rain on me yeah Wow holy Shh what a smash Ariana was so effusive the other day and said that you are an incredibly like generous collaborator like a supportive collaborator that you go into the experience making sure that not only you're performing at the highest level but you're giving people a safe space where they can be a part of it and it's not just come and do your part and I appreciate it like be a part
of this experience for sure Matt they well thank you Ariana she's not on the call with us but her and I connected right away and she was so wonderful and I think maybe maybe she assumed that it would be that she came in and I was like here just sing this and thank you so much for your time right but instead I asked her what she needed how she wanted to do things I I was you know when we were vocally producing her I was sitting
there at the right well not this constantly right Jim Henson when we finished I was sitting at the console and talking to her and then I remember I said to her okay now everything that you care about while you sing I want you to forget it and just sing and by and by the way while you're doing that I'm gonna dance in front of you because we had this huge big window I was like I'm gonna dance in front of you and she was like oh my god
oh my god I can't I can't I don't know oh my god okay okay and then I I did it and she sang and she started to do things with her voice that was that was different and it was the joy of two artists going like I see you and I see all the things that we all humans do this we create things that make us feel comfortable and we put them all around do it all the time we all do things to make ourselves feel safe and I always
challenge artists when I work with them I go make it unsafe make it super gang unsafe and then do it again and it was just awesome to watch her like I mean you haven't seen the video yet but she like she was like so open trying things that she hasn't done before she was like I'm gonna just trust you and it was it was this beautiful I think very healing process for me to not necessarily having a female artist that
mentored me as I came up and being able to be with her and hold her and be like anything that you feel chains you like any like pop cultural construct that you feel you have to live up to I'd like you to please forget about it and be yourself and she was like yeah that's an amazingly important observation because I wondered whether or not subconsciously or maybe consciously part of the reason you wanted to collaborate with her was
because of of the courage and the bravery that she has shown in recent years to try to pull herself out of some really traumatic experiences and you know in a weird way you know what I hear and rain on me is two artists finding each other and sharing that experience for sure that woman has been through some really tough really hard like testing stuff undoubtedly and her ability to move I mean she when she came
into the studio I was still crying and she was not and she was like she was like you're gonna be okay I got call me here's my number and she was so persistent she would try over and over again to be friends with me and I was too ashamed to hang out with her because I didn't want to project all of this like negativity onto something that was healing and so beautiful and eventually she called me on my she was like
you're hiding and I was like I am hiding I'm totally hiding and then this friendship blossomed and the song rain on me the lyrics that I wrote right here in this studio I'd rather be dry but at least I'm alive rain on me this is about like an analogue of Tears being like the rain and you know what it's also a metaphor for is like the amount of drinking that I was doing to numb myself I'd rather be dry I'd rather not be
drinking but I haven't died yet I'm still live rain on me okay I'm gonna keep on drinking this the song has many layers I wondered about that and I and I wondered because when we take ourselves to these places where we feel would we feel shame and that is the stone-cold killer shame is the stone-cold destroyer of everything and when you take yourself to that place then we search for anything that will distract us from our shame and
I wondered whether or not it got bad you know the drinking and whether maybe medication or any other crutch came into your life and how bad it got I mean I have really really dope doctors so they won't give me any narcotics so to be clear when I say pop a 9-1-1 on this album it is not an opioid or a narcotic like i don't take any pain medication because it's not healthy for me but I've flirted with the idea of
sobriety I'm not there yet but I flirted with it throughout the album and it's something that came up as a result of me trying to work through the pain that I was feeling but part of my healing process is going well I can either lash the hell out of myself every day for continuing to drink or I can just be happy that I'm still alive and keep going and feel good enough like I am good enough it's not perfect but
wabi-sabi you know I'm perfectly imperfect in in me saying yes do I think it's unfair that celebrities are like put in this place where we're not allowed to have problems yes but at that same time I would like to validate the problems of all these other people that are not famous right and then also validate the fact that like on the internet and through social media we have created these you know millions upon perhaps
billions of enigmas that are our you know avatars of who we are online in order to deal with ourselves and it's part of how we feel safe but it's turning on us and it begins to turn on you because you start to feel suppose economy it's a totally false economy and and the currency is shallowest right it's like you can't be be pretty enough on Instagram you can't be thin enough you can't be hot enough
you can't be rich enough you can't be I mean if you're not in it for impact like if you're not like famous because you're trying to help the world or make an impact on the world the return on what you're putting in is a is alike and that is a bottomless pit that is lit like you are literally circling the drain going oh I'm valuable if I get a ton of likes no that is not what makes you valuable what makes you valuable are your values
your morals your ethics your code how you act how you treat people your behavior that's what makes you who you are not how many people like your post well once you realize that once you come to that conclusion and you identify that you know there there are more significant tentpoles you should be planting rather than the ones that are planted for you or that seemed to moot and they move with the wind you get to a
point where you become free and I woke up this morning and the song that was rolling around on my head from this album right was free woman that is the one that just stuck in my head so much there's so many ear worms and that song is crazy but also the sentiment of what you're saying I feel like it's an important step in the album because it feels like you're taking control your narrative you've accepted you've let go
through in on me let go I accept it now I feel some form of freedom you know that this is the dance floor I fought for that whole lyrical refrain and that verse from that line all the way to the chorus is one of the best bodies of words on the album I think thank you so much you know I think like I tend to like aspire for things to be genderless just because I think that it's it's significant but with that song in
particular I felt a need to reference my my gender because even though I really have a tremendous disdain for people that attribute gender or sexual identity to your personality like I hate that I think if someone says like oh you're like your personality's masculine I'm like what does that even mean like it just like doesn't make sense to me but it was so important for this to be free woman because I was assaulted by
a music producer I was sexually assaulted by a music producer it's it's it's compounded all of my feelings about life feelings about the world feelings about the industry feelings about my what I had to compromise and go through to get to where I am and I had to put it there and when I was able to finally celebrate it I said you know what I'm not nothing without a steady hand I'm not nothing unless I know I can I'm still something
if I don't got a man I'm a free woman so it was it's it's me going I'm free but it it's not it's not just because I'm a free woman look at me I found gratitude and and everything is then it's I no longer I'm gonna define myself as a survivor or a victim of sexual assault like I just I'm a person that is free who went through some dub I mean that song is such a powerful statement it's such an important song and so wild that
we're dancing to it it's almost the perfect embodiment of what you're trying to achieve with this album is to go so deep and so raw and pull it open and let it all go and get to a place of acceptance and move past it and grow as a human and get to a new era of your life but I'm a dance while I do it yeah I say this is the dance floor I fought for a heart I know I'm that's what I'm living for light up my body and
kissed me to hardly I walk the downtown hear my sound this is my way of saying like I'm making a dance record again and this foot dance floor it's mine and I earned it and all that stuff that I went through I don't have to feel pain about it anymore it can just be a part of me and I can keep going and I can't tell you like how healing this was for me I could cry about it except I'm actually feeling so much more healed now that
that laughs away from the from the tear feeling is not even as much there when when I first started talking about this album I would cry like in between every interview and now I go well you know it turns out if you believe in yourself sometimes you're good enough and it turns out that's possible and I would love for people that listen to this record to feel and hear that and I also wish to say that you know not every
country around the world that every place has at their disposal what many of the things that we are talking about pop cultural constructs in the internet constructs political constructs that pertains specifically to America there are certain types of governments but what we do share is life experiences and what I can share is that if there is even a tiny spark inside of you that is still alive and beating and saying hey
I'm okay everything else isn't but right over here this part it's okay grab it grab it and hold on to it and and it is possible that if you do it will light you up in a way that you do not think you can be lit up it will it will bring you back to life if you believe in yourself and it's really hard to always believe in yourself but I hope that I can make people feel in some type of way that because I did maybe they can - well
you started out trying to heal everybody but then you ended up right back staring at yourself and what's amazing and this may be the most personal question I've ever asked you but I think it's a really it's a beautiful thing where you're at and I'm gonna go there I one of the things that's most event to us when we find clarity is the decisions we made in our lives in the way that we self-sabotage in order to punish
ourselves yeah and we make dumb decisions because we don't know any better and we think we're dumb and that's what we deserve and their decisions that you think you're made right across the whole spectrum of your life but it's a human desire to be loved and to love yeah and now that you've come out the other side of making this album you are in a situation where you're we just were you're discovering a new love can you
describe how it feels and how different it is knowing yourself better now I think I forgive myself I forgive myself for all the ways I've punished myself in private you know I've been open about the fact that I you know used to cut and I've been open about the fact that I've have had masochistic tendencies that are not healthy and they're their ways of expressing shame their ways of expressing feeling not good enough but
actually they're not effective they just make you feel worse and it you think that you deserve to be hurt and you think that you don't deserve good things you don't you think you don't deserve happiness and you know I have these like scars on my wrists and like yeah it's been something that's kind of it bothered me for years when I've seen ever when I was younger I don't I don't really read the internet anymore to be
honest but when I was younger I I would see people right like like those scars on her arm are disgusting and that makes you feel even worse because it makes no sense why someone that feels sad would want to hurt themselves and some to out to a lot of people that makes no sense to me it makes a lot of sense once I made deals with myself you know like you're not doing that anymore now when you want to hurt yourself and
say if you want to throw yourself against the wall like and scream you tell someone I wish to not glamorize this in any way to anyone that's listening to this interview or watching this interview you do not need to hurt yourself or be crazy to be a superstar you you don't have to hurt yourself to feel better even like yeah temporarily you think it's gonna cut the pain off that's going on in your brain it lasts two seconds the
harder thing to do is to ask for help and to tell someone to answer your question in long form these are some of the things that I've been through and then I stopped and I forgave myself eventually but I think I forgave myself because I decided that I was human and that made me feel better it made me I was like oh I'm doing this incredibly human thing even though I feel like a plastic doll look at me I'm so
human and now you're able to feel love and be loved right and know what it feels like and not try to burn it down because you don't deserve it know when L love when that word gets bigger when you love someone and in somebody like me that usually inspires like what we were saying in the beginning could be unconscious to go don't do it you're gonna get hurt don't love your you don't deserve love look how you've look at all
the weird you've done look how you've acted look how you've look at what I used to say was crazy behavior that I now have extreme compassion for not only myself but other people who experience this that L as it gets bigger as I love someone more I am internally being yelled at by a voice that is as buried inside of me and it's hard but it's worth fighting for you know that one of my favorite lyrics on this album is
every single day yeah I dig a grave then I sit inside at wondering if I'll behave it's a game I play and I hate to say you're the worst thing and the best thing that's happened to me all this stuff that made me start the album with could you pull me out of this alive right yeah all that stuff that that's that's exactly the stuff that pointed to my humanity it's exactly the stuff that pointed to my ability to make music it's
exactly the stuff that brought me back to Who I am so I guess what I'm trying to say say Zane is if you're listening to this album and you're suffering in any type of way just know that that's suffering within itself is a sign of your humanity and you are not broken you're connected to the whole world and we are one giant body we are one full entity and the whole you is having a whole human experience and there might be parts of
your life that feel like completely shallow or robotic or ancillary and unimportant and that's okay but that suffering is a sign that you're real and it's a way to ground yourself like I've actually learned that when I feel that way I can go well I'm a person and this is very real and I'm human and even though for Meniere's because I've changed my hair color or my looks are my wigs or my outfits I have somehow
allowed myself to have a life where I've given the narrative away and it's been written for me I can actually take it back by saying no I'm a human and I guess we're very human things all the time that's what this album is this album is a reclaiming of the dance floor you know you opened it and now you're reclaiming it and it's yours and you can dance all night if you want right without people interrupting your flow
and that's what's really euphoric about this experience and you had to go through that pain to get there but I'm glad you're back there you know yeah man like I got back there and also while I'm dancing now I'm dancing with my dad not for my dad you know what I mean yeah like everything's different I'm not performing to fix anything I'm living my destiny which is to give gifts to the world and I truly believe that that's
what I'm meant to do and I know you know like I I do believe in God I don't believe in God the way that you know maybe through art throughout history it's been portrayed but I believe in a higher force and I used to talk to blood pop about it there's a theory that the whole world was created by a feminine Soundwave and that that feminine Soundwave actually saw there saw what they thought was their father below them and fell to be with their
father but it was actually a reflection from behind them so they fell into an abyss and broke into two and that there are two then there were two galaxies that were born and one was good and one was evil and that the evil one is the one where evil things pretended to be God and then we believed in them and we divided and then we started to to argue and hate each other and that is that that is the world that I believe I live
on but that my understanding of God actually is that it's a sign I believe God is God began as a sound a sign from above and I got you in trouble by the way full disclosure I may have sent a message to Alton last night saying wow this Lady Gaga album is fantastic to which he responded dear saying I haven't heard it yet love ade well I mean I like first of all he's on a world tour he I mean where he
was you know not anymore but he was on this massive world tour and the fact that he even made a song with me on the album was it was like a super joy but actually I've kept everything unlock and I'm super private about my music and I don't play it for everyone I keep it to myself and I'm in so much trouble now like my gay dads are gonna be so mad you guys so I mean both of you sounds so good on this on this song and it's it's just a
joy to hear you come together because I know that you've come together in many different situations and he's being there for you because he is that caring sharing wonderful person when he brings you in and cares for you he really stands by that he's been my mentor for a long time I mean he's always challenged me to like keep my head above water and it's you know something that I always I always appreciate is that he knows when
I'm down like he just does and he knows because I hide because I never want anyone to like see me when I'm like that and blood poppin and you know everyone that I worked on this record with like you know including more again you know when we were doing the the interludes and the B or the beginning and the end right of the album you know like I I would just burst into tears or have a panic attack I mean I attack or a trauma
response like they they saw me go through so much I hide but you know Elton's always really challenged me to take care of my artistry and to really take care of myself and I really really honor that about him he's he is so so uniquely special and I cannot tell you how like instrumental in my life he's been to showing me that you can go all the way in life you can go all the way and it decades and decades of a career
and be authentic and be you and do good things in the world and take care of yourself and be there like he's such an inspiration and for me it's been so important because and I have also a very close relationship with his husband David and the truth is I've had a harder time with older women other than I would say like I think I feel like you know Celine Dion has been like such a warm and beautiful human being to me but in
terms of having a female mentor that goes like this is how it's done other than her and Carole King who I you know briefly met who was very supportive and like loving of my career it's proven difficult for me to to have someone in my life that would show me the way and having Elton and David has been been so wonderful and that day I'm gonna send out in the record because I yeah Elton David and the voice it they
should hear it before it comes out but he's gonna know what happened you know when he listens to it cuz he knows me and he knows the difference of me going you know give me that pink hat and tell everybody to shut up I'm about just like play guitar and sing Joann and he knows he knows when I sit down and I go okay how can I take something that's extremely painful for me and find the one piece of it that's universally human
and help somebody else and then let's see what it sounds like what does it sound like I like I literally Zayn when I make records I I can hear it I see it it's like the the sound is colors and then the words just come to me they fly into my brain but I literally go open the portal talk to the sound hit like listen for that for God listen and then make make the music and he he's gonna hear that and he's gonna know that I
made a choice and the choice was not just to make this record for myself it was to make up for the world you talked about not having strong a lot of strong significant female role models that could guide you and having to go somewhere else to find that and we talked a little bit about how supportive as a collaborator you've been to Ariana but also there was a little bit of trade because she showed you support on a
personal level you know you brought black/pink into this equation who are obviously one of the most exciting groups to emerge on the on the world seen in a very long time and it must be for you really nice to be able to it must be kind of the ultimate closure to recognize what you didn't receive what you didn't receive in kind that you can share and you can show to others I guess my question is are you keeping an eye on
the black pinks and the Aries of this world because of what you've been through 100 I love Billy Eilish I love all these younger artists I'm there for you I love you I am NOT in competition with anyone want everyone to win I'm support like I want to support and love but that's that's how I feel about the world saying like just generally I feel I feel that my rebellion in life is to be kind like to almost an annoyance to people and I
remember there was what I forget what a word show me you know Billy's won like so many awards and there was one night where she just you know she just swept a whole bunch of awards and I said send her some flowers I wrote her a note and for me it's healing because I go you know what that hurt me that I didn't get that but that's okay cuz I'm gonna be that for someone else and me being that for anyone is it's also a gift for me
because I go it that means it doesn't not exist it does exist and and do I want people to love the record for sure like I'd love for people to love the record but it's it's not just about the music Zayn it's about Who I am and what I'm trying to say the first billboard that came out for this album said you are essential right I mean it and I think that that the simplicity of seeing something kind on
your phone that's so simple or just like walking down the street and just seeing block letters that are telling you that you matter that's who I am that this is not just about music this is about culture this is about how can I do some how can I do this and it exactly envision like seeing the remote of it where do I fit in how don't like what do I mean in this industry and you know what if my record is loved by people
great and if not I really hope that young female artists or young artists of any gender identity any sexual identity will know that I'm rooting for them and I love them I think artists are beautiful I think people are beautiful and I think this idea that we're rooting each other on cheering each other on I think it's so important and look what's happened in this world with with you know SARS Cove - it's like this idea that we need to
cheer each other on I don't think that we've witnessed a time in history where this has felt more important I agree and we should focus very much on those that need help the most that's why I did the global citizens special with the World Health Organization is because I wanted to help the people that were the most in need that's what the World Health Organization does what we can see in all
of this is my god the kindness my gosh everyone rooting for each other everybody wanting to help each other everybody relating that they can't go help their grandma they can't my you know my grandma has cancer and has to go into the hospital for radiation and she's in her 90s and she has to go in by herself and my you know my mom is outside waiting for her but my mom waited and got tested to go it means like you know everybody
everybody has their thing right but there's some people in the world that already had nothing but they already had what we can't even fathom just a quality of life that we don't understand and then this happened so what what about those people and then I think to myself that's gratitude that's where gratitude is sparked and that's what can inspire people to help each other and I hope that through this record and I hope that through the
conduit that that is me that I can do whatever I can to just you know be a citizen of the world I was born this way this is how I am I feel this way and and helped to shape and shift culture in a way that is kind that is my rebellion that's what makes me a punk is that I don't give up that people think I'm annoying cuz I talk about doing good things that's just who I am it's really great I really enjoyed seeing you I
enjoyed seeing you I can't wait to like be with you and dance to this music together and I can't wait to see the world like I'm actually gonna go I'm sure that it's no surprise for maybe me but I'm probably going to go to every gay club that I can find and when I'm allowed to go and and hug and kiss every human that I come in contact with that when it's safe to because I just love people so much and I hope that the world
knows that although I may have said some things in this interview that imply that I feel feel or have felt in the past attacked or objectified in some way that that's not holistically how I viewed the planet it's it's it's something I've learned is just one small piece of my experience but holistically as a planet I think we're really beautiful and I think when hard things happen we really rally and support each other you