Marika Hackman says lyrics were ‘gay as f***’ before she came out

Singer Marika Hackman has said that her lyrics were already “super gay” before she came out to the public back in 2017.

After toiling with severe writer’s block for two years, the 31-year-old dropped her fourth studio album, Big Sigh, last week, and it’s already being met with rave reviews from music critics.

The indie-folk record deals with the highs and lows of life from intense love and lust to equally as disorienting spells of anxiety and depression.

While discussing the album in an interview with The Independent, Hackman said her lyrics are “gay as f***” – and that they had been long before she came out.

The singer came out to friends and family back in 2014, before making her sexuality public in 2017 with the release of her album I’m Not Your Man.

The album used explicit lyrics, pronouns switches, and call-outs to sleazy men who had asked to join in when she kissed her girlfriend and featured undeniably queer hits like “Boyfriend” and “My Lover Cindy”.

But, although it was Hackman’s first time being so obvious about her sexuality in her lyrics, the singer-songwriter believes her songs have always been pretty gay.

“I mean, even before that, my lyrics are all gay as f***,” she said. 

“It was all queer longing, big time, but just not so on the nose.”

Two years after I’m Not Your Man, Hackman released the album Any Human Friend, which she says is “peak queer”, with references to masturbation, cunnilingus, kissing strangers, and sexual curiosity.

That album was written shortly after Hackman and her girlfriend of four years, Amber Bain called it quits.

Hackman had been dating Bain, also known as The Japanese House, from 2014 to 2018, and although the two musicians have gone on to write songs about each other, she says they’re still “really good friends.”

On writing songs about her exes and lovers, Hackman said, “I never want to make someone upset with something I’ve written but also at the same time, you can’t just be nicey-nicey at the cost of writing arresting honest music.

“I’ve been in relationships with people who couldn’t give a s*** [about having songs written about them] –  and I myself don’t mind it. Dating musicians, I think it’s very important to make a pact that they don’t get offended by anything you write and vice versa. Because otherwise, you’re hemming someone in creatively – and that’s not right.”

But, before she began writing “gay as f***” lyrics, Hackman spent her closeted teenage years developing intense “secret crushes”.

She recalled: “I didn’t come out until I was 19 so I just had these deep secret crushes on girls, and when it’s secret you don’t really get to flex it, so I went through school just harbouring these feelings.”

While the secrecy of a crush was thrilling as a teenager, Hackman came to find after coming out that she could have the best of both worlds. 

“I realised that I can get s*** done and have someone I love,” she joked. “Can you believe it?”

Now, Hackman is in a relationship with musician Polly Louise Mackey, who is better known in the music scene as Art School Girlfriend. The two live together in east London with their dog Sonny.