The general gist of it was very positive and complimentary but the idea of outing myself on such a scale for the sake of selling a few more albums was a bit alarming. In real life, as usual, nothing really happened. In or out, straight or gay, we still had the same excellently devoted but distinctly small group of fans.
Years later when recording 'The Ventriloquist' I decided to leave in a lyric that had been troubling me; ..'& I just want him to be happy'. I had tried to make it work without being gender specific, thinking songs are songs not pages from my diary, the obvious gayness may stop some people connecting with the song. That all felt a bit fake, especially on such an open record so I kept it in and I think it was the right decision. For what its worth, 'The ventriloquist' is a very personal record, yet still a lot of peoples favourite.
Now I do gender specific songs reasonably often. Coming out in song is like coming out in life it seems, you have to keep on doing it and after a bit, in a good way, nobody really cares....
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