Becoming a Disabled Pop Star: Self-Expression and Building Community Through Music

At any moment, you can turn on the radio or your favorite streaming service and search up music based on everything under the sun. You can reminisce about love, loss, history, culture, fashion, even cold beer on a Sunday night. It seems like almost everything has been sung about, right? Wrong! 

Would you believe me if I told you I wrote the first dance pop song about disability?

Feeling Misunderstood and Isolated

Growing up with an extremely rare syndrome called Moebius Syndrome, which made me born with my eyes and face paralyzed, I knew about being disabled and different all too well. The chances of getting this syndrome are two in a million. Although now I feel super rare, you can probably imagine how isolating that could be in an area completely void of diversity. Every new place, every new interaction, every new stare haunted me and left me with a tainted view on the world. How could people say first impressions are everything when my facial difference was their first impression of me? It felt so incredibly vulnerable and scared that I had to show my cards to the world, where others were able to bluff and have their poker faces on until it was their time to shine. For a lot of my childhood, it felt like an open wound, wide open, on display for the world to gawk and throw salt on. It felt so dichotomous, having a family that assured me that nothing was wrong with me, to go out into the world and be seen as something completely different.

Finding Confidence Through Self-Expression

This is where community and expression swiped me off my feet and would continue to reshape the bain of my existence. Although no facial expressions means the universe has blessed me with incredibly youthful skin my whole life (free botox), it also means losing a huge chunk of the nonverbal communications that we use daily. Before I got my smile surgeries (which I started at the age of ten), I would constantly have people telling me that I always look so sad and need to smile more. Even if I was having a great time, confusion and concern would arise. I learned very quickly that I need to have other tools in my kit to showcase to others that really I am a kind, warm, funny, witty, and easygoing person, and I promise I won't bite. Unless you want me to!

This began my fashion journey and realization that you can seriously dress for the part you want. In the beginning of my fashion journey, this era was very preppy. Because people would automatically just assume, because of my speech and my facial difference, that I was unintelligent, and some would even speak to me as if I were a baby, I would dress with button downs and be very professional so I could walk in and finally get a bit more respect, especially in new spaces. Button downs were very, very loved. Luckily, after many, many years later, I have been able to really come into my own fashion and what feels right for me and, instead of chasing trends, really finding clothes that feel comfortable in my own skin. Alongside fashion, tattoos have actually been very effective in showcasing who I am on the inside to the outer world. My collection of tattoos indicate my intricate and artistic side, and I really believe that it emphasizes the level of depth I truly have as a person. Although I have the confidence and sureness of who I am now and do not feel the need to persuade others the kind of person I am, they definitely make it a bit easier. A pop star is truly my aura, and with that comes the popstar tattoos and style!

Bringing Disability Into Pop Music

So that brings me to music. How did I end up becoming a trailblazer bringing disability to pop music? Well, just like fashion and expression, I learned very quickly that music was one of the main things that I could use as therapy for myself and also a tool for others to understand me deeply. I have always been a singer, and actually have a VHS of me singing karaoke at the young age of three years old. I started playing percussion in fourth grade, and throughout the years learned piano and guitar. At fifteen, I had the incredible opportunity to go to Nashville to work with one of Gavin Degraw’s producers, and it completely altered my life. When I walked into that recording studio, I knew that this was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

However, at fifteen, I also started my disability advocacy journey, and the overwhelming flow of others' reactions were that I was “inspirational.” A tale as old as disability time. So to fulfil the prophecy, I started writing “inspirational” songs. Looking back, I cringe heavily at my first song called “Take a Stand,” but really, what did I know as a disabled teen finding himself? But alas, I needed to realize that I am a human with so many complex thoughts and feelings and am allowed to write and create about all aspects of my life.

I needed to create two albums to really understand and know my message and my sound, and am so incredibly excited and grateful for this new era of this third album called “DISABILITEA.” This era sparked when I realized how I use dance music to dance through trauma and pain, and that there is so much beauty in dance and movement. I then realized that when I tried to find disabled music, the music was only inspirational, sad, or pity. To me, that was one side of disability, but where is the disability joy? Where is the joy of finding community? Of being different? Of being resilient and so capable of navigating a world that was not built for you? I quickly got to work and made the song called “DISABLED,” a pop banger for the community to not only realize that reclaiming identity is everything, but that we are so incredibly beautiful, sexy, worthy, and deserving! This album is me spilling the tea on disability joy, queer joy, and dancing through pain in a way that has felt the most authentic my music has ever been. 

So what do you think? Will you have this dance with me?