Courtesy of the artist; photo credit: Natalie Osborne

For years, Fancy Hagood faced prejudice and pop detours. Now he’s back to country music, and finally feeling less alone.

Listen to an audio postcard of Fancy Hagood narrating his journey to hard-won creative freedom as a queer country-pop singer-songwriter

LGBTQ+ performers and fans are enjoying greater visibility than they have in the past. And one of the more rippling, resonant tenor voices in the mix is that of country-pop’s Fancy Hagood.

Unlike many of the queer artists that he now counts as kindred spirits and occasional collaborators, he didn’t come up in an underground scene or a separate space — he beelined for Nashville in the late 2000s with his sights set on proving himself, and his handsome, rousing melodies as mainstream material.

I sat down with him to talk about navigating an industry that wasn’t ready for that. You can hear a postcard in his voice above, and find the longform Q&A at Variety.

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