Exclusive Interview - Lagoona Bloo

Lagoona Bloo, welcome my beaut to Spill the Tea magazine. 
Thank you for having me. I'm so excited. When my manager was like, ‘Oh, you've got an interview’ I was like, absolutely! It really means a lot to me, it makes me feel like my hard work is like you know, worth it. 

When did you first discover Drag was for you? 
The first time I was ever, you know, ever introduced to drag. It was definitely through theatre, I have my degree in musical theatre, performance and directing and I had been cast in a few female roles, but I've never really connected to what drag was until 2016. I was cast in a brand new musical, it was a production of this new musical called Toast. The name has changed now but it was by Carner and Gregor, long story short, they needed a beautiful voice to play a Drag Queen. I was like, Huh, Okay, well, I'll try it. They showed me the music, I loved the music so I auditioned for it and it was one of the first times I was ever like… well there's a difference between playing a woman and playing a gay queer character. You know what I'm saying? And previously, I'd always played women (well not always played) I played Mary Sunshine, and I played Lady Bracknell, all these character women. And this character was just a Drag Queen. It was the first time that I was allowed to be hyper feminine on stage, because growing up in theatre, we're always taught, especially as men in musical theatre, we're taught to be like, ‘Manly men’ (at this point I’m in stiches as Lagonna Bloo puts on a hilarious theatre voice to explainer her point). I remember the first time I put my hand on my hip and my leg in a bevel and I was singing and performing in a way that I had always pushed against and it just felt so good but I thought, Oh, I don't know if I want to do Drag full time, or even if I want to dabble in it, but when I got back to the city, I could not stop thinking about it. So little by little throughout the rest of 2016 I was playing with wigs, with my makeup and at the end of 2016 I was cast in the Broadway tour of Elf the musical. I had a director who was like, oh, you're amazing, you're so talented, but just say the lines, as fast as you can, say the lines. And that was the moment for me, where I was like what the f*ck, I guess it's not what I thought, is what I wanted to do? I discovered that I was miserable. I was miserable doing theatre, I was 25 years old, in very specific character type playing 40 year old backup characters. And I was like, I think I'm a f*cking star! And the time that I felt like a star was when I was in Drag. In that moment, I thought, I am going to pursue Drag as a career. By the end of summer of 2017, I was doing competitions, and really thriving on the on the scene. I then started doing Drag full time and I've never looked back. It was the most amazing experience ever, I went from being someone who is not necessarily the most beautiful or typically gorgeous… I mean from our culture, in the queer society. There’s so much toxic masculinity and what people expect from you in theatre and in the queer community of what you should look like. Drag was the first thing that made me feel, beautiful and this daily confirmation of getting into Drag and seeing this beautiful creature was so impactful for me, it made me feel beautiful. It was really amazing for me. Granted, if you look back those pictures of 2016 it was… (Lagoona pulls a funny face) but I felt it. 

“To explain it a little more, the album is, well I like to call it a dream because each song is a fantasy”

You were feeling the fantasy, as long as you were feeling it, it’s fine! 
Right, that’s all that matters. A lot of people be feeling a lot of things and I'm like, okay sis, as long as you feel it right! HA! So yeah, musical theatre was my entrance to drag but it's transitioned into this amazing thing. It's everything that I've ever wanted to be.

You are of course, one third of Stephanie’s Child, are you proud of your sisters Jan and most recently Rose for how they did on Drag Race? 
Oh, absolutely. I'm so proud of them. It is amazing just to see them succeed. We are each other's biggest supporters. I helped as soon as Jan got the call, we were like, on it! What can we do to lift her up. It's the same thing with Rose I was really hands on in the creative process with putting her package together and helping her and, and it's been really amazing to watch her grow and to see them succeed on the show. They're my best friends. I you know, that being said, it is a little tricky being the last one to be on, there's a lot of expectation for me and I know from my fans. It’s been tricky to navigate, but I'm so proud of them, we love each other so much. We're always there for each other, it's more than just friendship. It's a sisterhood. 

It's been really amazing to see them thrive which has also pushed me to thrive as well. It's put a fire under my ass to work as hard as I can too, because I have to keep up. Just because I'm not afforded that opportunity yet doesn't mean won't happen. I don’t want people to think that I’m discouraged or that I am unhappy for them or not proud of them. There are a lot of people who have questioned ‘oh, are you jealous’ or ‘how does it feel to be the last one’ and as I said, there's a lot of pressure that comes along with it. But that being said, it's only the pressure, that push, that has pushed me to push myself forward and I'm really grateful for it. Because it's made me discover what I want to do with my drag and what I really like, what is Lagoona’s purpose? What is the thing that makes Lagoona stand out? And that’s my voice and my music, with the group and as a solo artist.

Moving onto your own music, were you always interested in making music or did this come with finding the art of drag?
I definitely had always dreamed of being a pop star. Growing in a really super evangelical Christian home, I was never allowed to listen to any sort of music. I had three albums that I listened to, like religiously. They were Britney’s first two albums, and Christina Aguilera’s first album, from third to sixth grade in school that's all that I listened to. There are some performances that I've watched of Britney and I remember as a kid that I would watch in secret, that was like, (Lagonna gasps and acts shocked), my friends wanted to be with Britney and I wanted to be Britney. In the back of my mind, I've always wanted to write and record and create pop music. However, growing up as a queer, chubby kid in the south, it didn't feel a reality. And then when I got into theatre, I was like, Oh, this is what it means. The dream had always been there to make music but Drag was the vessel that opened the world for me. Something that I love about Drag is that every single dream that I've ever had, to be on television to be, you know, featured in a singing competition, to sing in front of Simon Cowell, all these things that I've always wanted to do as David. I was able to do through Lagoona. And it's been an amazing experience. 

Now that I'm making music sometimes it feels surreal, it's always been my dream.

When making music how involved do you like to be in the process? (writing, producing etc). 
The entire process, every single part of it, me and my best friend met each other during the pandemic and it was kind of a right time, right place. I was making songs on my phone, literally singing into my voice notes and I showed him this little note, which was my first single ‘Greedy With My Love’, which was the first time I ever wrote, I wrote the entire thing. I showed it to him and he was listening to it and said ‘yep, I'm gonna make this for you, I want to make this’. Within a month, we recorded it and produced it in his apartment. It clicked, I thought, oh, wait, I can do this, this is a reality. And what's hilarious is that as we continue to work together, the songs just poured out of me. They just came out, it was easy. I mean, a lot of them were written in less than 10-15 minutes. It's amazing because it wasn't that I couldn't do it. It's just that I was not aware that I had the gumption…

Our interview is then interrupted by a giant fly! 

Oh, my God, it is so big ew go away. Oh, God. Okay, if I get disrupted that's why… so yeah.

I have been involved in every single process. I wrote 85% of the album, three of them completely by myself. I wrote all the vocals and all their harmonies for the interlude. And then for Hands for Bedroom Song, they were collaborations with Carson. And as far as sound, I had specific references for each track. I was there every second of the way, it was me and him. And that's it. That's how I want to continue. 

Some Pop stars especially in the 90s, were just shown songs, and then they record them, which is amazing. Don't get me wrong, but something that's really special to me is that I wrote these lyrics, these lyrics are a part of me. Someone didn't just write a cool song and I'm singing it. There's is a reason for this riff, there's a reason for this word. What I didn't realise is, in writing, there's a theme, if you listen from start to finish, it tells a story. It’s an entrance into the fantasy worlds, just the beginning of what Lagoona is and who Lagoona Bloo is, which is a fantasy. She's a dream world, for me it’s so interesting, because creating music was a dream and then going through the album, it is a dream. 

Let's talk about your latest release ‘Hands’. I must admit, literally even before we asked for the interview, I literally love it, it’s in my Spotify ‘On Repeat’ playlist at the top. I absolutely love it. 
Aww thank you, that means so much to me.

I swear hand on heart. I'm not just saying that, 100% it’s literally amazing but back to professional mode…
Thank you so much, no seriously. 

No worries at all it’s brilliant track. So ‘Hands’ what was the inspiration behind the track? 
To explain it a little more, the album is…well I like to call it a dream because each song is a fantasy. Each song on the album is situational, in the sense that this is how I would act in the in the situation. ‘Hands’ is really special to me, because it is the only one that is a personalised experience. It's the only track on the album that is based directly on what happened in my life. I was in a really short for a very brief relationship with this amazing person that I fell very quickly for, and I still care about him very much. I wish he could still be a part of my life. It’s hard because the song is about needing intimacy. I didn't realise this about myself, I love touch and intimacy, they are probably my first love language. And I was falling for this person who could not deliver that to me. It was incredibly difficult, it made me feel like it was my fault. ‘Hands’ is about the relationship and I keep referencing to the word dream and I mentioned that if you listen to the album, the word dream comes up a lot. And that song is the nightmare of the album, because it is the broken relationship. This person who is everything that I have ever wanted, except the most important love language that I need. It's about wanting to be touched, wanting to be felt. And at the same time, for them not being the right person for you but still you dream about them. We broke up a few months before the pandemic and I went through a period where I dreamt about him every single day. I mean the outro of Hands (Lagoona beautifully sings it to us) ‘I'm always seeing you in my dreams, one year later and I still see you in my dreams, in shining armor and you sweep me off my feet’ I wrote that in like 10 minutes. Carson got on the piano and it was just came out because it was real. It's in the intro and the outro bit, ‘I'm always seeing you in my dreams’. I mean, it was endless. And so there's a theme of this repetition, if you play it on loop, it's almost continues because that's how it felt. That's how it was.

And what's a gag is that I still feel that way about him. He's someone that I will always really care about, just because he's not the right guy doesn't mean that I still don't heartache about it. It makes me feel stupid, because it's like, wow, it was so brief, but I've never fell so fast. The thing that I love about it is that, I realised, oh, he gave me that, he gave me this incredible song that not only is personal to me, but I feel a lot of people can relate to. The thing that I love the most about ‘Hands’ is that people have reached out and said wow, these lyrics. Wow. I've resonated with this, Oh my god, I know exactly what this feels like, I know what it's like wanting to be with someone and they can't cross the line with you. It was very painful. But it was also very healing and cathartic. And it's one of my favourite tracks on the EP. 

That must be incredible to have people contact you over something that you've written, something that’s almost like an opening I guess to your diary. 
It is. I mean, seriously that's so funny that you say it's like a journal entry. Because that's how I describe it. The few people that I've talked to about ‘Hands’ is an entry into one of the many diaries of my heart. I remember I was talking to Alaska, and Alaska was like, ‘Why don’t you call it cracks in the ceiling’ and I was like no it's got to be a little more, you know... But the reason why that idea of cracks in the ceiling was because I would lay next to him and pray that we would like be physical or intimate. And, you know, he would kiss me on the cheek and turnover. And I would literally stare on a crack in the ceiling for hours before I fell asleep. And that's what every single line of the song is based on, what happened. I'm grateful for him. It hurts, but I'm grateful for him.

Describe the EP in three words. 
Sexual. Fantasy. Dreamworld. 

For most of my life, I was shamed for my sexuality, then when I came out. I've lost over 100 pounds in my life, I used to be a very heavy guy. I've gone through a lot of traumatising experiences being shamed by other men. So, for a long time, I felt shamed not only from home, from the church, from my family for my sexuality, but also in my sexual experiences. I've been shamed for just being who I am. The reason why it's so easy for me to write about these… I mean, there's some very forward songs, there's a track called Bedroom Song, and it is literally about getting f*cked, like literally. And there's a song called Game Boy, that is totally reference to all things, video games, the bridge is like, beat this pussy up like this Mortal Kombat, it’s the Call of Duty booty making come back. It's a sexy fantasy world and very bold and forward, but I love it. It's an expression of this inner sexy thing that I am finally being comfortable to express.

The track is from your upcoming debut EP AQUA, what can fans expect from this release?
I think fans can expect a totally realised world because if you listen to it from start to finish, it's just an entrance of who Lagoona is. They can expect just jams. I mean, it's the summer album. Imagine… for me, it's imagine all of your favourite pop divas, right…my favourites, each track is inspired by a different diva who's inspired me, so Greedy For My Love is very Dua Lipa for me and a little bit of Ariana Into You. You can expect a little bit of Carly Rae Jepsen, a little Gwen Stefani with the track Game Boy. And we get into Better Song and it is classic Ariana Grande Positions meets Oops, I did it again, by Britney. Then we get into Hands which is like the Robyn track. I mean, it is a pure pop album. I think Drag Queens are kind of put into a box of what Drag Queen music is, which is kind of a club track, very talking in a club maybe a lot of speaking over a track, maybe a campy track something that's really funny, but these songs are radio music. Something that I really want to do is push my music in, especially in the United States, because it hasn't happened yet other than RuPaul, to push into the mainstream, because it is…maybe I'm very biased, but it is so f*cking good. If you love pop music, you are going to LOVE Aqua, you're gonna have it playing on repeat because it is so f*cking good. 

Actually it's funny I was talking to Sum Ting Wong from season one of the UK Drag Race the other day and we were talking about her music and we were saying that exact same thing, this is sort of like pouring your heart out rather than just doing the usual typical Drag Songs. Sum Ting Wong wanted to write something that wasn't that, yes they are a Drag Queen but it doesn't have to mean that your music has to be pushed into a genre or type you can still write meaningful lyrics, not saying those songs aren’t but...
Exactly, you know what's interesting is that as I've been doing these interviews, I've had to really choose my words carefully because I don't want to invalidate that music, that music is powerful, that music is amazing, there is an amazing world for that. But I think because every Ru-girl comes out with a track like that, I think Drag Queens have, not that we've limited ourselves but there's a stereotype for what people expect of us. And so I agree fully. It's interesting because I always try to be careful with the way that I choose my words in saying that I want to push it forward because I don't want to ever invalidate anyone's art, that is never my T. But I do want to change people's minds, I want to push it into something that people don't expect. I want to raise the bar a little bit. I want to surprise people, I want people to listen to this and go, WHOA. Literally whenever I show it to people the reaction generally is good, people say this is actually really good. But I want to be careful with the way I say it. 

Of course, I do 100% get that and I get where you're coming from because like I said, I wasn't lying when I said ‘Hands’ is in the top my tracks, I think sometimes the issue with the stereotypical Drag songs is that there's a time and a place and you have to be in that mood, I guess that the same for any type of music, but what I mean is especially with ‘Hands’, I can listen to it again and again and again, it can come on and I won’t be like oh here comes the Drag song and if I'm at the traffic lights having to go ooop, skip, because I'm looking at the person next to me giving me a look. I can listen to ‘Hands’ and as you said with all those pop divas, it could easily be one of their songs. 
Thank you (Lagoona then sings beautifully) That literally means the world to meeee.

I would sing back but my voice is dreadful. So with the EP, if there was one person dead or alive that you could have feature, who would it be.
It would have to be either Ariana Grande or Kim Petrus. Those two are like my dream collaborators. I've been so inspired by Ariana simply because I love that she is making music that she wants to make. And the same thing with Kim, Kim is like breaking boundaries in the music industry, they're both iconic. I love their voices, I love their music. I'm very inspired by them. 

Oh my god. Yeah. I mean, I think Kim Petrus. Kim or Ariana. That's the T b*tch. Oh my God, I would gag or die. Those two are just my dream collaborators. I mean, who knows, I mean, you know what? I'm just gonna put it in the universe. I'm just gonna be like, F*ck, yeah, one day one day.

I mean can you imagine the trio, the three of you? 
I would die. Can you imagine, Like F-you old Stephanie’s Child Hello, new Stephanies Child. 

You wouldn't make it to the track, you would die and they would have to do it in memory of you.
LITERALLY! Oh, my goodness, yeah, that would be a dream.

Would you ever tour the UK? 
I do have some really cool projects in the work works. There have there have been talks about an Aqua tour, I don't know if it will happen just quite yet. But that being said, absolutely within the next few years I will be touring original music, and the UK is absolutely one of the stops that I'm planning to go to.

Any last shout outs?
The person I have to thank and shout out to is my incredible producer and best friend, his name is Six Foot 5, he is incredible, Carson is his name. He was the first person to listen to a song of mine and say, Yes. Every time I have an idea, I'm like, ooh, what about this? Or what about this line? It's always, yes. There's never a no. He always just endlessly believed in me. We've known each other for a year. He believed in me and we created this album. He believed in me. He was like, F*ck, yeah, let's do it. I love you. Let's do it and he's invested in me. I don't know, where or what I would do without him and it's funny, cuz he's like, oh, you'd be fine. I'm like, b*tch, it would not sound the way this sounds. Because the production quality is really incredible. He is amazing, I have to shout him out.

I also have to shout out my roommate Sarah. She's literally, my sister. She might as well be my Drag Mom.

I have to shout out my manager, Jackie. She has helped me really push, really pushing me to work harder than I've ever worked. It's been a lot of hard work but I'm doing it. So yeah, those three.

You can listen to Lagoona Bloo on Spotify here.

AQUA will be released 18th May.

To find Lagoona Bloo on Instagram click here.

Image credit - Robert Postotnik

Note: Some of this interview has been edited from the original transcript to help with readability.