In the brand new video for “I’m on My Cell Phone” Nicky Click bounces across a room littered with drag queens and club kids in a cheerleading outfit emblazoned with the words “Gay Sex.” It’s a pretty good introduction to the quirky electro world of this queer femme and feminist pop machine. Her nonstop touring schedule has included dates with Lady Sovereign, The Gossip and Scream Club. She is now headed back to Canada for several dates in Toronto and Montreal as part of her Cookie Monster Halloqueen tour.
Click is known as much for her politically inspired dance music and lyrics as for her wild and crazy wardrobe and manic choreography, mixing mile-high hairdos, fishnets stockings and hip-hop aerobics. This tour finds its inspiration both in gothic fashion and in sex.
“It’s gonna be me and my equally naughty but more evil twin sister Nicky Slikk,” she says laughing. “It’ll be a strange Elvira experience for the costumes and it’s also bird-themed. We’ll be doing some scissoring onstage. It’s gonna be a dirty tour.”
Her sophomore album I’m on My Cell Phone is with Olympia-based Crunk’s Not Dead Records. The evolution of Click has seen her go from teddy bears to corsets, and her new look is just another layer of what she sees as her growth as a conceptual artist.
“I’m so into goth presentation lately,” she says. “Like looking a dead bride… beauty through darkness. I’m in the Madonna version of Nicky Click right now.”
But despite the Halloween tour and its sexy, dark premise Click steers clear of the horror genre, so much so that she won’t even talk about horror films.
“I’m scared of vampires and scary horror movies,” she squeals.
Click’s albums cover everything from exercise to queer politics and being a femme, but Click doesn’t feel confined by labels. In her song “Two Femme Girls” she raps, “Sorry if this fucks with your rigid gay boxes/ But I just really like hot femme foxes.”
“I feel like I’m taking it to the next level,” says Click. “Femme is something I really believe in on an everyday level, but I’m not trying to represent what femme is at all. It’s cabaret performance that happens to be by a femme person. I think a lot of queering femininity is claiming that as your own, and a lot of the time it is an over-the-top queering of gender. I think I’m throwing it back in their faces.”
Recently engaged to a trans man, Click sees her approach to identity as fluid and inclusive.
“Anybody can decide whatever gender or sex they are,” she says. “I like femme girls but I am really attracted to masculinity. I’ve always been kind of bisexual and it makes a lot of sense to me. It’s something that each person has to go through and it’s connected to love and trust. It redefines for me just how far love can take you into accepting things”
“That’s why queer is so important,” says the New Hampshire native. “I don’t have to say I’m bisexual or I’m straight. It’s just queer. It’s fucking with everything on so many levels for me. I know fags and dykes that are in relationships and that’s very queer to me. It is fluid, and drastic in some cases. It’s a part of who I am. I have no shame in my game.”
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