Class of 2021: Jazmin Bean (2024)

“I would perform at clubs, do the most extreme things that I could do and see how many people I could shock.”

Beginning as an early teen by emulating the looks that adorned the then-popular Monster High dolls, make-up became a way for Bean both to overcome their everyday insecurities and become a souped-up, nth degree version of themself. “It’s the face I want to put on for myself all the time because that’s how I see myself,” they say. “If I saw my [normal] face I’d think, OK that’s a nice face, but that’s all you can say. But if I were to put on the face I do then I’d have so much more to say about myself; you can tell more about me.” In an ideal world, they say, they would make the changes permanent; there are no legal ways currently to do it, but the dream would be eye enlargement surgery and to get their “ears pointed like an elf”.

Music for Jazmin - the first installment of which came with last year’s ‘Worldwide Torture’ EP, recently re-released via Interscope - feels more of an arm of the whole project that is their life than its entire core. The horror-pop of their output - pop-metal hybrids that spin twisted fairytales of “gouging out [their] eyes” with love [‘Saccharine’] and create an evil manifesto on its title track (“A pure violation of God’s great creation / It’s an infestation‚ it’s world domination”) - comes backed by elaborate, theatrical videos, Bean soaked in blood or strapped to a candy pink latex dentist’s chair. Perhaps incongruously, they state that their dream musical collaborators and favorites are Avril Lavigne, Nicki Minaj and Gwen Stefani. “If I could have them on a song I’d lose my mind,” they sigh, “I think I’d just have a stroke or something.”

“It’s the face I want to put on for myself all the time because that’s how I see myself.”

Yet if Avril’s skater girl schtick doesn’t quite marry up to the Manson influences you might expect, then perhaps what unifies Bean and their idols is a commitment to whatever their specific schtick may be. Rather than attempting some great act of political transgression with their art, Bean seems to be a fairly cheerful, confident person who is simply drawn to the more hyperbolic possibilities of life. They have Aspergers, they explain, and are a very particular person with regards to all their creative decisions. “When I watch mainstream pop artists’ videos, obviously it’s pop and it’s made for the masses, but it just makes me feel very…” they tail off. “I just think being particular is everything and why wouldn’t you want to be?

“I had this really weird psychosis half a year ago where I was like, I wanna win a Grammy,” they giggle. “Even though we’re nothing alike, I saw people like Billie and Lana nominated and it made me think, oh my god a Grammy! That just seems gorgeous! I just thought it would be such an entertaining idea to have someone like me experiencing that. I thought people would be like, ‘What has music turned to?!’ if they saw someone like me win a Grammy, so I was quite set on that for a few months and then I just started having my normal ideas and fell out of it because all of them were so far from sounding like a Grammy nomination or any nomination…

“You can’t ever aim to please anyone, though, ‘cause they’re all gonna be dead in 200 years…”

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