Premiere: Tayls burst as rainbow confetti in new video, ‘Pop Tart (Queer Boy / Small Town)’

Identity is fluid. History has proven we, as human beings, push the envelope regardless of what society dictates. We brush life with complex, emotional shades ⏤ we can never be easily defined, nor should we ever want to be. Life is ever the richer by our willingness to explore, to prance in the sunlight, to allow ourselves to truly feel with ever color of the rainbow. Finding himself treading water and nearly suffocated, Taylor Cole ⏤ frontman of indie-pop band Tayls, rounded out by bandmates Greg Dorris, Jessey Clarck, Molly Balsam, Atticus Swartwood, Jo Cleary, Justin Smith, Andy Heath and Micheal Taylor ⏤ sheds his past and reemerges as glittering and triumphant. The Nashville-oriented troupe make a cannon ball-sized splash with their debut single, an entry called “Pop Tart (Queer Boy / Small Town),” which gets a prismatic, neon-sewn visual, premiering today.

Together as one, the vigorously-unapologetic ensemble celebrate life and feeling at home in their skin, unruly and authentic to the queer-bent spirit of flashy glam-rock. “‘Pop Tart’ is about feeling like you’re playing a game that you don’t know the rules to. I was feeling alienated by the people in my old band. This mindset brought to the surface feelings of being judged growing up in a small southern town where I lost a lot of friends after I started telling people I was bisexual,” writes Cole to B-Sides & Badlands over email. Cole’s deconstructions of the past fuel the fire in his gut, and “Pop Tart” is as much a statement piece on his own evolution as it is a lionhearted decree to be oneself despite a world systemically built against you.

“I been thinking of a night I could say goodbye / Guess I’m waiting on a sign or a guiding light,” Cole casts out his own venomous self-doubts, crawling from a crusted shell before fluttering as reborn into the rustling wind. “Hey! Ain’t it grand? That I’m high enough to land? / And it’s fine, it’s alright / I’ll find myself with some love and some time / You know there’s more than science to me,” he sings before uncaging a viscerally-charged rock vocal, one that shreds away all the toxicity that he had come to know. The visual is appropriately doused with rainbow rays and confetti, filmed as a lo-fi confessional that witnesses Cole confidently himself and surrounded by equally-bodacious comrades.

On the video, Cole explains, “The video, like the song, has a double meaning. On one hand, it’s a total nod to my favorite song by The Flaming Lips, ‘She Don’t Use Jelly,'” he says. “On the other, it’s a visual representation of my life now that I have found new friends and a support group to bloom like the bright little flower I am! Hell, we are all bright little flowers! We just happen to find ourselves in a giant field.”

“I think they hate me in a way I just can’t ignore / Well, who said I wanna stay,” he also confronts, the guitars frothy and wrapping together. His honesty is addicting, and along with production that is equal parts synthetic and organic, “Pop Tart” inhabits each of the senses with a sweet, delicate aroma. “My favorite frontmen were always lanky and feminine. I always knew that’s the kinda man I wanted to be: an alpha poetic, girly-man,” reflects Cole. “Growing up, that look in Tullahoma, Tennessee only translated to: ‘You must be Queer!’ I experimented with my sexuality – kissing boys, wearing women’s clothes. This is ultimately a song of self acceptance. It’s our birth song! It says, ‘Here we are fuckers! We are weird as can be, but we spread our love and glory on everything and everyone.'”

“Pop Tart (Queer Boy / Small Town)” is a beginning to a new lease on life. Let’s jump in!

Watch below:

Photo Credit: Caroline Conrad

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