A few weeks ago, Drugdealer, the one-man baroque pop project of one Michael Collins got some unexpected exposure on late-night television. Drugdealer got a big spotlight moment on Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show, but not because Collins was there to perform in the studio. (Amyl And The Sniffers were actually that night's performers; The Tonight Show evidently loves acts who reference illicit substances in their names.) Instead, it was because a viewer sent in the note that Jimmy Fallon and Michael Collins actually look like one another. And it turns out that Fallon actually does look a bit like Collins, as long as he's got the right fake facial hair, wig, outfit, and facial expression. One might argue that any white guy of a certain age could look like any other white guy of a certain age in these circumstances, but what the hell, sure.
Naturally, that means the time is right for some new Drugdealer music. We last heard from Michael Collins' musical alter-ego in 2023, when he followed up his album Hiding In Plain Sight with the one-off single "Lip Service." Today, he's back with a new song that he made with his longtime collaborator Natalie Mering, better known as Weyes Blood. Drugdealer and Weyes Blood have teamed up on a number of songs over the years -- "Suddenly" and "The End Of Comedy" in 2016, "Honey" in 2019. They share a love of rich, luxuriant '70s-pop pastiche, and they make a good team.
The new Drugdealer/Weyes Blood collab is called "Real Thing," and it's not a Turnstile cover. Instead, it's a lush and insistent folk-pop jam with a vaguely funky bassline and a whole lot of smooth-jazz saxophone. Michael Collins started working on the track with Parisian producer Max Baby when both of them were in a studio owned by a member of the '70s prog-rock band Magma. Collins says, "Immediately, I realized that it was the perfect thing to show Nat, who I had been wanting to collaborate with again for years. After that, we started working on it via multiple trips back and forth across the US, and it just became one of my favorite things we’ve ever done." Check out the song's James Manson-directed video below.
"Real Thing" is out now on Mexican Summer.
