Fancy Hagood on Reclaiming His Path as a Gay Country Artist, After Fleeting Pop Success: ‘I Do It for Queer People to See Themselves in a Story’

Long before Chappell Roan debuted her new country song, “The Giver,” on “SNL” and leaned into the camera to exert lesbian ownership of country-style expression, Fancy Hagood was committed to carving out space for queerness in country music. Earlier this year, he started covering Roan’s song “Casual,” joking that her unabashed lyrics had finally freed him up to sing about oral sex. And that’s just the latest Nashville taboo that he’s broken.

Hagood grew up in small-town Arkansas, and left for Nashville in the late 2000s to launch himself into stardom. Soon after, he came out as gay, which proved a barrier to his ambitions, in spite of how he showcased his rippling tenor voice and gift for crafting stirring, ardent melodies on stages and in songwriting sessions alike. He’s spent almost half of his 33 years confronting the narrow imagination of the music industry, not only in the country realm, but the pop mainstream too.  

His has been a sometimes promising, often defeating journey through homophobic rejection, fleeting Top 40 success — complete with Ariana Grande and Meghan Trainor co-signs and appearances on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” and “Dancing With the Stars” — and forging like-minded community in country music, as evidenced by his recent casting in Orville Peck’s cover of “Rhinestone Cowboy” alongside TJ Osborne and Waylon Payne. On the other side, Hagood’s made his way to a keenly openhearted sophomore album, “American Spirit,” and revived his early aims with seasoned perspective. 

Hearing the song “Fly Away” on your new album made me think that you must have been reflecting back on the person you were when you arrived in Nashville as a teenager. What expectations and ambitions did you bring with you then? And what moved you to write an “It Gets Better” song for your younger self now?

Coming to Nashville, I was 17, so you think you know everything. And I moved thinking it would be a month or two before I was on the radio, getting all the accolades. I learned pretty quickly that’s not how things roll. But I just had zero fears moving here. I’d barely driven on a highway — that [song] lyric’s real. I got into Trevecca University, which was my footing in Nashville. And then I just started hitting the ground running. 

I’ve always believed in myself so much, in a really delusional way. I would say I had that until I moved to L.A. and had my first record deal and was working in pop music. I feel like a lot of that got kicked out of me. A lot of the self-talk became negative, because a lot of the outward talk was so negative. It took me a lot of time to recover from that. And as I sit in therapy these days, I’m seeing the signs of that brave-ass 17-year-old boy who moved to a city he barely knew to chase a dream. I’m seeing him in the mirror. He feels so [present] in the process of making this record. It makes me emotional, because I lost him trying to be something that other people wanted me to be. 

I was writing with Sean McConnell, and we were sitting out back smoking on his porch and I had this idea: “You were scared as hell to take the highway / You barely knew how to drive / Your folks said to do it their way / But you had Nashville in your mind.” And he was like, “We need to write your story.” It was one of those things where it just fell out and just felt so right. I knew pretty much immediately that was going to be the last song on the album.

That’s what inspired it, feeling like I have returned to the person I moved to Nashville as. I moved to Nashville to be a country artist. That was my dream, and I felt like it got really sidetracked by people not being able to see someone like me, a queer, flamboyant dude, being successful in country music. So I went on all these side roads to try to find success. 

A part of your origin story that you reference frequently is where the name “Fancy” came from. From what I’ve read, your coworkers at a mall store gave you that nickname. Once you became Fancy Hagood, how did you first get noticed by the industry?

Some people come out of the closet. I knocked the door down and rode out on a unicorn. I dyed my hair platinum blond.

You came out in Nashville? 

Yeah. I first came out of the closet in 2010, and I started working at Forever 21 the same year. And yeah, my coworkers started calling me Fancy because of the Drake song, “You fancy, huh?”

My friend Sarah Haze is an amazing songwriter, and she had a lot of buzz when she first moved here from California. She would take me to every industry event with her, to the Opry, to Universal Music Publishing’s Christmas parties, to all the stuff. I’m just walking around in a full face of makeup at these industry events, introducing myself as “Fancy.”

Were people interested in you as a songwriter or as an artist? 

Not as an artist. They were interested in me as a songwriter. I think people came to my shows interested in my art, obviously, but an industry that’s trying to monetize everything is not looking at a 6’2”, 280-pound man in makeup saying, “This is going to make us a lot of money.” They should have been, but that’s not what they saw. So I got signed to a publishing deal first. I was at Big Machine Music in a publishing deal, and then that ended up being a joint venture with Prescription Music out of L.A. That’s where it all just kind of started. 

I was trying to think back to what it was like before your friend TJ Osborne came out and other queer voices entered the spotlight, or even before another of your friends, Kacey Musgraves, released “Follow Your Arrow.” What did you encounter that made it seem impossible to do what you wanted to do in country music, and steered you towards pop?

There was a very prominent, tangible attitude that I would not be successful as a country artist if I were openly queer and presenting myself like that. I sat in rooms where people said heinous things to me. Any time I would try to sing about a boy or make my pronouns be specific to my own story, [I can’t count] the amount of times [I heard], “We can’t say that in a song. That’s not pitchable. Let’s change this to something more palatable.” Or sitting in rooms with A&R people or publishers [who said], “I don’t see you working here. That’s just never going to happen.”

That’s so disheartening to hear, that someone like you is not going to work in this town. And if there was a place where you could be a songwriter, [it would be] behind the scenes. I’m a songwriter through and through, but my ambition is to be the vehicle sharing the songs. 

A singer-songwriter. 

Yes, that’s right. You have these people who ultimately see your talent, they see the potential, but they also operate in fear. A lot of times when something hasn’t been done before, it’s hard for people to jump on board until they see it done. As I hung in there and stayed in the game, people were like, “Maybe you could do more of a pop thing. Maybe it’d be more accepted there.” So I shifted my time and attention to trying to do that. And, you know, I had a little bit of a splash there. 

It seems like a huge paradox that in your pursuit of artistic freedom, you wound up launching your pop career with a promotional campaign that concealed who you were behind the mysterious moniker “Who Is Fancy?” When you reflect back all these years later, what do you make of that? 

What I make of it is that a lot of well-intentioned people were trying to do the most to make something happen, and they probably [didn’t] realize that they were shattering my self-esteem in the process. This industry is not an easy industry to be in. I was not prepared for the amount of ridicule, the way people would want to change me. It was really hard. And I felt more closeted in Los Angeles, California than I ever felt here in Nashville, Tennessee. Because in Nashville, people might not think I’m successful, but damn, did I have their attention. They’d never seen anything like it. 

There were positive things happening in L.A., too. Victoria Monet was one of the first people I ever wrote with in L.A., and Emily Warren, who’s a huge hit songwriter. I wrote with Max Martin, Dr. Luke. I did a lot of stuff in the pop world without much success. The only success I really did have was with my own songs that I put out. 

I used to think of “Goodbye,” my Top 40 hit, and feel like a failure. Is that not crazy? Now I think of it and I’m like, “My first single in this world was so digestible. And people heard it and loved it.” I went from being told I couldn’t be an artist to having a Top 40 hit on my first attempt. That’s not a failure. But it takes 10 years of hindsight to undo the trauma, to let go of the past, to let go of the pain of feeling so unaccepted.

Very soon after “Goodbye,” you were touring with Meghan Trainor and Ariana Grande, and releasing a single with them. At that point, how far away did you feel like you were from your stylistic leanings?

There’s a big difference between the person I was when I was 23, moving to L.A., and the person I am now at 33, releasing my independent sophomore album. And I’ll tell you the difference. I moved to L.A. with a chip on my shoulder, an agenda. And that was, “I’ll show them.”  The difference is, now I do this for myself. I make music for my healing. I do it for queer people, for them to see themselves in a story. There’s not an industry person that I’m doing this for any longer. 

This summer, I was on the road experiencing life on my own, touring in a rental car with my guitar and my merch by myself. I’m sitting with fans every single night at the merch table. I’m selling my own shirts. I’m hearing the stories. I’m getting to connect with people for the first time in my entire career. When I was on tour with Ariana and Meghan, those are amazing bucket list moments, but I wasn’t getting to see the impact my art was having. People have shared so many incredible things with me, and I feel really honored to be able to make music that makes people feel like they’re seeing themselves in an art form for the first time, especially in country music.

On stage, I’ve heard you summarize your past experiences as a contradiction: you were too queer for Nashville and too Nashville for L.A. That made me wonder what made you willing to give Nashville another try.

By the time I was out of all my deals and dropped from the record label, the manager, all that stuff, I just set my sights back on Nashville, because it’s my home, it’s my community. And it was really hard to bounce back, because you go from being the king of the castle with a Top 40 hit and you come home, and when you don’t have the song on the radio, people are a little bit less inclined to want to help. 

I’m really, really lucky to have an amazing group of chosen family here in Nashville. A lot of them are fellow artists. And I think a lot of people think we’re close because of all of that. But that’s not what makes us close. We’re all at different stages in our careers. It’s the small minutia, things that make us feel like they know the real me. I can see the real them. It’s not about the Instagram [posts] and the songs and the tours and whatever. Those people have seen me at my absolute worst. When the roof was ripped off of my house in a tornado, TJ Osborne was the one who picked me up. These friendships run really deep. And that’s what made me want to come back to Nashville. I have such an unshakable group of friends here that I knew that if I could just get back here and be with them, I’d be OK. 

How did you initially find and form that circle? 

I was like, “Those people have fun. They party like I do.” I met Lucie Silvas, who is one of my nearest and dearest, and she’s also one of my favorite artists and songwriters. And she and I started writing together and we just hit it off immediately. Then just slowly but surely, you fall in with the whole crew. I met Natalie Osborne, who’s my longest running manager. And not to brag — I’ve had about eight. 

Eight? Really? 

Yeah. The joke I used to make was that Miley Cyrus can’t be tamed and Fancy Hagood can’t be managed. But I learned that it’s not that I can’t be managed — it’s that I can’t be manipulated. Having someone like Natalie, who is like my platonic life partner, she believes in this as much as I do. 

This album is the first time I’m sitting at the table with the team that’s helping me do this, and I’m not having to explain myself. And it’s not a coincidence to me that a lot of the people sitting at the table are female or queer people. I do feel like there’s key people on this team that see the shared vision and see the potential of what artists who come from different backgrounds have to offer a genre. 

And it’s not about making everyone listen to everyone, right? I’m pretty sure at the core of Jason Aldean fandom, they’re not going to be rushing to listen to a Fancy Hagood album. What I want to do with my album is bring people to this party to say, “Look, your stories matter, too. And I know that because my story matters.” Country music is about storytelling and there’s so many stories to be told. It should not be this exclusive thing where only one narrative is spun. 

You mentioned a catastrophic event that happened around the time that you were releasing your debut album, “Southern Curiosity.” A tornado hit your home right before the pandemic shutdown. What else stood in the way of you making that album and getting it out? 

I so confidently left all those deals in L.A. thinking, “Well, I can move back to Nashville and get whatever.” I went from being on Jimmy Fallon and touring with Ariana Grande to checking IDs at a bar. There were a lot of really low points, having to figure out stuff financially, not having a publishing deal. And Natalie, who’s now my manager, started working at a publishing company. And she ended up getting permission from her boss to run my calendar and set up writes. And [her boss] Steve Markland just kept hearing songs that I was writing. And then he’s like, “How can I help you?” 

As we were making “Southern Curiosity,” I was so anti- calling it country music.

Was that because you didn’t want to claim a genre that had a track record of not valuing the queer music-makers and fans that had been there all along? 

That’s a part of it. I still have trauma from feeling rejected from that community for so long. It did not seem feasible to me to label that as country. It’s called “Southern Curiosity.” There’s obviously some rooted Southern elements that were purposeful, but I was calling it “Queer Southern Pop.” We put it out as a pop record. And to my shock, it gets playlisted on pretty much exclusively country playlists on Spotify, Apple, everywhere. And I’m like, “What is happening?” 

I toured on it, and then I’m supposed to be creating again. The whole name of my whole career has been “start over.” So I tried [again] to make a pop album, and there was about a six-month period where I did not write one song. I could not write one song. I’d be sitting in studios, and nothing. That had never happened to me before. I found it so awful.

I happened to have a show in Brooklyn, New York, and my ex-partner and I decided to take a couple of days off and spend time in New York before the show. One day we took a train up to Hudson, upstate New York, and it was so beautiful and it felt like this small town. There were pride flags everywhere. I had this vision of small-town, gay America and how different my life would be if that was the case. Out of nowhere, the entire chorus of my song “Savior Self” flooded my brain. All of a sudden, the writer’s block was done. It really made me understand that I was back doing what I originally came here to do 

There’s a perception that things are progressing in the Nashville music industry, that it’s becoming more diverse. What registers to you as a genuine, not just performative, change? 

There’s genuine change in Nashville because there’s more female badassery happening. There’s queer people working in this industry. There’s queer artists everywhere you turn, putting pen to paper and working so hard every day to show up and to be seen. And that’s not the Nashville I remember 16 years ago. I think it comes down to individuals stepping into themselves and owning their power and saying, “I deserve to take up space here.” That’s how Nashville is changing. There’s more of that. 

I think Music Row’s a little stagnant. But I will also say, I’m a product of a lot of amazing music executives taking a risk, taking a chance, stepping outside of the good old boys’ club. My “thank you” list is so incredibly long, because of the people that poured their time and energy and talents into this record. And I’m talking songwriters, producers, players, publicists, publishers, managers, marketing teams — and a lot of it because of passion and belief, because we’re not making a lot of money doing this right now. 

You’ve taken on or participated in efforts like inviting queer and trans artists, some of them also artists of color, to join you on a covers project, hosting an Apple Music show with diverse guests, singing on an Orville Peck track with a “who’s who” of country’s queer men and playing Peck’s rodeo. Those seem like moments of solidarity. Do you also look at them as chances to demonstrate that LGBTQIA+ performers are not a monolith?

Yeah. Look, I think TJ and I are a perfect example. We might be in the same boat, but we are different fruits. 

Completely different vocal styles, songwriting approaches and vantage points. 

Yes. That is what’s so exciting about it right now. There’s so many artists living their authentic true self against being told not to. And we are all very different. 

That’s how people pit people against each other. Right? I remember being signed in L.A. and Sam Smith was popping off and everyone’s like, “We got to get your single out before his next one.” And it creates this idea that there’s only one seat at the table for a successful queer person. This moment we’re living in in Nashville, you have Brooke Eden, you have Adam Mack, T.J. Osborne, the Kentucky Gentleman, Denitia. I mean, there’s so many artists that I just think the world of. And I am so happy to exist in Nashville at the same time as all of them, because I feel like it’s a movement. 

You were talking about the detour that you took after “Southern Curiosity,” before leaning even further into the polished, acoustic side of country-pop and singer-songwriter pop with “American Spirit.” How close is this to what you set out to do when you first got to Nashville?

When I moved to Nashville originally, it was Little Big Town and Sara Evans and Keith Urban and Nickel Creek, that kind of vibe. And that’s what I was listening to again this summer, making my record, because I really wanted to honor that original dream. 

And you wound up with guests who were among your early influences, Nickel Creek’s Sean and Sara Watkins. 

My God. That blows my mind. I’ve been stalking Sara and Sean Watkins for years, because I’m obsessed with the Watkins Family Hour and Nickel Creek, of course. They’re my favorite band. And they’re saying, “Yeah, we want to sing on your song.” It signals to that 17-year-old that he’s on the right path.

You’ve framed this as a breakup album of sorts. The thing about that is it sets up the expectation that it’s going to feel like you’re capturing that initial raw anger toward an ex and telling the world how they did you wrong. Did you even attempt to write in that way before you found this direction?

Trust me, I definitely attempted to. The night the shit hit the fan and this relationship was dissolving, I immediately turned to my guitar and my pen and I thought I was going to be savage as hell. I thought was gonna be Olivia Rodrigo, honey. I thought I was going to be so savage in the lyrics that only he would understand how savage they actually were. … And even though I probably could have written 100 hateful songs about the experience, my true takeaway — and I’m not even just saying this to be like Hallmark cheesy — my true takeaway is gratitude. I feel so grateful for the information that that time in my life, in that partnership, allowed me to find, because I left that relationship different. And I like who I am out of that relationship. I liked who I was in it. And what a gift to experience all of those emotions, even if they don’t feel the greatest.