Perfume Genius on Love Island, Addison Rae, and Trimming His Bush With a Pocket Knife

When Perfume Genius, rocking a cropped shirt and low-rise jeans, teased what was in store for his 2025 Glory Tour with a performance on The Tonight Show earlier this year, no one expected his pubes to be the star of the show. Unfortunately, national television wasn’t quite ready for the moment, and they ended up blurred. Later on, the 43-year-old singer-songwriter born Mike Hadreas revealed that he’d tried trimming them with a pocket knife, but his bush just wouldn’t budge.

That kind of chaos captures the spirit of the Glory Tour as a whole. Genius throws a chair across the stage and tackles a yoga ball, his melancholic vocals drifting over the band’s lush live arrangements in a celebration of the self-destructive urges that live in all of us. “I think everything’s so fucked right now that you can just feel the energy in the air of people really needing to feel crazy in a safe way,” he told us on a call earlier this month before heading to Japan to play the Fuji Rock Festival. Below, Genius takes us inside his Glory summer, from his creative partnership with Alan Wyffels, his boyfriend and collaborator of 16 years, to a chance encounter with Charli xcx’s dog.

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PERFUME GENIUS: Hi.

SIMON DWIHARTANA: Hi, how are you?

GENIUS: Good. How are you?

DWIHARTANA: I’m good. Where are you right now?

GENIUS: I’m home in Tujunga, which is a little northwest of L.A.

DWIHARTANA: Well, thank you so much for making time to be part of Tour Diary. I am quite the fan. I discovered you over COVID because of your song “Otherside.” I really think that the drop in that song made me gay. 

GENIUS: [Laughs] I will take it. The drop still hits, too. It’s deep and gay.

DWIHARTANA: During the show at Brooklyn Paramount, you edged us a little bit because you muted the drop during the first chorus. Was that intentional?

GENIUS: Yeah. But maybe that’s the biggest drop of all–no drop. That’s even gayer than a drop. It’s a drop that doesn’t drop.

DWIHARTANA: Yeah.

GENIUS: I’m queering out the drop. But we just had the idea, “Well, what if we faked it?” When you’re doing it in rehearsals it doesn’t seem good, but when you get to the show and there’s energy in the air, it has the same effect. There’s some shows where it’s dead silence and really tense, and then sometimes a couple of people would laugh. But it’s always high energy. 

DWIHARTANA: The crowd was cheering when you muted it. I think everyone got it. 

GENIUS: We hit it the second time.

DWIHARTANA: You did. So let’s talk about your new record, Glory. How are you feeling about this era so far? This is your seventh studio album, is that correct?

GENIUS: I think so. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I feel very in control now in a way that I hadn’t before. I really labored over the lyrics this time, and I’m really proud of them. And the visuals around it are my favorite thing I’ve ever done. 

DWIHARTANA: I love the visuals so far. I actually wanted to ask you about the look, because I feel like you’ve been wearing the same fit over the course of this era, the baby tee and the low-rise jeans. Is the look a reference to something?

GENIUS: I think all of my references, and especially for the styling, were like, “I want it to be this, but not this.” I wanted it to be chic, but stupid. I wanted it to be expensive but shitty. You know what I mean? 

DWIHARTANA: Yeah.

GENIUS: There were a lot of fine-line things that could have the potential to be bad if we didn’t nail it. Like, I have the tendency to wear really oversized things. Sometimes for the music, I’ll pump up my confidence and wear something that I wouldn’t in my daily life. I thought I would feel self-conscious wearing something so tight and with my pubes out and the baby tee, but you just click into it.

DWIHARTANA: Speaking of pubes, when you were on The Tonight Show they blurred out your bush.

GENIUS: No comment. I’m not supposed to comment [Laughs]. They were all really nice and it was a wonderful event.

DWIHARTANA: Then when I saw you at the Brooklyn Paramount, you were talking about the pocket knife you used to trim your bush.

GENIUS: I have a lot going on. Even when I was young, I looked like I was 11 but I had a full bush. You know what I mean? 

DWIHARTANA: [Laughs] Yeah.

GENIUS: I realized that it was a little too much before the show, so I was trying to cut it. I found a pocket knife and tried to hold them tightly and trim them off, but I couldn’t do it. I don’t know if it was the dullness of the blade or the strength of them. 

DWIHARTANA: I was actually going through a Reddit discussion and a lot of people think that your look is a reference to Robert Plant during a show in ’77. 

GENIUS: There is something very rock and roll about the look. There’s also something bitchy, almost teenage and angsty about it too. It reminds me of Delias and things that girls wore when I was a teenager.

DWIHARTANA: Do you have any pre-show rituals?

GENIUS: Well I have to make sure I’m nervous before the show for it to be good. So I stop what I’m doing 10 minutes before and I’ll go close to the stage and remind myself what I’m doing. The whole show basically depends on me being hyper-present, because I just make it up as I go. I have little choreographic beats that I hit each time, but most of it is just me exploring. And if I’m not present, then I’m not going to be in my chair as much, because I’m going to be thinking about something else.

DWIHARTANA: Speaking of the chair, you also use an exercise ball. Tell me more about that.

GENIUS: The exercise ball was just for me. I spent a lot of time on ULINE, where you can order industrial wholesale things. I was looking for anything blue, like a bench or big industrial bags. And I was looking for a good blue chair to use on Amazon. I thought the yoga ball would be good because it’s light and I can utilize it in many different ways. And I like going into a garage. And I really wanted to have a power washer on stage, because I think they look really cool. There are some that are orange, like the cords on the album cover. I like to interact with things and think about having little relationships with objects. I don’t know, I just like it. 

DWIHARTANA: Yeah. I feel like blue really defines this whole era. Like the blue tee, the blue logo, the blue lighting. Is that just a color you’re drawn to at the moment, or is there some meaning behind it?

GENIUS: That was also with Cody [Critcheloe] and with Andrew [J.S.] who designed it. Before I even talked to Cody, I sent him an insane mood board. But I wasn’t scared of any of it. Then from that, we start talking and it builds into this thing. So we had all the press images and the proposed album cover, and then Andrew showed us some inserts, like when you pulled the record out. And then we wanted it to feel like title cards from a movie. A lot of it is supposed to be like [film] credits, and the blue looks like VHS blue when you first start the tape. It’s very much Gregg Araki vibes too. There’s something really beautiful and overpoweringly rich about it, but then it has this sensibility like VHS and things that we grew up with. 

DWIHARTANA: Are you a big Gregg Araki fan? 

GENIUS: Yeah, I grew up with that. I just bought this box set on the Criterion sale and it has The Doom Generation, Nowhere and another one..

DWIHARTANA: Are there any movies or TV shows that you like to watch on the road?

GENIUS: I was watching Love Island. It’s good on tour because it’s on every day. So if the connection was good enough, I could watch it in my bunk before I went to bed.

DWIHARTANA: Are there any venues or cities that you love playing, where you just know the crowd’s always a blast?

GENIUS: New York, it’s a big deal. You know what I mean? Always feels like the most major thing. And honestly, I thought the show was so good in New York. 

DWIHARTANA: It was so good.

GENIUS: I felt so good. But the shows that were the most fun on this tour were the smaller cities. I think everything’s so fucked right now that you can just feel the energy in the air of people just really needing to feel crazy in a safe way, or just share something that’s different than the shit that we are sharing otherwise. In the smaller cities, you could feel that energy more. 

DWIHARTANA: Do you still get stage fright?

GENIUS: Yeah, but before I’m on stage. Once I’m there, I don’t have it anymore. I was really nervous to play The Late Show for about a month. It’s a high pressure thing to play on TV. But the second I had to do it, I felt very calm. And I remember when I did that on David Letterman too, I was so nervous. And then right before I was supposed to walk on I was like, “You’re a bitch!”

DWIHARTANA: I wanted to talk about the set list. So it starts with “In a Row” and it finishes off with “Queen.” What are some things you take into consideration when putting together a set list? 

GENIUS: We have so many songs now, and even within my records, there’s no real genre. They all feel part of the same thing, but they can sound very different. So the way I sequence the record is just by things that feel spiritually similar, and then songs that are sisters. And then I will make an arc, like a trajectory of energy. We go up and then we go a little down, and then we go really high up and then we take a big dump. But “Queen,” I don’t feel like I can do another song after that. 

DWIHARTANA: And you included a cover in your set list, “Fade Into You” by Mazzy Star.

GENIUS: I like the come down of it. It’s like after everything’s destroyed at the end of the show, I’m coming back for a deep breath, but with magic intact and everything. Plus that song, everyone has a relationship to it of every age. I was listening to it when it first came out, but I know a lot of kids like that song too. The young kids know that song. There’s even that fake Trump tweet, have you seen that?

DWIHARTANA: I’ve not seen it.

GENIUS: [Laughs] It’s so stupid. It’s just a beautiful song.

DWIHARTANA: Yeah, it is. You and Alan [Wyffels] have been writing and touring together for over a decade, right? Tell me more about that creative relationship.

GENIUS: 16 years.

DWIHARTANA: 16 years. That’s crazy.

GENIUS: He was the first person I ever sang in front of. I got this record deal from all these home recordings I made by myself. I had never played a show and I’d never sang in front of anyone. And now we’ve played every show together. The second album was the first time I’d ever been in a studio, and same for Alan. How we work is, I will start writing and I will show him my seeds of ideas. We’ll talk about it or fight about it or try things. But he’s really good at finishing. He’s very critical. He has a good work ethic. But he is also spiritually crazy and loves the same things I love. But I hate working. I don’t like finishing things. I love demos and sketches and ideas. I don’t really like finishing. 

DWIHARTANA: Do you guys ever have creative conflicts?

GENIUS: Yeah, all the time. I like fighting though. Because we’re very, very different. I would never rehearse. I would just be like, “Let’s just make it up when we get there. Let’s just see what happens.” But Alan loves rehearsing. Both are valuable. Being more hippie about it. That’s the weirdest thing about being with someone else, is that they’re always just a completely different person. They have their own ideas, their own ways of doing things. But that’s why it’s so fun and why it works. 

DWIHARTANA: Also, because we were talking about movies earlier, would you ever dip your toes into the film world?

GENIUS: Oh my god, I’d love to. That’s my dream. That’s kind of what I’ve always envisioned I would end up doing. 

DWIHARTANA: You should get Gregg Araki on the phone right now. He’s going to do a movie with Charli [XCX], who actually gave you a shout-out during her Coachella set.

GENIUS: I know. That was really cool. I really like her a lot.

DWIHARTANA: Have you ever met her before?

GENIUS: I met her dog.

DWIHARTANA: Oh. How did that happen?

GENIUS: I was at a friend’s house and her dog was there. They were babysitting her dog. We haven’t met her, have we?

ALAN WYFFELS: No.

GENIUS: No.

WYFFELS: Strangely.

GENIUS: I did a remix for her and we chatted a little bit.

DWIHARTANA: Yeah, “Good Ones.” Speaking of Charli, you recently tweeted about Addison Rae. You were like, “I have a lot to say about Addison Rae.” So, what do you have to say about Addison Rae?

GENIUS: There’s something internal, something intrinsic and singular about her energy that’s very organic. But then she’s also very much in control. Her persona is calculated in a way that I like. But also, she has this charisma that you can’t fake. You know what I mean? She has an energy that is rare now. That’s why I said that she’s not afraid of dying–

DWIHARTANA: Like Gilmore Girls?

GENIUS: When I watched Gilmore Girls, they’re not afraid of getting murdered ever. And whether Addison does or not, it has this energy of “Life is beautiful,” but without sacrificing sadness or anything. There is a tiny bit of melancholy about some of it. Also, I love how hot she is, but it’s for her. Do you know what I mean? She is so hot.

DWIHARTANA: She is. I bet you get this question a lot, but what’s next? Are you writing songs while touring? And are you thinking of continuing your erotic Supernatural Substack? I want to know.

GENIUS: I thought about it. Well, originally I had one with Misha Collins, the angel guy from Supernatural, the last one in the trilogy and I had a couple ideas. Something where I’m an elevator, I’m a water heater, which I guess is much like me in my chair and my yoga ball and everything. I’m an inanimate object that he falls in love with. But it felt too AI-y about it when I was writing it. I don’t want to do anything about robots or AI.

DWIHARTANA: Yeah, yeah.

GENIUS: So I’ll rethink it. I just want to make another record. I think we have a couple months off in the fall and the goal is to write.