened. [Laughs.] That’s how I feel about things. Especially when a movie’s bad but because it made a wild choice, I can’t really get upset. I like when things happen.

Did you read Adam Levine’s Instagram DMs hitting on models?

HADREAS: So much of this is wrapped up in everyone’s reaction to it sometimes I don’t know the core story. I saw the memes about it, but I don’t know if I saw the original thing or what it’s about. He’s probably my age, and he was kind of corny when he was sexting right? “Your breasts are so amazing” or something. [Laughs.]

Honestly, I felt kind of bad for him. I’m hesitant to say that because I don’t know the whole story. But if the whole story is that he’s corny and midlife-y then to have that put on blast is embarrassing. I haven’t done anything — well, I don’t know. I’ll have to think about if I could be soft-canceled. [Laughs.]

Well, OK, speaking of cancellations. I feel like I was able to forgive a lot with Kanye over the years, or empathize with the mental health episodes. Do you think at this point you could still enjoy his music separate from all the shit he’s been saying?

HADREAS: Maybe eventually. At least the older stuff. I mean, he’s brilliant and he’s an egomaniac, and I can understand how when people get more power and they get more enabled to keep their world really small — everyone’s building them up, so they get tunnel vision. Their experience is really important and their experience of the world is the only experience. Less and less of the outside comes in. You mix that with whatever else… I mean, I don’t know him, so. I am forgiving of that.

But at the same time if you say fucked-up shit, you said fucked-up shit. There’s consequences to that. Now it’s just exhausting. I’m not reckoning with the question anymore. I’m just not even asking myself the question.

Did the #DeleteSpotify moment, with Neil Young and Joni Mitchell removing their catalogues in protest of Joe Rogan, resonate with you at all?

HADREAS: Yeah. I mean, that’s a privilege to be able to take all your music off. I understand if that’s possible for you, then why you could stand up and do something like that. But it’s not possible for a lot of people. It’s what’s happening. How much do you want to participate? Because you want things to change, but then how much do you want to go with it because it’s how things are. It’s a complicated balance to find.

Especially because I only listen to music on Spotify. [Laughs.] That complicates things. The ease of using it and how much music I found because of it. I rely on it, almost, for curation. For finding music the way I used to find music. For a while that stopped, as I got older and started making it myself. But the ease of being able to find new music there has made it so that I can do that alongside all the other stuff I’m doing. As a teenager that’s all I did, listen to music.

But I’m also kind of clueless, I have to be honest. I understand labels are getting paid chunks of money and artists are getting fractions of a fraction of a cent per stream. It is pretty bizarre that in a lot of cases the people making the art have the worst deal in almost all aspects of the business.

Right, a lot of people have also been talking about how broken touring was this year — established artists not even being able to break even. Did you see that when you’ve been out on the road?

HADREAS: I think everyone, across the board. Unless you’re at a really high level. I’m sure even that has changed somewhat for them. For us and for a lot of my friends, it’s been hard. That used to be the money maker. You can’t really rely on it at all now. It’s hard. I think a lot of people having had some time away from it… even separate from the idea of money, making your body and your brain and your spirit available to that thing again is really daunting. Because we had a break from how punishing and unsustainable it is. A lot of people are cancelling for mental health reasons. I think that’s a global thing. People maybe took care of themselves in different ways, even though they were also scared and had hardships in different ways, in the last couple of years.

I’m going on tour in February for the first time since the pandemic. You’re getting me so excited to return to it.

HADREAS: Well, just to balance that out. I had more fun touring, and I enjoyed it, more than ever. I really truly did. I had so much fun with my band and playing the shows. Some of it was post-apocalyptic feeling and really bizarre, especially in the beginning, when nobody really remembered what to do. I just missed it so much. I missed being around people. I took it so for granted.

This is going to be a hard pivot. Did you lose any money in the crypto crash?

HADREAS: [Deep sigh] OK — I’m just going to be open and honest. People were suggesting to me for a long time that I should make an NFT. I was like, “I’m absolutely not doing that, I’m never doing that.” Thank God I didn’t let them get to me. The way it’s described to you always is like, “This is the thing, this is going to change everything.” Even if my gut is telling me this is corny as hell, it’s hard to not listen to people. Because I’m not a businessperson. Sometimes you still go with them because they’re the expert. I’m glad I didn’t let that get to me.

But… I did let someone convince me to put money into Bitcoin. The next day I lost a ton of it. It’s shameful to me that I had some of it. I don’t even know what it is. I just know that I hate it. I hate hearing about it. I hate being talked to about it. But I did it.

We’ve talked about Twitter before — you’ve had this very amusing, anarchic spirit there. Do you think it’ll survive Elon?

HADREAS: I think it’ll survive, but I think it’s been soured for a lot of people. It hasn’t been fun on there for a while, to be honest. People aren’t using it in the same way. It used to be vital for finding information, but it also used to be vital for me for finding nonsense. There’s less and less funny nonsense on it. It also seems like Elon Musk is just making it the same as it was by taking it apart and putting it back together. It’s like he takes something away and then realizes why it was there and puts it back. I think it’ll probably be the same but maybe with more white supremacy, so I’ll just leave. [Laughs.]

A lot of artists have complained about TikTok this year.

HADREAS: That’s where I’m going to go, I like TikTok.

I noticed you had one. But a lot of artists have talked about their labels trying to get them to write a TikTok hit or whatever.

HADREAS: I’m not ambitious in the way that I think a lot of the people I work with wish I was sometimes. I like TikTok because I’ve figured out a way to have fun on it, but I don’t know if it’s what people would’ve wanted from me. But if that’s how you end up connecting to people… people forget that sometimes I think. They think there’s a formula or you have to game it in some way. But it’s always just doing something you’re excited about, or having fun, or that’s fucking stupid honestly. A lot of the times the things that are the most popular are the dumbest, or the most wrong, or the most anti. It’s already been done the right way for a long time.

I had some meetings about TikTok. I don’t even know what’s going on, but I know more than the people I had meetings with, you know what I mean? Like, what did they think I was going to do? I don’t know. I’m so bad at self-promotion. I’m so bad at engaging in a way that is pretty natural for younger people. I can’t do it like that. I don’t feel like being on camera that much. I like it when it’s controlled and I have a concept, but just lunch time on a regular day? I’m not going to be like, “Hey, everybody!”

Some new terms were in circulation in 2022: “vibe shift,” “goblin mode,” “indie sleaze.” Did any of them define your year?

HADREAS: What is goblin mode? Because I feel like I am that.

It was voted the Oxford word of the year so I actually have the definition right here: “a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.”

HADREAS: That’s cool. [Laughs.] I like that. What were the other ones?

Indie sleaze and vibe shift?

HADREAS: What is indie sleaze, like white belt era? If that does come back… I guess they’re just going through the decades and it’s getting more and more recent. Kind of like Stranger Things. When that came out I was like, “I was alive for this.” So is indie sleaze the revival by people who did it before or people trying to freshen it up? I asked the guy who did my hair to give me more of a mod Britpop haircut, which is very that time period. Maybe without knowing it I’m participating in indie sleaze.

I actually didn’t know about this, but Earth is apparently spinning faster. Did you hear about this?

HADREAS: No. I mean, so? Is that bad? There’s always something happening. That’s how I calm myself. Maybe we just know so much now. I guess they actually do know and they can go back a couple hundred years and say it didn’t. I don’t care, dude. Who cares? [Laughs.]