All By Herself

This genderfluid, muscle fem pop singer admits that she has never had a real relationship. “I’ve gone on many dates, but despite my wanting to be in a relationship, I have never quite reached that level of connection with another person,” the artist known as Queen SirJET explains.

She makes clear that she is alone but not lonely. Queen SirJET has learned to embrace life’s sadness, the same way she embraces life’s joy, and she hopes her new single, “Stay with Me,” inspires listeners to do the same. “Sadness is part of the process in everything we experience,” she continues. “You can’t find true happiness until you find who you are without it, and that is only found through grief and isolation.”

It is why every song the artist writes showcases the power of sadness; and also why she recently changed her name from Sir JET to Queen SirJET. “People often ask me what it is exactly that I think I’m the queen of. I’m not a queen because I think I’m fierce, or because I’m the ruler of a certain population,” she clarifies. “I’m a queen in the sense that I have mastered sorrow and solitude. I am the queen of sadness and my songs are a reflection of that.”

She says that she was the quintessential bullied kid as a youth. “As a teenager, I had no friends. I didn’t have the opportunity to develop social skills so as an adult, people thought I was odd and off putting. In the early stages of my music career, gay media tore me apart for being a typical gay muscle guy but then when I finally came into my own as a cross-dresser, they said I was too different to be relatable.”

Queen SirJET says that an undying pattern throughout her life has been “you’re just not what we’re looking for.” She says it was from the constant rejection that “Stay with Me” came to be: “When you’ve been told so many times, everywhere you go, that you don’t belong, you eventually break and simply resign yourself to being alone.”

“Stay with Me” is a mid-tempo, electronic song, and in it, the artist dives into her psyche, asking soulful questions that she often ponders about in real life. Quandries like: is she a good person?

“I do sometimes wonder if my motives are pure and if I’m putting other’s needs before my own. Did I say the wrong thing to that person? Should I have given more when I noticed someone was hurting? I don’t always know how to put my feelings into words.”

She admits she is also guilty of not giving herself emotionally to a person in the same way she gives to them physically. “All too often, what I offer to the person lying next to me is my body and sexual gratification when what they really need is an empathetic hand.”

Queen SirJET grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and later Scottsdale, Arizona with her two parents and older sister. She was a two-year-old male who wanted to play with dolls and wear sparkly leotards that grew into a teenager who despised his body hair and his changing voice. A doctor diagnosed her as having a mental disorder, gender dysmorphia, and put her on anti-depressants.

“It wasn’t until I was 28, living on my own in Hollywood, when I began to understand it was safe to come out of hiding,” Queen SirJET says. She bleached her hair like her idol Marie Fredrikkson of Roxette, and started wearing female clothing and painting her nails.

She was thrilled to finally escape the heteronormative world, and she embraced her new identity in her music, releasing her first EP dedicated to her gender fluidity, Shout-out to the Lonely, in 2012. The title track featured an elaborate video directed by Madonna’s former back-up dancer, Carlton Wilburn. In 2020, she released her first full-length album with a music video that paid homage to famous gender-fluid singers who embody the spirit of empowerment.

Last year, she released “Alive”, her first single with producer Velvet Code. “Stay with Me” is their fourth collaboration.

“In the end, ‘Stay with Me’ is about recognizing that not everything in life is sunshine and rainbows,” Queen SirJET reflects. “Emotions are all temporary, so there’s no shame in giving in to the dark side from time to time. We can be happy later and fully feel our grief now. I tend to be a lone wolf myself, so this song was my way of coming to terms with the fact that I might always be. In other words, I’m ok with my own loneliness.”

Queen SirJET’s “Stay with Me” is being distributed by So Fierce Music is available now on Apple Music, Spotify, and all digital platforms. Follow Queen SirJET on Instagram.