“People often ask me why I changed my name from Sir JET to Queen Sir JET,” the genderfluid, muscle fem pop singer reflects. “Like, what exactly do I think I’m the queen of?”
“I’m not a queen because I think I’m fierce, or because I’m the ruler of a certain population,” she continues. “I think I use the word ‘queen’ in the sense of being the master of something. I am the queen of sadness. I’ve mastered sadness and solitude, and my songs are a reflection of that.”
She has learned to embrace life’s sadness, the same way she embraces life’s joy, and Queen Sir JET hopes her new single, “Stay with Me,” inspires listeners to do the same. We spoke with Queen Sir JET from her home in Los Angeles.
What inspired you to write and record “Stay with Me”?
A lot of my songs start with a phrase I hear while listening to the base track, or sometimes I’ll hear a phrase while listening to another artist’s song. In this case after a few weeks of listening to the track my producer sent me, I started hearing “shadows want me to know, that I’m not alone,” and little by little the song became about my own experiences with dating. I’ve never had a relationship, but all too many times I’ve experienced that wanting to be in a relationship, but never quite reaching that level of connection with another person.
That’s heartbreaking.
The song is about recognizing that not everything in one’s life has to be sunshine and rainbows. We can have a dark side, we can romanticize our sadness and indulge in negative feelings if the mood feels right. Emotions are all temporary, so there’s no shame in giving in to feelings of loneliness from time to time. We can be happy later and fully feel our feelings now. I tend to be a lone wolf myself, so this song is my way of coming to terms with the fact that I might always be. In other words, I’m ok with my own loneliness.
This is your first track that is not a dance number.
It’s a mid-tempo song, but like most of my songs, it’s electronic. At the time, I was sending my producer examples of tracks from my favorite Erasure album, Nightbird. Songs like “No Doubt,” and “Here I Go Impossible Again.” I wanted to do at least one mid-tempo song for the upcoming EP and those songs were the inspiration.
Are the questions you ask in the song – like “Am I good person?” – questions that you ask yourself in real-life?
I do sometimes wonder if I am a good person. Did I say the wrong thing to that person? Should I have given more when I saw they were hurting? The list goes on and on. I’m a socially awkward person, and despite being empathetic, I don’t always know how to put into words the energy I’m sensing from that other person in the moment, so then I’m asking myself later, did I say/do the right thing? And when it comes to other people, so often a lot of us don’t know how to give of ourselves emotionally in the same way we give of ourselves physically. It’s easier to give your body than it is your emotional help. And so that’s where that line came from, the questioning if I’m a bad person because all too often all I give is my body, when what many people need isn’t sexual gratification but rather an empathetic hand.
Have you experienced a lot of hurt in life?
I don’t know if “hurt” is the right word, but definitely a great deal of rejection. I was the quintessential bullied kid as a youth, which lead to having no friends as a teenager. From there I never really developed social skills so as an adult, people often think I’m odd and off putting. I was criticized to shreds by the gay media for being unoriginal in the early stages of my career, and then I was too different to be relatable once I came into my own during the mid-point of my career when I started cross-dressing. It’s been an undying pattern throughout my life: “you’re just not what we’re looking for.” I think that was where this song came from: when you’ve been told so many times that you don’t belong anywhere you go, you eventually break and end up alone, constantly trying to understand your own loneliness.
What do you hope fans ultimately take away from “Stay with Me”?
If you can learn to embrace the sadness and the loneliness in the same way you embrace the joys and triumphs in life, you will know what it means to be alive.
Queen Sir JET’s “Stay with Me” is being distributed by So Fierce Music and is available on Apple Music, Spotify, and all digital platforms. Follow Queen Sir Jet on Tik Tok and Instagram.
By Chris Fragnito
Photos courtesy So Fierce Music
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