Perfume Genius Talks with Jia Tolentino, and Anthony Lane Examines Outbreaks in the Movies

Summary

---

Episode Overview

Podcast: The New Yorker Radio Hour
Episode Title: Perfume Genius Talks with Jia Tolentino, and Anthony Lane Examines Outbreaks in the Movies
Date: May 19, 2020
Host: David Remnick

This episode explores two main topics:

1. Anthony Lane, film critic for The New Yorker, joins David Remnick to discuss “plague movies” and how cinematic depictions of outbreaks resonate in the age of COVID-19.
2. Writer Gia Tolentino interviews musician Mike Hadreas, known as Perfume Genius, about his creative process, identity, and emotional journey reflected in his latest album, Set My Heart On Fire Immediately.

---

I. Anthony Lane on Outbreaks in the Movies

Introduction to the Segment

• David Remnick introduces Anthony Lane, noting his “binge” watching of 20-30 films about pandemics and plague ([00:21]).

Revisiting “Contagion” (2011)

• Main Points:

  • The Soderbergh film Contagion has surged in popularity during real-world pandemic.
  • Lane ranks Contagion highly among pandemic movies ([01:02]).
  • Noted for its realism: “You just… sit there and go, that’s right, they do that… don’t touch that credit card.” (Anthony Lane, [01:10]).
  • Clip played illustrating everyday transmission risks.

• Film Critique:

  • “One of the strange things about the film is it’s very scary. It’s well put together, but it can’t resist the upswing at the end… the finding of the vaccine by the brilliant young scientist. … It doesn’t pay much attention in the end to what a search for a vaccine is gonna look like. It’s an interesting case of the Hollywood ending needing to improve on life…” (Anthony Lane, [02:38]).

The Classic: “Faust” (1926)

• Relevance and Insights:
  • F.W. Murnau’s Faust is discussed as a reflection made in the shadow of the Spanish flu ([03:28]).
  • Key Point: The film visualizes plague as almost supernatural vengeance: “There’s a biblical sense, that of possible vengeance, that you have earned this by being irresponsible citizens.” (Anthony Lane, [04:00]).
  • Lane notes Murnau’s interest in darkness and redemption, with Faust making a deal with the devil “for quite altruistic reasons—he wants to be the sort of person who can cure a plague…” ([04:43]).

“Panic in the Streets” (1950)

• Synopsis & Themes:

  • Elia Kazan’s Panic in the Streets is highlighted as essential pandemic cinema ([05:55]).
  • Infectious disease meets crime procedural: a corpse with pneumonic plague sets off a race to contain both the criminal and the outbreak.

• Insightful Commentary:

  • Lane remarks on the film’s focus on working people, skepticism about public information, and contemporary relevance about misinformation and press freedoms.
  • “Rich Widmark is fantastic because he’s doing good...but he’s not a do-gooder...he tells people off...with a kind of sneer and a snarl, as if he really means this.” (Anthony Lane, [06:14]).

• Notable Quote:

  • “We’re all in a community. The same one.” – Film clip, underscoring the film’s resonance today ([08:34]).

Reflections on Pandemic Films vs. Real Life

• Lane compares cinematic pandemic with real-life quarantine, noting a lack of focus on daily tedium, confusion, and personal isolation in film: “Where’s the lockdown bit? Where’s the boredom bit? … There’s almost none of that.” (Anthony Lane, [08:39]).
• “Who wants more of that at the moment? You can get that at home.” – (Lane & Remnick, [09:17])
• Lane jokes about longing for the return of movie theaters: “I need James Bond in November, come what may.” ([09:24])

---

II. Perfume Genius (Mike Hadreas) with Gia Tolentino

Opening Context

• Gia Tolentino describes Perfume Genius’s music evolution and discusses the context of the COVID-19 pandemic around the album’s release ([10:38]).

Creative Process Amidst Quarantine

• Hadreas’s Reflection:
  • “The hardest part is that I had envisioned this whole way that this was supposed to go… That required people and it required being right and it required leaving. And so now I’m trying to figure out a way—how can I have that same energy, but just like with In My Bedroom or something.” (Mike Hadreas, [10:43])

Evolution of Sound

• Tolentino traces Hadreas’s sound from “sad, intimate, bedroom pop” in his debut Learning (2010) to the “rock album” textures of Set My Heart on Fire Immediately ([11:10]–[12:08]).
• Hadreas on Classic Influences:
  • “I kind of was inhabiting classic ideas and classic ways of, like, of singing. And that felt really satisfying, but there’s also this, like, undercurrent of something else or something supernatural, or, you know, kind of trying to meet those two things.” ([12:50])
  • On American classic pop and swagger: “Felt like there was always not completely room for me in the music, but inhabiting that specific, like, map and the swagger… felt good… to be singing about the things I care about.” ([13:22])

Queerness in Music

• Essence and Challenge of Queer Identity:

  • “It’s essential to me… but… I don’t want that to be, like, a barrier to me being able to have other people listen to it… sometimes that is, like, a sacrifice to… how smart and technical and, like, actually deliberately I’m making this good music, you know?” (Mike Hadreas, [14:59])
  • Yet, “the emotional content is honestly way more important to me. And being a queer musician… is way more important to me.” ([15:28])

• Expression of Community:

  • “I just want to grab like 10 people and… buy a big ranch and live with them and just make our own world. But then I’m leaving behind a bunch of people that don’t have the luxury of leaving… I need to stay and be helpful.” ([15:54])

Personal History and Transformation

• Tolentino recounts Hadreas’s trauma and bullying as an openly gay high schooler and how his music has been a vehicle for processing pain and seeking freedom ([16:18]).
• Hadreas on emotional progress:
  • “Every record is kind of like aspirational… I wanted to be really like more liberated and free…but it was kind of aspirational… now I kind of feel like that more.” ([17:56])
  • “I think I feel all those phases less now than I used to and consciously maybe. … I don’t really feel like I need to do that anymore.” ([18:40])

The Audience’s Experience

• Music as Companionship:
  • “If I make a song where two things that are competing are existing at the same time... I make, like, four minutes where they can be just next to each other… it just makes you feel less lonely for four minutes. And that’s what I hope.” (Mike Hadreas, [19:41])
• Notable Song Example:
  • On the final track’s meaning: “The whole idea of that song is that all the stuff that I think I’m reaching for and trying to access and longing for and trying to go to, what if it’s ultimately nothing? … but also... in that song is that other people are with me. And if this is all there is, then, you know, I want to be with you. There’s just okayness to it not being okay.” ([19:53]–[20:49])

Overarching Theme

• Tolentino closes by relating the music’s drive for equilibrium and meaning to the collective feeling of living through uncertain times: “There is this sense, I think, for all of us that, you know, all we have is what’s in front of us. All we have are the little moments of kindness that other people are extending to us... and it’s gotta be enough.” ([20:57])

---

Notable Quotes

• “Where’s the lockdown bit? Where’s the boredom bit? … There’s almost none of that.”
  — Anthony Lane ([08:39])

• “Felt like there was always not completely room for me in the music, but inhabiting that specific, like, map and the swagger of some of that singing and how they’re really ultra vulnerable, but also have this really intense command and confidence at the same time. Felt good. And it felt good to be singing about the things I care about.”
  — Mike Hadreas ([13:22])

• “If I make a song where two things that are competing are existing at the same time… it just makes you feel less lonely for four minutes. And that’s what I hope.”
  — Mike Hadreas ([19:41])

• “There’s just okayness to it not being okay.”
  — Mike Hadreas ([20:49])

---

Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:21] – Anthony Lane discusses binge-watching outbreak movies
• [01:02] – Lane and Remnick discuss Contagion’s prescience
• [03:28] – Lane recommends Faust (1926) as a plague movie
• [05:55] – Panic in the Streets is discussed
• [08:39] – Reflection on how real pandemic life differs from the movies
• [10:38] – Gia Tolentino introduces Perfume Genius segment
• [12:08] – Discussion of new album’s sound and influences
• [13:22] – Exploring classic pop structures as a queer artist
• [14:59] – Queerness in music: essential or reductive?
• [16:18] – Processing trauma through music
• [17:56] – Transformation from aspirational to realized liberation
• [19:41] – Music as a space where contradictions can coexist
• [20:49] – Acceptance and connection in the face of uncertainty

---

Concluding Thoughts

The episode deftly weaves together the onscreen and personal narratives of confronting crisis—whether through pandemic cinema that reveals both our anxieties and our cinematic desires for tidy endings, or Perfume Genius’s artful negotiation of trauma and identity in song. Both segments grapple with emotions of fear, hope, and community, ultimately seeking meaning and solace amid upheaval.

Transcript

[Narrator]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co production of WNYC studios and the New Yorker.

[David Remnick]

Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

[Anthony Lane]

David?

[Mike Hadrius]

Hi, Anthony.

[David Remnick]

This is your first zoom call.

[Anthony Lane]

This is my first zoom call and maybe my last. You know, Evie had to help, so that's what children are for.

[David Remnick]

Usually when I get a recommendation from one of our writers, it's something like, here's three good history books to take to the beach, or here's everything you need to know about soundcloud rap. But when I called Anthony Lane the other day, he just finished a binge of movies about plague and pandemics. How many films did you watch or watch part of together?

[Anthony Lane]

I watched as many as geekhole of. I suppose about 20 or 30. And those are the ones which are basically about disease. Comes into a lot of movies, but it doesn't hang around. In fact, one of the first signs that the, the pandemic of pandemic movies was starting to happen was when everybod started to watch Contagion again, which is the Steven Soderbergh film.

[David Remnick]

Now, do you rank Contagion pretty highly?

[Anthony Lane]

I do. I mean, people now saying, oh, I liked it all along, whereas in fact, they weren't that key in the first place. But now it's very hard to watch in a, in a stand back way because you just, you do tend to sit there and go, that's right, they do that. But that's exactly what you do, you know, don't touch that credit card.

[David Remnick]

Did this one make your top three or four?

[Anthony Lane]

Oh, yeah.

[David Remnick]

So let's listen to a little excerpt.

[Anthony Lane]

Yeah, this is, this is contagion. Hello?

[Actor (Contagion Clip)]

Hello, Mr. Barnes?

[Anthony Lane]

Yes.

[Actor (Contagion Clip)]

This is Dr. Mears from the Centers for Disease Control. Hi. I believe you may have had contact with Beth Emhoff last week.

[Mike Hadrius]

Yeah, I picked her up at the airport.

[Anthony Lane]

What's this about?

[Actor (Contagion Clip)]

How are you feeling today?

[Mike Hadrius]

Pretty cruddy, to be honest.

[Interviewer]

Head is pounding.

[Mike Hadrius]

I probably picked up some sort of bug.

[Actor (Contagion Clip)]

Where are you right now?

[Mike Hadrius]

I'm on the bus heading to work.

[Actor (Contagion Clip)]

I'd like you to get off immediately.

[Mike Hadrius]

Wait, what. What's going on?

[Actor (Contagion Clip)]

Where, where, where's the bus?

[Gia Tolentino]

Aaron?

[Anthony Lane]

Blake and Lindale, can you tell me what's going on?

[Actor (Contagion Clip)]

Blake and Lindale, I really need you to get off that bus. Listen, it's quite possible you come in contact with an infectious disease and that you're highly contagious. Do you understand? I want you to get off now.

[Gia Tolentino]

And stay away from other people.

[Mike Hadrius]

No, no.

[Interviewer]

What do I Do.

[Actor (Contagion Clip)]

Don't talk to anyone. Don't touch anyone. That's the most important thing. We'll send somebody to meet the bus. Okay, I'm on my way to you now.

[Narrator]

Aaron.

[David Remnick]

Looks like he gave the disease to about 14 people on the way off the bus. Coughing, gripping the pole.

[Anthony Lane]

Yeah, the pole. It is very clever in a way that it's very good on surfaces, and it educates you into things that we do know now, anyway. But that actually counts as one of the more relaxing parts of the film, I'd say, you know, but there is one of the strange things about the film is it's very scary. It's well put together, but it can't resist the upswing at the end. It can't resist the finding of the vaccine by the brilliant young scientist. And given what care the rest of the film has taken to try and reproduce the ways in which these things actually do pass and mutate, it doesn't pay much attention in the end to what a search for a vaccine is gonna look like. It's an interesting case of the Hollywood ending needing to improve on life rather than reproduce its every fear.

[David Remnick]

Anthony, is there a second film that we should look at?

[Anthony Lane]

There's about 20 other films you should look at, but I think there's one going back a long, long way. And this is Faust. Faust from 1926, directed by F.W. mournau. And I was watching this thinking it would. As it would be a historical, you know, curiosity. But Moonau, he was making it in the shadow of the recent Spanish flu. So people actually had been thinking about plague not long before. Plague plays a major part in it because one of the first things that happens is that Mephisto, who's taken a. You know, in a proper life and death struggle with archangels, has said, look, I can. I can strike this town down. Let's see how we go look. So what he does is to bring plague into a town. There's a wonderful famous image of Mephisto looming over this little German town, and the plague creeps in. We see the plague creeping in and people starting to keel over from it. And what's interesting, of course, is we see people having fun when the plague strikes. You know, you see, as in all medieval films, people do nothing but tumble and do acrobatics. But the idea of this idea of fun being cut short. People are always enjoying themselves when the plague strikes. Therefore, there's a biblical sense, that of possible vengeance, that you have earned this by being irresponsible citizens. Faust is in Some ways indebted to that. But it becomes, as always with Murnau, as in Nosferatu, which he'd made a few years before, he's very interested in the way that darkness can creep upon us, and also in the way that light can flare out and defeat it. Faust, who's thought of as a wise man with skills and medical skills in the town, is asked to come and help, and then says that he can't help. The plague is insuperable. He would need to have greater powers. Cue the powers. And so, in other words, the deal with the devil is made for quite altruistic reasons. He wants to be the sort of person who can cure a plague, which I think is. It has a certain twist to it. In the first place, if there is a movie, I think, which after having trawled through quite a fair number of these, if there is a movie that you should see, because it's in itself a good movie, regardless of the circumstance which we find ourselves. That's Panic in the Streets, the Alar Kazan movie from 1950.

[Actor (Panic in the Streets Clip)]

Here with recorded is the story of a silent, savage menace. How for three days, a great American city found itself outside the United States of America. The events, incidents and emotions of the people who were a part of it, who found time running out as they looked into the face of mortal peril.

[Anthony Lane]

So it's before Streetcar and before on the Waterfront, but he's already interested in working people and in their ordinary lives. And that matters a great deal in the film. So a guy comes ashore from a boat in New Orleans, and he's. He's shot and dies. But at the autopsy, they realized, in fact, he's had pneumonic plague. It then becomes, you've got to find the baddie who shot him. Not in order. Not just because he's committed a crime, but because he may be infectious. And if the baddie in. In this case is played by Jack Palance, you're thinking, oh, Jack Palance. He's basically like the virus, just in a black shirt. I mean, he's sort of. You know, he looks like. He doesn't look like he's uninfected in the first place. He's infected with, you know, with being Jack Palance. And so Rich Widmark, who's the doctor with the public health, comes in, finds that and starts to immediately take action. And the really interesting twist is the extreme skepticism that Widmark shows towards public information, because in this case, if you publicize it, Jack palace is going to skip down. So there's quite a lot about press freedom, interestingly in this. And Widmark is fantastic because he's doing. He's doing good in the film, but he's not a do gooder. And when he tells people off for kind of thinking in a. For thinking in too naive a way, as he does politicians and mayors and other cops and so forth, he does so with a kind of sneer and a snarl, as if he really means this. And he knows because he knows what's at stake. So it stops the film from becoming sappy. And I think we're gonna see a clip.

[Actor (Panic in the Streets Clip)]

There's no reason for panic. Our only chance for full cooperation, Clint, is to inform the public. You agree?

[Anthony Lane]

No.

[Actor (Panic in the Streets Clip)]

The minute he prints it, the men we're looking for will leave the city. Now, I've told you once and I'll tell you again. Anyone leaving here with. With plague endangers the entire country. The entire country hasn't got it. We have. A woman died here last night. This problem lies right here in our own community. Community? What community? Do you think you're living in the Middle Ages? Oh, come now. Anybody that leaves here can be in any city in the country within 10 hours. I could leave here today and I could be in Africa tomorrow, and whatever disease I had would go right with me. I know that. Then think of it when you're talking about communities. We're all in a community. The same one.

[David Remnick]

Wow, that is resonant. What is the upshot of watching all these films?

[Anthony Lane]

In all honesty, I thought there was some. Fine. There was some wonderful films here, and so there's wonderful bits of films as well. But I also. Because inevitably you sit there comparing it with the experience we're all going through in our various ways at the moment. You sit through thinking, well, where's the lockdown bit? Where's the boredom bit? Where's the confusing public signals? Where's our experience of this? Where's the thing when you can't go across town and see your. Your aged parent or your. Or the kids can't see their grandparents? There's almost none of that. And I can see why. Because watching two hours of people in a household not getting on with each other, you know, who wants more of that at the moment?

[David Remnick]

Yeah, you can get that at home.

[Anthony Lane]

You can get that at home. Exactly.

[David Remnick]

So let's let the real life movie end soon so we can watch these.

[Anthony Lane]

Exactly. So we can all go out to an actual movie theater and get lots of health, giving sodas. And then, because you know, James Bond has already been delayed once. It's supposed to be November, and if it's any longer than that, we've suffered enough. I need James Bond in November, come what may.

[David Remnick]

Anthony Lane, thank you so much.

[Anthony Lane]

Thank you so much, Dave.

[David Remnick]

Anthony Lane is the New Yorker's film critic, and you can read his essay Our Fever for plague [e-mail] more to come. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Gia Tolentino is a staff writer and the author of last year's bestseller, Trick Mirror. Music is one of Gia's great passions, and for years she's been following Mike Hadrius, who records under the name Perfume Genius. He has an album just out called Set My Heart on Fire immediately. Gia Tolentino talked with Perfume Genius recently.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I mean, first, like, how are you? What's the vibe like?

[Mike Hadrius]

I don't know. I got the hardest part is that I had envisioned this whole way that this was supposed to go and even visually how I was going to feel, how I was going to be. You know, that required people and it required being right and it required leaving. And so now I'm trying to figure out a way, how can I. How can I have that same energy? But just like with In My Bedroom or something.

[Gia Tolentino]

I've been a fan of Perfume Genius for a long time. I remember listening to his first album, which was called Learning and Learning came out in 2010. And I think that one of the songs that people still talk about from it is the third track, Mr. Peterson. It's a really sad song. It's about a relationship with a teacher.

[Mike Hadrius (singing)]

He'll let me smoke weed in his.

[Actor (Panic in the Streets Clip)]

Truck.

[Mike Hadrius (singing)]

If I could convince of my love to know love.

[Gia Tolentino]

And things get really dark. But the song, almost like it sounds like Seven Swans era, Sufjan Stevens. It sounds like Here Comes the Sun, sort of this really, really intimate, really carefully written bedroom pop. He sounded different then than he does now. His new album is called Set My Heart On Fire immediately.

[Interviewer]

And.

[Gia Tolentino]

And it's a rock album. There are a couple of songs in it that seem to reference this 50s Roy Orbison, Elvis kind of thing. There's. There's kind of a 90s grunge sound. One of the 50s leaning songs is Whole Life, and it begins with this sort of beautiful instrumental that then breaks into the vocals where he's singing in this, like, almost swaggering way.

[Mike Hadrius (singing)]

Half of my own life is done.

[Mike Hadrius]

I kind of was inhabiting classic ideas and classic ways of, like, of singing. And that felt really Satisfying, but there's also this, like, undercurrent of something else or something supernatural or, you know, kind of trying to meet those two things.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I mean, the, like, the sort of Elvis Y thing that you're doing a lot on the album. Like, as you were writing for this album, as you were putting it together, what was like, can you tell me more about feeling that vibe build, that sort of. Those sort of, like, old Americana structures?

[Mike Hadrius]

I think a lot is just because that's music I've listened to my whole life. I still carry it around all the time, but felt like there was always not completely room for me in the music, but inhabiting that specific, like, map and the swagger of some of that singing and how they're really ultra vulnerable, but also have this really intense command and confidence at the same time. Felt good. And it felt good to be singing about the things I care about.

[Mike Hadrius (singing)]

Don't you know you're Queen? We are.

[Gia Tolentino]

Perfume Genius. Real name is Mike Hadrias. He is now 38, and the world of his music is a sort of implicitly and explicitly queer universe. One of the songs that I think he's best known for is the song Queen off of the album Too Bright. At one point, he sings, don't yout Know youw Queen. Cracked, peeling, riddled with disease.

[Mike Hadrius (singing)]

Don't you know you.

[Gia Tolentino]

It's this playful, like, sumptuous kind of rejoinder to these narratives about queer bodies. And it's this, like, lush, like, incredibly strong taunt. It's amazing.

[Interviewer]

Do you find it, like, classifying your music as. Do you find that reductive, or do you find that, like, essential?

[Mike Hadrius]

It's essential to me, but. And I have no problem with that at all. People do. And I don't want that to be, like, a barrier to me being able to have other people listen to it. I mean, it's just the flip side to everything. It's like, I talk about the content of my music all the time, and then I feel like sometimes that is, like, a sacrifice to. To how smart and technical and, like, actually deliberately I'm making this good music, you know?

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Mike Hadrius]

But at the same time, the emotional content is honestly way more important to me. And being a queer musician than that idea and talking about those things is way more important to me.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I was reading something in an interview where you. When you were talking about kind of the freedom of. Not, like, kind of desiring the freedom of not needing to convince people of your right and ability to do what you're already doing, well, I Mean, it's.

[Mike Hadrius]

Even like bleed into my daily life where I just want to grab like 10 people and like move to like a. Buy a big ranch and live with them and just make our own world. But then I'm leaving behind a bunch of people that don't have the luxury of leaving, like, you know, and I need to stay and be helpful to the people that can't just like, you know, go to the desert and roll around with me.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Gia Tolentino]

So I interviewed Hadrias actually before his last album, no Shape came out. And I still remember this. You know, something he told me at that interview, which is that when he was a young teenager, the world gave him this idea of himself that he found really hard to shake. He was the only openly gay student at his high school. He was bullied pretty brutally. He was beat up, and he. He dealt with a lot of trauma. And there's this really interesting way in which you can see his whole trajectory as a musician as a way of processing and getting free of this trauma. The first albums were very inward. They were cathartic and, you know, all the pain was right there on the surface. And that's what it was. To Bright, the third album, you started to hear him become defiant. And then his last album, no Shape, which came out in 2017, it felt like this really profound breakthrough. And it began with this song called Other side that contains this almost surprise moment of exaltation and joy in a way that hadn't really come into his music before.

[Mike Hadrius (singing)]

From the Other side.

[Gia Tolentino]

It was like watching a chandelier shatter. When that moment kicks in.

[Mike Hadrius]

I feel like every record is kind of like aspirational. Like, yeah, I wanted to be really like more liberated and free, but it was kind of aspirational that I wanted those feelings. And so I was thinking about them and reaching for them, and now I kind of feel like that more.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, In a couple of interviews you talked about that, like kind of 12 year old idea of yourself being so kind of sticky that like, for a while it prevented you from seeing either how you've changed or how the world's changed. That, you know, this image was just sort of dominant. And I. And I was wondering if you still feel like that, if you still feel like those. Do you feel all of those selves with you?

[Mike Hadrius]

I think I feel all those phases less now than I used to and consciously maybe. I think I felt like I had to keep them all heavy on my mind to try to warm them up and soften them and make them feel better for a while. And I don't really feel like I need to do that anymore.

[Interviewer]

Do you think about how you want your music to make people feel, or do you just let that happen?

[Mike Hadrius]

I do. I mean, I want them. I mean, I guess I want them to feel like I do. But then because. Because it's been so freeing for me to, like. Like, if I make a song where. Where two things that are competing are existing at the same time, and I've been told my whole life that I have to just pick one, but then I make, like, four minutes where they can be just next to each other.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Mike Hadrius]

I mean, it doesn't fix anything or solve anything, but it just makes you feel less lonely for four minutes. And that's what I hope.

[Interviewer]

Can you give me an example of those two things that that would be.

[Mike Hadrius]

I mean, like, the last song on this record is very sad. It's probably, to me right now, the saddest song that I've ever made. But, I mean, there's some. Some sweetness and hope to it. I mean, the whole idea of that song is that all the stuff that I think I'm reaching for and trying to access and longing for and trying to go to, what if it's ultimately nothing?

[Mike Hadrius (singing)]

No, God, not this time.

[Mike Hadrius]

Like, I wasn't anywhere before this, and I'm not going anywhere after, you know, but also in that song is that other people are with me. And if this is all there is, then, you know, I want to be with you.

[Mike Hadrius (singing)]

Just be here, Jamie.

[Mike Hadrius]

There's just okayness to it not being okay.

[Gia Tolentino]

There's this sense throughout this whole new album of Hadrius sort of willing himself into an equilibrium in the midst of things that might feel chaotic or uncontrollable or sad. And, you know, there's a very obvious correspondence between that movement, that sort of movement and that sort of effort and the kind of experience of being alive right now. There is this sense, I think, for all of us that, you know, all we have is what's in front of us. All we have are the little moments of kindness that other people are extending to us and that we can extend to other people, and it's gotta be enough.

[David Remnick]

Staff writer Gia Tolentino talking with Mike Hadrius, who records his perfume Genius. His new album is Set My Heart on Fire immediately. I'm David Remnick and thanks for joining us this week. See you next time.

[Mike Hadrius (singing)]

I thought the sea would make some. I don't know.

[Narrator]

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbus of Tune Yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Botin, Ave Carrillo, Rhiannon Corby, Callalea, David Krasnow, Caroline, Lester Gofen, Mputubwele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses and Stephen Valentino, with help from Allison McAdam, Morgan Flannery, Danny Bonner, Meng Fei Chen and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Tsarina Endowment Fund.