EDGE Interview: Jake Shears Wants You to Party with 'Last Man Dancing'

"I got here a year ago," former Scissor Sisters front man Jake Shears tells EDGE from Glasgow, where he's preparing to launch a concert featuring music from his new album, "Last Man Dancing." He's not referring to Scotland per se, but rather to the UK in general, having relocated to London.

"I really miss New Orleans a lot," the pop star adds. "I miss my friends in the States. I miss my mom and dad." He goes on to lament the death of his beloved dog, who he'd brought along on the move. But life for Shears has been going full-tilt, and it doesn't sound like he's had much time to brood.

"Between the Tammy Faye musical" – for which he wrote the lyrics to Elton John's music – "the album stuff and everything I've been working on, it's been a lot," Shears adds. No kidding: He toured with Duran Duran earlier this year, in addition to finishing the new album and making a handful of videos to go along with it, including the mini-movie set to "Too Much Music," the album's opener, which sees Shears starring in a neo-noir with DL gay overtones.

This full-tilt pace has been Shears' life for a while now; even before Scissor Sisters went into what's been described as an "extended hiatus" in 2012, Shears was branching out, writing songs with and for other pop stars like Kylie Minogue and Tiga, duetting with Cher on her song "Take It Like a Man," and, apart from his music, writing his memoir "Boys Keep Swinging," starring in a production of the stage musical "Kinky Boots," and releasing his first solo album – those last three projects all coming to fruition in the same year, 2018. More recently, he's toured with Minogue and been featured on "the Masked Singer," where he was disguised as... what else?... a unicorn.

Watch Jake Shears' video "Last Man Dancing"

Taken all together, Shears' schedule makes his next words unsurprising: "My social life hasn't been fantastic in the UK, I gotta say. But it's my own fault. It's just too busy."

"Busy" isn't the word for his new album, though. Try "energetic," or, more fitting, "fun." The 12 tracks on "Last Man Standing" have a dance floor-ready sheen, a sense of mischief, and contributions from a host of collaborators like Kylie Minogue (on the track "Voices"), Amber Martin (on the disco inferno titled "Devil Came Down the Dance Floor"), and Big Freedia (on the song "Doses") – not to mention samples by Jane Fonda (on "Radio Eyes") and Iggy Pop (on the album's banger of a close-out, "Diamonds Don't Burn"). Shears told EDGE about the new disc, his pop culture influences, and how he was ready to have a good time on his sophomore solo LP.

EDGE: "Last Man Dancing" isn't just something you play at a party, it is a party! Is this your response to COVID and getting out again?

Jake Shears: That could be an element of it. I think that there was a lot of inspiration for this from being able to throw parties again. My house in New Orleans is set up to get together with people and have a good time, and the music was test driven a lot in those scenarios, so that was fun. But quite a few of these songs I wrote before spring 2020, so I think it's probably the record I would have made anyway.

EDGE: I've always thought of you as a Loki kind of a trickster of pop, partly because being gay is front and center in so much if your music. Is that sense of mischief something you were wanting to bring to the genre?

Jake Shears: It's funny you say that. Back in the day, I think I had a very Puckish energy about me. But it's funny, because I [wasn't] going to be 25 forever, right? You have to grow beyond that and grow out of it. In a way, I had to become a man. I was so boyish for so long, and I still have a bit of boyish energy. But yeah, I think a trickster is a good term. I love being a host, I love showing people a good time. I love surprising people sonically. I like surprising people in my writing – that's really important to me. I think about [my] trajectory over the last 20 years and it's... [Pauses] You can't be a party twink forever.

EDGE:: No, unfortunately not. But you have the solace of lots of talented friends who come in and help you out in the studio, as is the case with this record. Were these collaborations a matter of saying, "I need Le Chev for this sonic picture [on '8 Ball']" or, "I want to have Amber Martin come in and do something with me," and ending up with "Devil Came Down the Dance Floor?"

Jake Shears: Yeah, things just kind of fall together. When I moved to New Orleans, it was like my dream to write with Big Freedia, and I was just waiting for that call. Finally, at the end of [the COVID] lockdown, I got the call to work with Freedia, and it was so exciting. I wrote some stuff for him and with him, and we just got on great. I thought it'd be amazing to include his voice on this record.

"Devil Came Down the Dance Floor" was a demo that I'd written with my buddy Michael Cheever, and it was just kind of sitting there. Me singing it didn't really get me excited. Amber Martin is one of my best buddies, and at my house with me in New Orleans she was like, "You need to write me a song," and I was like, "You know what, I think I might have a song that you'd be great on." We recorded her vocal on it in my living room, and the song just came alive.

It's less about me singing all over everything, and more about making an interesting piece and bringing all these different aspects of my personality and the people I'm interested in, and turn it into [something creative]. I've always had my own special blend of influences and fascinations.

EDGE: I was listening to the last song on the album, "Diamonds Don't Burn," and thinking, "I wish the new James Bond movie were coming out. This could be the theme." And then I read in an interview somewhere that you said the same thing! Was that something in your mind all along?

Jake Shears: Yeah, I was thinking of something very cinematic and sort of intense, with really fantastical lyrics. I started listening to Edward O'Brien, the drummer from Radiohead, who put out this amazing album ["Earth," in 2020], a great solo record, and it was very [similar to] U2 in the early '90s. So I went back to "Achtung Baby" and "Zooropa," and was getting really into the sounds [of those albums] again, just loving those albums. I was thinking about how they made me feel, and I was thinking about "Batman Forever" with "Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me," and all of those things were kind of falling into one thing. And the title is very Bond.

EDGE: While we're speaking about the cinematic aspects of the music, the first track, "Too Much Music," has a great cinematic video. It really is a little movie. It's a noir, and it's almost like a James Bond film – or at least a "Mission: Impossible."

Jake Shears: I love how that video turned out. When you're shooting videos, you never know how something's gonna turn out, and Callum [McDiarmid] did such a good job with it.

I'm a big film geek. I love movies. I love movies from the '70s and the '80s, from the late '60s. Tarantino is one of my favorites, and the Coen brothers. I love old Steve McQueen movies. I think all those influences, you can kind of see them in that video. It is really cinematic, and it's kind of a dream video. I've always wanted to make a video like that.

The funny thing about it is, we were shooting on the coldest days of the year in the UK. We were shooting in Norwich and on sound stages, and it was so cold that when I was doing the lip sync sections I couldn't move my lips. My face was frozen! I remember looking at the [early] non-color [corrected] version of it, and I looked blue. But I'm really happy with how it turned out. I'm glad you like it.

"Last Man Dancing" is out on June 2.

Check out pics from Shears' IG: