Scissor Sisters’ Jake Shears Loves Feeling Sexy. Lucky Us!

Given that the Scissors Sisters name references a certain sexual position, it should come as a shock to no one that the band isn’t afraid of sexual themes in their music. Songs such as "Filthy/Gorgeous" clearly show the band's ease with the erotic side of life. Further proof of that comes from the band’s music videos, including the video for "Filthy/Gorgeous" (directed by John Cameron Mitchell) which came in two versions: a full-length, more graphic one showing Shears in a variety of explicit sexual situations, and an edited version.

Jake Shears of Scissor Sisters

But with Ta-Dah, the band’s follow-up album to their self-titled first album, Shears felt the band had lost some of their edge and become too “stuffed-animalish.” Seeking to recapture the Sisters earlier sexiness, Shears spent several months in Berlin indulging in that city’s well-known night life.

And judging from the resulting album cover for their new album Night Work, the band does have their sexy back. Featuring the clenched buttocks of ballet dancer Peter Reed, the album seems to be as in your face as Shears hoped. But using sex as part of rock-and-roll isn’t exactly notweorthy. What just might be groundbreaking, however, is how much the out Shears is using gay male sexuality to promote the new album.

AfterElton.com recently had the chance to talk with Sisters' exuberant lead singer about paying tribute to the 80s New York club scene and the gay men we lost to AIDS during that time, the Sisters influence on Lady Gaga and others, as well as promoting a healthy gay sexuality that includes safer sex.

AfterElton.com: Based on the album cover and some interviews you've given, much is being made of Night Work being a celebration of sex. Is that accurate or has that been blown out of proportion?
Jake Shears: No, I definitely think there's an element of celebrating the joy of sex and sexuality, for better or for worse. I've really been thinking about it a lot lately after the album was made. I just watched Looking for Mr. Goodbar with Diane Keaton the other day.

I hadn't seen it in a long time. It's a problematic movie in a lot of ways, because it's about this woman opening her sexual awakening and she kind of gets it in the end in this horrible way. That's problematic, but there are a lot of parallels I think with that movie and this album. There is a sinister dark side running through it, but it's still infused with joyousness.

AE: Would it be fair to say, given the Robert Mapplethorpe album cover, and some of the magazine spreads you've shot, that this is a celebration of gay sexuality?
JS: I wouldn't say that particularly, but it definitely is ... it's spirit is ... it's sort of dedicated to the pioneering gay liberators of a certain time period, especially those who died of AIDS. All those creative people were just suddenly gone. In a lot of ways, it's a celebration of them, but I wouldn't say it's necessarily about gay sexuality.

That's definitely in there, but I think it's more about letting people do whatever they want to get up to without throwing judgment calls on them. It's about more than just being gay. It's a bit broader than that.

AE: Are there any songs on the album specifically from a gay male perspective?
JS: "Harder You Get" is the fifth song on the album, and that is unquestionably sung from a gay perspective. And the second song, "A Whole New Way to Love You" is pretty unabashedly gay as well. But then there's songs from a heterosexual perspective. There's a song on there called "Sex and Violence," which is the tenth track on the album. In my head, that's singing about heterosexual encounters. There are multiple points of view.