Founding Daddy

A message from our President, Jack Powers, on Inauguration Day ;)

Hey wicked pissers, here’s my treat to keep you sane this Election Day… the wise words of JACK POWERS straight (well not really straight) from the magazine!

I knew it was him the moment I saw his figure around the pavilion entrance to 14th Street Union Square Station we agreed to meet. It was a sunny and hot spring day in New York which meant everyone was in very little clothing. Here he came, a man with well-worn blonde ends, gold-looking shoes (which I would later find out were wrestling shoes and look a lot like the Donald Trump sneakers), PVC pants with a matching black leather jacket and sunglasses. It was like if Tom of Finland went to Studio 54, and if Studio 54 made it into the 80s and was a much cooler gay club with go-go dancers and catchy spoken word tracks. There, in all his glory, Jack Powers: the only pop star in New York City.

We’re in Jack’s neighborhood just up from Union Square—he points out where his apartment is in relation to his local chic French café, A.K.A. Le Pain Quotidien, which we just walked up to while reminiscing about our kindred days in shitty UAL student halls in London (we’re Central Saint Martins sisters—Jack did Performance Design and Practice, I Fashion Journalism). Since we’re above 14th street, technically we’re in Midtown, and I’m doing what Jack calls “midtown drag,” bringing my Downtown and Brooklyn oriented ass up here for a rendezvous. “I used to live in The Village,” he confesses, “but then you’re just like around the same people all the time. Those people who do some arty thing.” But in midtown, Jack wanted to start setting up a new fantasy for himself, otherwise known as his real life, because the Jack you see online, the wide-eyed gaze and excited smile, quick talking and pulsating energy, is exactly the Jack you get in person. He said to my initial question about character building and performance, “It’s not a character, I’m just like this all the time. Sorry!” And that’s part of the reason Midtown drag stopped feeling like an identity he had to adjust to, “I feel like no one’s pretending up here.”

A certain what makes the singer, who started making music about two years ago, so magnetic in front of you and on your screen; When he looks at you, it’s like he looks so deeply into your eyes that you can’t help but wonder if he’s trying to read your mind. But admittedly, that kind of eye contact and attention is very flattering. And in the middle of a bustling fronch (read it like I spelled it) café, the cacophony fell away, and it was just me, Jack, our piping hot tea and my phone recording, left. Past the point of no return, everyone is so busy with their jobs that no one would bat an eyelash if Jack were to walk out in the black Mellita Baumeister get up he wore for the music video of his latest single, “Sell Out,” a gay American crime drama set to a soundtrack about embracing the je m’en foutisme of Midtown and being a glam superstar. It starts with a techno whisper:

“The whole town, Told me, Stay underground, Pop is crazy, What’s so wrong with everybody feeling good? So good.”

Then he lets out an orgasmic, downward glissando “OH!” and we’re off to the races as he taunts the listener with Oh!

Jack wrote his slate of new records, first of all “Sell Out” in L.A. with Jeppe Laursen, who co-wrote and produced “Bad Kids” and “Born This Way” off Gaga’s album of the same name. For the singer, this was like reconnecting with his inner child—which is never far from the surface to begin with. “’Born This Way’ was like such a huge album for me as a kid. So, to like, work with [Jeppe]. It’s just like been insane because the first thing that we did together on our first session was we just like improvised melodies. no lyrics,” Jack told me, which was very different from his process before which stared with lyrics over a beat and “Twelve, thirteen, maybe more coffees and following the inspiration.” In other words, he’s traded Gaga’s meme-able “bus, club, ‘nother club,” for the real deal.

Mixed in with the 80s Italo disco vibes and vocals put through Laursen’s Space Echo reverb machine, Jack is exploring something new: 74 bpm. “It’s not gonna be like what you think. It’s got curve balls,” Jack says. What comes to mind are the pulsing synths and beat of songs like “House Party” and talky and sleazy guitar spoken word vibe on “Tommy Phenomenal,” both off of Jack’s first EP, 2023’s “Popstar.” One thing his first group of songs have in common is a pulsating sexuality which might not be front and center in his next three releases.

“I wrote all this new music in LA, so I was thinking a lot about Americana,” the constructed Americana of Hollywood Studios and Lana Del Rey, because as Jack says proudly, “I’m a New Yorker before I’m an American. I don’t know about America that much ‘cause this place is so different than the rest of the country. Wacky, wacky, tacky vibes. I don’t know what it’s like in New Hampshire, I just don’t. I’m not gonna pretend I do. But I’m ready to explore it and discover it.”