Jake Shears, 47, is an American singer, songwriter and actor, best known as the co-lead vocalist of Scissor Sisters, the pop band he formed with backing vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Babydaddy in 2000. The band hail from New York, with their self-titled debut album, featuring \u201cTake Your Mama\u201d and \u201cFilthy\/Gorgeous\u201d, going to number one after a breakout Glastonbury performance in 2004. \u201cI Don\u2019t Feel Like Dancin\u2019\u201d, co-written with Elton John, topped the Top 40 in 2006.<\/p>\n
Shears made his Broadway debut in Kinky Boots in 2018. He toured with Kylie Minogue in 2019, appeared on The Masked Singerin 2020, and starred in Cabaret in the West End from 2023 to 2024. Here, he looks back at the moments that shaped him: from a nomadic childhood in the desert, to coming out in the 90s, witnessing 9\/11, and getting the band back on the road.<\/p>\n
I grew up in an RV. I was born in Mesa, Arizona, and we lived out in the desert, driving around in a motorhome<\/a> for months at a time \u2013 from the West Coast, all the way to the East coast, up to Canada, then back down. We didn\u2019t have a TV, so I would bring in piles of books. I was always reading and writing weird little stories. I still do. I finished a novel last New Year\u2019s Eve, and I wrote a book last year \u2013 a real messy one.<\/p>\n I\u2019m very extroverted but also very introverted<\/a> \u2013 so right down the middle. I always knew I wanted to perform, but I didn\u2019t quite know how. At NYU, I started hanging out in the experimental theatre wing and got cast in shows. I was also making money dancing on bars.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve always needed attention. I wanted to make people laugh, to be the centre of the room. Now it\u2019s my career, I don\u2019t have those impulses so strongly, but I\u2019ve definitely funnelled them into my work.<\/p>\n I was in New York on 9\/11, when the towers fell. It felt like a very pivotal moment in my life, and for the city. Around that time, Babydaddy and I started just messing around with music \u2013 he was learning Logic, and we\u2019d make silly songs, just to make each other laugh. Then we started performing them.<\/p>\n When I first heard our first single, \u201cElectrobix\u201d, played in public, I knew my life was about to change. It was at the S\u00f3nar by Day festival in Barcelona, on the best drugs<\/a> I\u2019ve ever had. Suddenly hearing our song just blew my mind.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not as good as a single guy \u2013 I feel unmoored. Dating in your forties is hard, and when I first moved to London, I wasn\u2019t at my happiest. Now I\u2019ve got a wonderful boyfriend, Jon Reynolds \u2013 he\u2019s a West End dancer. We met when I was doing Cabaret in London. We went on a blind date, and it\u2019s been two years.<\/p>\n