This year, here at Loverboy, we are celebrating our tenth anniversary, daaahling! One of the artists we absolutely had to feature in our first issue back in 2014 was Welsh, queer, independent, electro-pop artist, Bright Light Bright Light aka Rod Thomas.
Since we first spoke Rod has moved to New York, opened for Cher on tour, recorded with Sir Elton John, been the only independent artist to sing on Graham Norton’s BBC Show and released four albums. His latest collection, Enjoy Youth, is out today and features tracks with House legend Ultra Naté and the producer responsible for so many 00s British pop bangers, Richard X.
Enjoy Youth’s twelve queer anthems give huge Hi-NRG and 90s House vibes with Rod’s production bigger than ever. Serving up a soundtrack of self-positivity, falling in/out of love and ‘Boys Etc.’, our favourite right now is ‘I Don’t Know What I’m Going To Do’. It’s too beautiful. Loverboy’s George Alley zoomed Rod in New York to talk more….
Rod, can you believe you were in our very first issue….a decade ago? It seems so long ago…but also, not. Back then you said, ‘I was tired of people thinking I was boring. I wanted to make pop music and have fun.’ With this album you’ve said, ‘I want to feel fabulous and unstoppable.’ The idea of seeking out fun feels a constant one throughout your career. Relatable!
That’s a long, long time ago! A different life, honestly. I’ve been living here in New York for eleven years now so I think when I first spoke to Loverboy, I was probably still living in London. It’s been amazing living out here but it’s nice to go back to London and see the bits I like. Much has happened in the last ten years, like all the touring and collaborations. I don’t really remember what my life was like back then. But in terms of the creative process and inspiration, it changes record to record. It all feels very different, especially after COVID. That really shifted my perception; being on the road constantly for a couple of years and then having that year of enforced stillness.
You began to release music from your last album, Fun City, during COVID. Was that a difficult time to promote an album?
It was wild; obviously, you schedule releases far in advance of when they’re out. We had the first single released for March, so it ended up coming out like two weeks after lockdown. It was a disappointment because the last album was about the queer experience/focus. I planned to travel to all these different cities and work with artists to amplify voices and help accentuate people’s positions in the community who often get overlooked. It was disappointing as all those shows and opportunities were cancelled, as it wasn’t about just me, it was about how important it is to create and nurture community as an LGBTQ+ person. So, it is nice now that I get to do live shows while this album is coming out and be a part of the real world versus an online network.
You’ll be back in the real world indeed!! You are touring the UK in June, correct?
Yes. It’s just a handful of dates while the album comes out. I’ll be back to do more shows when people have had time to digest the record and get to know the songs.
What will the live experience be like at these shows?
Really camp, maximum fun! A shift that I noticed thanks to COVID, is that I used to be adamant that my shows had to be perfect because I haven’t had industry support throughout my career. I’ve been unsigned, releasing my own stuff and self-managing. I had to prove to myself that I was as good as the people that I was getting rejected in favour of. I wasn’t letting myself have as much fun as I probably deserved to have live.
Post-COVID, a switch has flicked. I’m excited and am enjoying the work that I do versus a pressure to ‘present’ the work I do. The connection in the room has felt the strongest that it has in my career, because I believe I’ve proven myself by now. If someone fails to see that, they’re just not my people.
You’ve taken a DIY path to your music making, but you have been able to have a long list of noteworthy achievements for an independent artist: performing with Elton John, being the only unsigned artist to play Graham Norton. It feels a little punk…
Yes, I like feeling punk. It’s very weird that I’ve lived in a limbo of categorization. Everything I do is very commercial leaning pop, but I’ve done it in a very folk/DIY way. For a lot of the major labels, they didn’t understand that I could work from a grassroots level. I’ve had conversations with people who don’t understand why I did something on a budget or tried to do things by myself. The answer is because I wanted them to happen. I never had an ‘in’ with the music industry. I come from a coal mining valley. I’ve had a lot of fun making these doors open. I never thought that I could play Glastonbury. I did. I never thought that I could release albums and collaborate with a million selling artists, and somehow, I did.
You must be resilient as well to be able to market and create music within a pop avenue. Radio-orientated Pop in the 21st century has been quite codified. To me It feels like you align with queer adjacent people that were making commercial pop in the 80s.
I think I do. I think being a queer person means having to do things in a slightly obscure way before you’ve even done the work. We don’t really fit into the norms, whether you dress in a way that doesn’t fit, or just simply by being part of the LGBTQ+ world. You must get your mental barricades up as they prepare you for rejection and to be more driven than if things were just presented to you. I’m probably grateful for a lot of the hurdles and how they made me work a lot harder to get stuff done. Would I have loved a label? Yes. I’m very grateful but on the flip side, for example, I had one of my albums in 2016 come out the same week as an artist friend. I had $28,000 that I’d saved up from my personal bank account to make, master, press, market and create all the videos for the record. They had £40,000 pounds from their record label to fund just the album cover.
£40,000 is not a casual figure…..
And good for them because their album cover was great! However, people don’t understand the difference money can do for your campaign. But, you make do with what you’ve got, and I’m doing that. There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors [at play].
Speaking of marketing, you have four different limited-edition cassettes for ‘Enjoy Youth’ each one of them has a different song.
Yes, they have their own little bonus track and collector card. I remember when I was a kid, those magazines you could buy with stickers included to complete a collection. I was thinking, about how I used to love doing that with Ghostbusters stickers or Monster in My Pocket. I thought it was fun and I have fans that love physical formats.
You worked with Richard X on this album. whose career became noteworthy initially with his DIY mashups like the Sugababes with Gary Numan. Currently mashups of famous/cult dance tracks is something you do as a DJ and on social media. Was this the impetus to work with him?
Well, he’s the person that inspired me to do mash ups to begin with. His work was cool especially because you didn’t really know that it was a mash up unless you knew the originals. I didn’t know ‘Being Boiled’ was a Human League song before he used it for the ‘Ain’t Nobody’ mash up with Liberty X. Back when I lived in London, I attended a Christmas party with some gay songwriters where I met Richard. We hit it off and stayed in touch. I was very nervous to ask him if he wanted to write a song together because rejection from someone you care about is such a big thing. Eventually I did ask, we went right to his studio, had a writing session and this is the song came out of it. I sat on it for a little while. It didn’t fit with [my album] ‘Fun City’ at all. But when thinking about the ‘Enjoy Youth’ album, I was like, ‘Right, well, he did soundtrack a lot of my youth!’ I think he is one of the best pop producers that the UK has ever had. His musicality is so cool, he really has the gayest taste for a straight man. Having Richard on this album is a life goal for me. I feel like Rachel Stevens.
You also teamed up with House music legend, singer/songwriter Ultra Naté for your single ‘Every Emotion’!
I’ve worked with lots of huge people in my career, like Elton John and Andy Bell from Erasure, but there are people like Ultra Naté, who have a coveted place in my heart. I remember going into Woolworths in Neath, my hometown, to buy her CD singles. ‘Found a Cure’ is my personal favourite. I thought, ‘How cool is this woman, to come out with these gigantic songs and break into the UK pop charts, when no one knew who she was?’
One day I had had a few mimosas and was playing around with some samples and found some Rhodes chord progressions that you can hear in the pre-chorus. I was constructing drums around it to sound like a classic New York House track for Ultra Naté to sing on it. I then added in the little ‘La la la’ to kind of sound a bit like her. I’m good friends with one of her managers, Bill Coleman who put us in touch. She loved the track and so we recorded it together.
Speaking of informative queer youth influences, you composed the soundtrack for All Man, the documentary about the gay clothing catalog International Male. For me personally, International Male was the closest thing I could access to Gay porn in high school!
It was cool to watch the footage as I was scoring it and learned so much about the magazine. It is truly a bizarre story. In a way I think that there are parallels between the story of the magazine and my own, in that it was unlikely that it would last as long as it did. Truly who the fuck thought that I was still going to be making music now? You know, I think a lot of people are very surprised that I’m still putting out music. I have people that I used to write songs with being like, ‘Oh, are you still making music’? With International Male, God knows how it got as big as it did. They just made it up as they went along. I have the same ethos so I was the perfect fit for the soundtrack!
As you know Loverboy Magazine is named after the hit single by Mariah Carey. What’s a favorite Mariah moment for you?
My favorite Mariah moment is when she did a signing for Caution in New York. I was flying back from Toronto, and I just made it. I got home in time to pick up my copy of Glitter on Vinyl and go to her signing. When we were waiting in this line the security guard said, ‘She will only sign copies of Caution. I said, “When she sees this, she’s going to be very happy”. So, I went up to my place with the record she held it up and she said, “Justice for Glitter” in front of everyone! So playful. Just having fun. ‘Enjoy(ing) Youth’!
Enjoy Youth is out now.
