Fancy Hagood has recently released his incredible new record – Southern Curiosity – and it’s a masterpiece. Here, we interview Fancy about the record and why this was the right time to release this project.
How are you today?
Good thanks, how are you?
Not too bad thanks. Congratulations on this album – I felt like we’ve all been waiting for it for years. I remember seeing you perform during C2C at All Bar One and wanting
Oh yeah, that was probably in 2018 – that was around that time that I started writing for this record. I spent a lot of time in London in 2018, I pretty much was there for six months of the year and I did a lot of writing there. London feels like a place where genre is just so limitless. It’s not like when I lived in LA and everyone was like, you’re country and then in Nashville they were like you’re pop. London was the first place where I went when I started writing and if I started singing something, no one tried to define me.
You wrote Mr Atlanta in London didn’t you?
I wrote ‘Mr. Atlanta’ and ‘Don’t Blink’ in London, there might be more I just can’t think off the top of my head, but yeah all of those came from London and ‘Don’t Blink’ was the first one. I was in a session with Naughty Boy and he was introducing me to all of these different producers and songwriters and I was honestly just having the best time – me and Naughty Boy hit it off really well, just personally. So, I ended up staying in London past the week I was supposed to be here, working with his crew, and one of his guys named Shaq was just honestly the sweetest. He came in the room one day and was like, I have all these tracks and there’s one called ‘Country Girls’ that I thought you might like. He started playing this track and it was literally just an electric guitar and a drum beat. It just spoke to me, I loved it so much and I literally just started singing and writing over it. I finished ‘Don’t Blink’ in the States in the studio, I finished like that bridge version, but it was just an inspiring place and I loved it.
I know you’ve worked in LA before and then moved to Nashville and you’re now such a huge part of the songwriting community in Nashville. How has the evolution of your music changed with where you’ve lived? Are you glad this record came out now?
I mean, yeah, I jokingly say, because I moved to Nashville first when I was 17 and I lived here until I was 23 and then I moved to LA eventually – I still had a place in Nashville but I didn’t come back all that often. I moved back officially in 2016, so Nashville has always been home to me. When it came to my artistry, I think everyone has always valued me as a songwriter, but my passion has always been my artistry.
It’s been an uphill battle for me honestly. Looking back now, I am so thankful things did not pan out for me the way I thought it was supposed to. Every year since 2013. I’ve been saying ‘this is my year!’ because something’s happened, I’m like ‘Ok, this is it.’ In 2013, I signed to Big Machine Music Publishing and the next year, I’m signed to Scooter Braun and Republic, the year after that I have a top 40 hit. Every time those milestones happen, I think this is my year and then it did not pan out that way. Honestly, I can say now with hindsight, being 2020, I was not ready. I was not in a space personally to stand in that spotlight. I don’t think I quite understood my purpose yet and I think a lot of life has happened between then and now to where I fully feel validated not only as a person, but as an artist. I feel like I finally know exactly what I want to say and how I want to say it. The question left over from my past career was ‘Who is Fancy?’ I feel like you can listen to this album [Southern Curiosity] and you can learn who I am and my spirit and my heart, I think that’s the most important thing to me as an artist. Back in the day, I was thirsty for it, I just wanted to prove people wrong – all the people that told me you’re not an artist, you’re a songwriter. I just wanted it so badly, to prove those people wrong and that’s not why I want it anymore. Now, I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone.
It’s almost laying out your true self.
I really started thinking about why it is that I want to make music and I want to make music because – as a younger kid – it was hard for me to relate to the stories that were on the on the mainstream, because there wasn’t very many gay men on the mainstream, if they were, they were ambiguous. I wrote Southern Curiosity for baby Jake – which is my real name – and it’s been a really freeing experience for me both creatively and personally – to write music that reflects who I am 100%.
I was even reading that you’ve said before that people have asked you to take out pronouns and things like that. I think that’s part of the magic of this record – it’s clearly your story, it’s something that hasn’t been told this way before. I think, no matter what genre that is, I don’t think these stories have been told the way that you’re telling them and that’s so important.
It is important, I think it’s important for anyone to be able to hear themselves in any medium, whether that be art, music, film, books, television. We live in a time where things are so polarising and the thing is, I’m just tired of being told that my story as a gay man is polarising – it’s absolutely not. My story is not any different than any of my heterosexual friends who get to speak about their love stories. It’s not polarising. I’m at a place where I think it’s time that these stories are told, and I don’t want to make music that doesn’t tell that story and doesn’t speak to who I am as a person. Like I said, I did this for my younger self, this reflects every part of me and every part of who I am is heard and seen and validated. It makes me emotional, because growing up I didn’t have that. In a broader stroke, I think we’re seeing here in Nashville, so many different people stepping into their true authentic self, and even people who have been standing in their authentic self finally getting that time in the sun, that time in the limelight. You know, we just saw Mickey Guyton host the ACM!
I was going to say, I think it’s so exciting what is happening in the country genre right now – voices are finally getting the spotlight they deserve.
Yeah and even more so, some voices that haven’t always been given that platform are starting to be able to be seen on a bigger level. I think that’s so important, because country music’s about storytelling and there’s so many stories left untold and so many voices left unheard. I just feel so emboldened to be here in Nashville in this moment, in a time where people are able to express themselves in a free way where it’s not just about one point of view, or or one side of the story. It’s exciting to be a creator right now.
It’s an exciting time to see music change and see what’s coming up nationally right now, I think it’s the most creative, it’s ever been.
I agree.
I really want to talk to you about Mr. Atlanta – it’s one of the first songs that I really dove into on the record. Can you talk a little bit about that track and the evolution of it and the sound?
I was kind of inspired by the sound of Paul McCartney. I love the Beatles and I love Paul McCartney, so that was kind of where the sound came from. The story of the song is that I had met this guy at a concert with friends of mine in Atlanta. We had a bunch of friends of mine that had gone to Atlanta to see a mutual friend, I ended up meeting this guy. Nothing panned out from it, but it just felt so like Kismet and of the moment. It had me thinking ‘dang, dating is so hard, trying to find someone is so difficult.’ It can be so like soul crushing, but then I started thinking about it. I’m like, ‘Man, what if every single experience is to lead you to that right person?’ If you could just like walk away from any relationship with the good and leave the bad? I started thinking about these experiences and relationships. I was like, ‘man, I really can take something away from all of it’. You know – the rejection from a guy in Nashville, the guy in Chicago not being present and the kid from my hometown finding out that I am able to be emotionally aware.
I love that idea of taking the positives forward and leaving the negative.
Right? There you are in this moment of spontaneous, fun- loving feeling of flirtation, you’re sitting across from someone, you’re like, ‘Oh my god, this is the one,’ drinking in your eyes – I do that all the time, I’m a little bit boy crazy, I can fall in love just like that, so that song was a fun way to discuss taking the good with the bad and keeping your eye out for the one and knowing that all of us experience heartbreak. There is something beautiful about experiencing different people and different things and every time you experience someone – whether it be platonic or sexual or romantic – you take parts of those people, and they take parts of you – hopefully – whether it’s negative or positive, you’re a changed person by these experiences. It brings you to higher experiences, it brings you to your higher self, it brings you to a new experience that you can learn from.
Oh, I love that. The other one that I literally can’t stop listening to is ‘Forest’ – your vocal is magical on it. It’s just so poetic. Can you talk about that one, because it’s such a different sound in comparison to Mr. Atlanta?
Yeah, I have this habit of finding men who are not out of the closet, or who are not openly expressing to everyone what they express to me about their sexuality – it’s just kind of been a thing that happens to me all the time, sometimes I’m just heartbroken for people who don’t get to express their true selves or their true feelings. ‘Forest’ came from a place where I had met this guy, and he was married and just coming to terms with his sexuality for the first time and just going through it – it was just a platonic friendship thing, but I wrote ‘Forest’ as a song to let people know that there is safety in this world and there are communities where they can be themselves and they can be their higher self and accept themselves. There’s places to go where people accept them for being who they are.
I just wanted to meet you in the forest. I wanted them to know that it doesn’t always have to be like a physical space – that can also be a place inside yourself, where you go to accept yourself and love on yourself and care for yourself, even when you might not be in the physical realm. I just want everyone to know that who they are is validated, they’re seen, they’re heard and who they are matters. There’s places and people that accept them and for us, it’s kind of that invitation to be yourself.
It’s a comfort whoever you are. In its entirety, this record must be one of the best of the year, I think it’s so special. I guess what did you hope for when you were setting out and what did you hope that people would take away from this and what are you going to carry into the next project – though I know that may be a way off?
Trust me, I’m already on to the next one. Southern Curiosity is not new to me. It’s kind of interesting – we’re putting it out now. So much happened to me personally and to everyone collectively and globally. It’s just one of those things – timing is everything. It came out when it was supposed to and I’m loving getting the messages that it’s connecting with people – both people from my community and people not from my community. I think it’s really something beautiful because I wanted Southern Curiosity to be a bridge for people who may not understand my lifestyle or who may not understand someone like me. I wanted to write an album that was truly vulnerable and truly honest and filled with real stories about my life. The question from my first foray into the music business was ‘Who is Fancy?’ I wanted people to really be able to walk away from this album with my heart in their hands. I think what I’ve experienced in my own personal life is that people always take issue with things they don’t know and there’s so many people in this world that don’t know other gay people or don’t know people like me. I wanted to give them my bleeding heart for them to maybe find the strength within themselves to have empathy and choose to walk in my shoes a little bit and to see that, more so than not, we’re alike, we want the same things. Everyone wants to be loved.
We need to get rid of all this kind of polarising stuff.
Yeah, let’s see each other and it’s been so healing to put it out and to be getting messages from all walks of life, talking about what it means to them. I mean, I got a message the other day from a guy that’s like, ‘I’m sure you did not write this for a 52 year old father of three.’ The thing is I wrote this for baby Jake with hopes that it did connect further and reach across. I wanted the queer community to have an album that relates to them and speaks to their life and who they are, but ultimately, I wanted to reach across the aisle and offer some insight into people who don’t know gay people or who don’t understand and give them insight that we all want the same things, our stories matter, and hopefully, that will reach people. As far as the next project, I’ve been writing. We started writing for Southern Curiosity in 2018, we started recording in 2019. We pretty much wrapped it up, like mastering and mixing in early 2020, so this has been a long time coming. I’ve been writing a shit ton and I have so much to say, outside of this story about being queer in the south. It is important to me to get out there and now I feel that I’ve told that story, I feel like there’s so much more to talk about and not just from the queer experience, but now with my experience with how polarising the world is.
You’ve got so many more stories to tell – I can tell. Thank you so much for your time today and for this incredible record.
