"three cheers to the boy racer"

I remember when this album came out, and being devastated that the one person I cared about the most appreciating it did not even fucking congratulate me when it came out. We are talking crying for days, straight up crushed about it.

My second album, 'All the Queen's Men, Vol. 1' was supposed to be a multi-part release, as an homage to the Robyn 'Body Talk' series. It was going to be the same idea. The title song "All the Queen's Men" still exists (and maybe one day I will release it), but it has yet to see the light of day. I don't know if I will ever come back to revisit this project (although I really miss working with my friend Will Curry, and would love to work with him again, because he is so great and it was so fun).

People have consistently said this is their favourite of all my albums. For me it was the first time I felt "this is an album."

The album was an exploration of my relationships with men, from abusers, to friends, to my grandfather.

"Prince of Memphis" is one of my most favourite things I have ever written, and to this day, I think is as special to listen to now as it was 9-10 years ago.

I wrote this for my friend, Jordan.

"Ringside" has consistently been one of my most successful tracks to date. I really love Depeche Mode and Donna Summer, and I feel like this is a great marriage of the two sounds. It was the first time I had done a track like this all by myself!

One of the crown jewels of this album was "Assisi @ 1276"-which took the longest to write and work on out of all of them. There are a lot of little magical coincidences in this album. Casey, whom I wrote "and to be free" with also co-wrote this one. His confirmation saint was St. Francis, which was also my grandfather's, and also his birth name. Jordan's music and theatre teacher from childhood sings on this track. I knew that this album could not be finished until I found the recording I had of my grandfather--and I had almost given up on finding it. It was beyond perfect, beyond what I had remembered it being. It was so special. It fit the song so perfectly, and when he talks about "beautiful classical music" at the end, and then it goes into "Prince of Memphis," like I couldn't have planned this better.

At the end of 2016, I released an EP companion to the album. It had a bunch of alternate takes and b-sides.

Maybe someday I will revisit this album's world.