Jake Shears
- Category : 1978-births
- Type : GP
- Profile : 1/3 - Investigating / Martyr
- Definition : Single
- Incarnation Cross : RAX Tension 3
Biography
American singer and songwriter best known as the lead male singer for the pop band Scissor Sisters. The openly gay Shears is known for provocative dancing, flamboyant outfits, and near nudity.
At the age of 19, he travelled to Lexington, Kentucky, to visit a classmate, who introduced him to Scott Hoffman. Shears and Hoffman hit it off immediately and moved to New York a year later.
Shears attended New York's Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, where he studied fiction writing and was a classmate of Travis Jeppesen. He also wrote pieces for the gay magazine HX. In 2000, he worked as a music reviewer for Paper magazine.
Shears and Hoffman formed Scissor Sisters in 2001 as a performance art stunt, playing outrageous shows in clubs like Luxx, the heart of the electroclash scene in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where Shears lived. After a couple years struggling in New York (working with the record label A Touch of Class, who produced "Comfortably Numb" and "Filthy/Gorgeous"), Scissor Sisters finally found success in the United Kingdom and Ireland, ending 2004 with the biggest-selling album of the year in the UK.
In October 2017, Shears released his first song as a solo artist, "Creep City", which he described as a "pretty theatrical jam, with quite a few twists and turns." In February 2018, Shears published his autobiography, Boys Keep Swinging.
His debut solo album, Jake Shears, was released on 10 August 2018.