Lucy Spraggan: ‘I was attacked by cis man in locked room – trans toilet bans don’t stop assaults’

Lucy Spraggan’s eighth album Other Sides of the Moon is a collection of reimagined fan favourites from older albums, plus a few new songs too, about loss, grief, and her wife of one year, Emilia. She’s up for chatting about it of course, but really, she wants to talk about transgender rights. She’s got a lot to say.

First, the album. We’re on sofas in an office in central London, 5pm on a Friday, on one of the first proper hot days of the year. It’s not a greatest hits album, she says – “They were never hits anyway!” – but rather an example of how the past is changeable. “I have this perspective on the past that it’s such a big part of your present [so] it was really nice to go back and dig around in [my discography] and cultivate it to be what I always wanted it to be.”

Production has changed on a few of the older songs, with a little help from Simon Cowell, her friend and the record’s A&R director. “He’s just like a professional perfectionist. At times I was getting frustrated because I thought, ‘This album is never gonna get made!’” The pair became close in 2021, almost a decade on from her experience on The X Factor in 2012, which ended after she pulled out after being raped by a hotel porter during the show’s production. 

Last year, Cowell walked her down the aisle during her wedding to Emilia. They remain good friends. “I have had a spag bol at Simon’s,” she beams when I question what a Simon Cowell social looks like. She doesn’t let him cook for her. “His favourite meal in the world is beans on toast!”

Other Sides of the Moon includes “The Lesson” and “Heaven”, two new songs specifically about grief. Spraggan lost a friend a few years ago, and during a session with a medium, he contacted her and told her to write “Heaven” about him. “When you get older, some people don’t get older, and as you get older, that happens more,” she explains. She’s not sad; she seems meditative, even accepting. “I was just thinking about how people can teach you so much when they’re alive, and then when they’re gone you realise the only thing that they didn’t teach you how to do is to be without them.”

The almost title track “Other Side of the Moon” is a sweet nocturne about her kismet relationship with Emilia. The pair were friends for years prior to becoming a couple, but after eventually admitting their feelings for each other, Spraggan knew “straight away” that Emilia would be the woman she’d marry. Spraggan wrote the track “in the traditional lesbian way of about a f**king month after we started seeing each other,” she laughs. The pair have been through the wringer since tying the knot, moving house into a “literal field” in East Yorkshire, dealing with grief and other “stressful” situations, but “all it has done is strengthen our relationship and I’ve been really grateful to have her,” she says.

Lately though, Lucy Spraggan has been worried. “Terrified,” she puts it. We’re meeting a few weeks after the UK Supreme Court ruled that transgender women aren’t included in the legal definition of “women” in the Equality Act 2010, a decision which was welcomed by Labour leader and prime minister Keir Starmer. Across the apparent political divide, Reform UK has proposed banning Pride flags from council buildings. “It’s not just the right [wing], it’s the stupid,” Spraggan deadpans. “Stupidity has no class. It has no creed. It’s just f**king stupidity and it bores me to death… I’ve had to explain to various LGB people that, I’m like, they will come for you next.”

We go deep on trans rights, and Spraggan is at her most fired-up, seemingly more passionate about protecting a minority group than she is about new music, her wedding, and yes, even spag bol with Simon Cowell. 

“I’ve always felt so passionate about trans rights to the point where there’s not many many things that will make me get physically angry, like f**king angry,” she says, gritting her teeth, screwing her hands into a fist. 

Spraggan has more reason than most to rally behind trans folk. In her 2023 memoir Process, she revealed that during her childhood and teens, she identified as a boy named Max. “Writing about Max and realising how intrinsically deep that runs for me has been huge,” says the now 33-year-old. “If life had been different when I was younger, I’d probably still be trans. And actually to be able to say that in an environment now is really liberating.”

As puberty began, Spraggan felt differently in her body, and decided to live as a cisgender woman. Yet in the years since, she’s struggled with body dysmorphia. “I thought I hated myself ‘cos I was fat.” It was a friend, trans man and author Ethan Kenny Jones, who suggested that her dysmorphia may actually be gender-related. “I never thought my experience was of transness, or like, maybe I did, but I would never have said that out loud. And for that to be validated? I was like, ‘f**k yeah’.”

Spraggan knows that her experience could be weaponised by those who believe trans youth can simply just change their minds about transitioning. “That’s why I really didn’t wanna say it initially,” she says.

“But I’m not telling the world that I’ll never be trans. Like, that’s it. It was puberty that stopped me from being trans the first time. I got t*ts and everyone was like, ‘You’re gonna have to make a decision’. I chose to be a girl; I don’t know that [during] menopause I might choose not to be. I’m non-binary,” she shares. “I can do what I f**king want, and I will punch someone in the face for trans rights. I s**t you not, I will.” As she launches her clenched fist into a fearsome jab, I believe her.

One of the biggest potential impacts of the UK Supreme Court’s ruling is the prospect of trans women being banned from single-sex spaces, like bathrooms and changing rooms. It’s this particular argument – that trans women are opening the door to the potential abuse of women in single-sex spaces – that enrages her the most. 

“I was attacked by a man in a locked hotel room,” she says of the 2012 assault, which she only spoke of publicly for the first time in 2023. She furrows her brow. “What makes you think that the symbol above the f**king door is going to stop a man from sexually assaulting you? Whoever wants to hurt people will f**king do it regardless. This is not about bathrooms and this is not about trans people. This is about something a lot deeper, and again it’s about stupidity. It doesn’t make any sense,” she says fervently. 

“Speaking as a woman who has been assaulted, a locked door won’t stop that guy. A pane of glass ain’t gonna stop that guy. If he wants to f**king attack you, he will. That’s not trans women.”

It’s a sobering conversation to have, but Spraggan thinks it’s essential that she be the one to have it. “Being cis opens me more up to the straight world. I’m a messenger,” she smiles. It’s time to move on from the heavy stuff. Back to the music. She’s historically released an album every two years. Is that still the plan? She shrugs. “F**k knows. Probably!”

Other Sides of the Moon is out now.

Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.