Tom Rasmussen has always worn many hats. (Quite literally, in some cases: the musician first made themself known to the wider world as their former drag alter-ego, Crystal, a Russia-born, Lancashire-raised songstress with a penchant for fascinators.) They’ve written two books, co-composed a musical, and even served as a sex and relationships columnist for Vogue. But the hat they’ve always felt most comfortable wearing—and which they returned to in earnest a few years ago—was pop music. “I think it’s so embarrassing to be like, ‘I’m a storyteller,’ because that’s what annoying people say,” Rasmussen says, with typically self-effacing humor. “But I think that’s what I’ve done across all my work, and it really came to the forefront when I started writing my own music, for myself.”
In 2023, Rasmussen released their debut album, Body Building, on Globe Town Records: a heady, dance-pop rollercoaster of a record whose more euphoric moments were counterbalanced by remarkably vulnerable lyrics charting the peaks and troughs of coming out as nonbinary, and the double-edged sword of visibility. Now, just 18 months later, Rasmussen has returned with its follow-up, Live Wire—and is ready to wear their heart on their sleeve in a different, more hopeful way. “I’m really pro big and beautiful, vast emotions,” Rasmussen says of the more introspective tone of the new record, which delves into the smaller, quieter moments of their life—from casual hook-ups to marriage and their most intimate friendships. “I’m a funny person, but I’m also quite emotional and actually quite sincere.”
Across Live Wire’s 14 tracks—punctuated by three “psalms,” in a nod to the album’s overarching theme of finding faith in friendship and romance—Rasmussen once again veers between genres, from the stomping, ’80s-inflected synth-pop of “Nobody’s Love,” a tongue-in-cheek celebration of sex, oysters, and room service, to the glittering ode to queer friendship that is “Never Look Back,” which features The xx’s Romy singing a message of support and encouragement to a struggling friend. On the final song, “I See Potential as a Beautiful Thing,” a plaintive, piano-led ballad that allows Rasmussen’s falsetto to shine brilliantly, the various threads of the album seem to come together in a joyous celebration of our ability to change. “Used to speak softly, but now I can sing,” they croon. Sing they certainly can.
Here, Rasmussen talks to Vogue about how their journey with faith inspired the album, collaborating with Tim Walker on the album cover, and why they’ll always love a pop-girl reinvention.
Vogue: When did you start working on the album? Was there a clean break between writing Body Building and this record?
Tom Rasmussen: I started writing this record at the end of the writing period of the last record. Myself and Finlay Henderson—who I wrote a lot of the first record with—just carried on exploring. Body Building was a lot about exteriority, and the way that people meet the world—especially how trans people meet the world—and the emotions and feelings we have to hide in order to do that. And I began to feel like there were loads of songs I was starting to write that didn’t fit into that world. I was thinking about the inside, or what was behind that, and was really writing in the recesses of what was left by Body Building.
Would you say that the two albums are companion pieces, in that sense?
Well, I definitely believe in the school of the big pop girlies who reinvent themselves for each album. But I guess you could say it’s a different side of the same coin. This is the interior world. And I guess it’s more nuanced and complex than the first record, which was about fighting and resistance and fearlessness. This is the more human aspect. I feel like so much of my work up to now has been about justifying why I am allowed to exist, and why we, as queer people and trans people, are allowed to exist, but actually what happens in that process is complexity is lost. And so, this album is really all the feelings I’m having when I’m not thinking about all of that.
The spirit of joy and sex and love that courses through the first few songs—how did that reflect what you were going through when writing them?
I mean, the winter before last was a particularly hedonistic one, and a real “fuck it” period. All my friends seemed to be in the same place at that moment too, where we were all willing and happy to just lean into the chaos, going nuts, making out, running around town, going to loads of parties, and slightly shirking responsibility. It was refreshing, actually, because my group of friends are usually pretty focused. The song “Faithless” was actually written on my phone on the beach in Magaluf, where I went with my friends Amelia and Rene, and I’d had just wild sex with a man who picked me up and drove me out of the city. I was like, oh my God. This is it. I’m going to get killed. Instead, I was slain in a different way. [Laughs.] But during that time of clubbing a lot, I was also thinking a lot about faith, or my lack of it. And in that moment, my faith was worshiping this very beautiful man. So, yeah, that was born out of a particular winter of hedonism—and one wild trip to Magaluf.
Your journey with faith recurs throughout the album; you have these interludes titled as psalms, and songs that touch on this idea of finding a different kind of spiritual devotion in your lover.
I grew up with a faith, and I definitely don’t have one anymore, or at least not in the same way. But it’s strange to be in the world and be like, Oh, I’m just floating untethered to anything bigger than what I can see around me. Writing this album also came at a time when I was in nature a lot more, because I’d just got a dog. I would go clubbing at night, but then spend hours walking the dog and just… thinking. And it opened up a different side of my imagination. It felt quite childlike—this sense that there was something magical afoot. I think even the songs on the album that are about sex and clubbing and friendship are about forms of worship, or putting your faith in things. And when it came to the psalms, I always wished I was posh enough to make choral music, but I m not. Not that I’m saying Kieran [Brunt], who I co-wrote the psalms with, is posh enough, but he just has this amazing understanding of how harmonies work and how choral music works. So we spent a lot of time back-and-forth-ing these choral songs, and they really became the checkpoints along the journey of the album that split it up into sections for the body, heart, and mind. I don’t know if I have more of a sense of faith now, after writing the album, than before, but I definitely feel more comfortable thinking about it?
How did the song with Romy come about? The song feels like a really interesting joining of your two sonic worlds.
She’s so wonderful. I’d never met Romy, but I was loving her album, and she was on tour and had done this interview in a record shop, I think, in Nashville. They asked her three favorite albums of the year, and she chose Body Building as one of them, and I was so shocked. So I messaged her and was like, “Are you kidding, diva?” I probably didn’t say “diva,” but I asked her how she heard it, and we got talking, and then we didn’t talk for a while. Then, last November, she asked me if I wanted to open for her at the Brixton Electric, which was amazing. I stood on the DJ booth and I nearly fell off. It was very chic. Fin and I wrote this song a few weeks after that and it had this sort of dreamy feel to it that I thought Romy would sound amazing on. I was sort of scared to ask her, but I just sent her it and was like, “Would you listen to this, and if you like it—but only if you like it—would you ever consider singing on it?” And she said yes. I listened to her voice so much in my mid to late teens, so it was just amazing being in the studio with her. At one point I thought, God, maybe I should have asked for her to be on some giant trance radio banger, but it’s so nice that it’s a song about queer friendship, actually.
Tell me a little more about the visual world you wanted to build around the album—you worked with Tim Walker again on the cover, but it has a very different feel to Body Building.
When Marit [Berning], my artistic director, and I sat down we wanted this record to have a very different feel to the imagery that kind of surrounded the previous record, but equally fab. I worked with set designer Leo Titford, and we were talking with Tim about the record being about trying to connect, and revealing different parts of yourself, and breaking through those barriers of human connection…and also a lot about sex. So Leo handpicked all these leaves from different cruising sites all around London, and then bound them inside these amazing latex frames that they sprayed with, basically, lubricant. We wanted it to be an image that felt confrontational and direct, while also having some sort of barrier or blockage to it. I wanted the cover to look like a moment I’ve been caught—a moment of truth.
Did touring the previous album feed into the writing process for Live Wire? Are you excited to bring it to life onstage?
I feel like finally, with these shows, there’s enough budget to do what I want onstage. I’m working with an amazing installation artist called Adam Wadey who is building this whole laser world. It’s very camp. But, yeah, I think about the live show all the time. I think I have a lot of fear that the act of being a musician is a selfish one, but actually, I think it becomes the most generous act when you are sharing songs with an audience who are giving so much back. If I’m running and listening to a new demo, I’m like, “Oh my God, this would be heaven to play live,” and that definitely pulls me towards songs that I like to write. I’m really pro big, beautiful, vast emotions. I’m a funny person, but I’m also quite emotional and actually quite sincere, and quite tender and romantic and hopeful. So I guess I just really want to make people feel that when I play live.
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
