With this new instalment of Dazed Does Room Service, we hang out with Hayley Kiyoko, the queer pop artist who swept up 20Gayteen. In a year of Troye Sivan’s bottoming anthem “Bloom”, the intimate queerness of Brockhampton’s “Something About Him”, and Janelle Monae’s glorious Dirty Computer, Kiyoko gave us the soul-affirming, defiantly gay album Expectations. An album highlight includes the urgent teen romance dream “What I Need” with another Dazed fave Kehlani. With wall-to-wall bangers and ballads, Kiyoko explores identity and the soaring heights of queer love and lust.
In the last while, she’s bagged the MTV VMA for Push Artist of the Year, a fan choice award, and embarked on a huge US tour, then popped up on Panic! At the Disco’s as well as Taylor Swift’s arena shows. Most recently, she picked up a GLAAD nomination. The Los Angeles musician is currently touring Europe, with a spot at this summer’s Reading and Leeds festivals. 2019, Hayley Kiyoko is coming for you.
Kiyoko’s fanbase is deeply passionate, their love for her a testament to the need for artists that are disrupting music with LGBTQ narratives of love, loss and light. And, of course, for driving pop bops. In this episode of Dazed Does Room Service, we chill in Kiyoko’s London hotel room and over some salmon, soup and veg, we talk family, her love of Japan, her onstage aesthetic, drunk pizza and getting hangry.