Kai Bosch is on a mission to be ‘the world’s biggest gay pop star’ – and comes Elton John-approved
Kai Bosch: ‘I want to be the biggest gay pop star in the world’. (Marieke Macklon)
Kai Bosch: 'I want to be the biggest gay pop star in the world'. (Marieke Macklon)
Earlier this year, while on a family holiday in Greece, Kai Bosch received an Instagram notification that would give most musicians severe palpitations: Elton John had just tagged him in a post.
The Rocket Man himself was announcing to the world that he and his husband David Furnish are major fans of the 23-year-old pop singer. “The Elton love went from zero to 100, really quick,” laughs an incredulous Bosch today over Zoom. His manager had discovered that Elton was a fan, and weeks later, Elton’s team had asked him to appear on his Apple Music radio show Rocket Man, where he promotes artists on the rise. “Then literally within like two weeks, I was FaceTiming Elton John. It was…” He widens his eyes. “It was crazy.”
Bosch’s Rocket Man episode aired last month, and the pair bonded over growing up gay in small towns; Bosch grew up in rural Cornwall and came out aged 14. Not everything went to plan, though. “What they didn’t show was the part where my Wi-Fi crashed and I had to ask Elton John if he could see me,” he laughs again, readjusting in his chair and stroking his Frank Zappa moustache. “In all the clips I’m bright red and it’s because I’m so embarrassed!”
Elton’s affirmation came at a good time. Bosch began making music in his bedroom aged 17, and put out his moody, alt-pop debut single “Be Right Back” aged 20 in 2022, all timid cursive vocals and hazy synths. It’s a way off from the subtly sexy pop maximalism of his most recent single and the one Elton lauded, “Summer of Love”, and that’s because Bosch has waged an internal war with his musical output since the start.
“There’s been so many points where I have felt like giving up and thinking, ‘This isn’t happening, this isn’t working,” he tells me. “Elton just totally solidified that feeling of like, ‘OK, and this is why you keep going.”
Bosch’s unease with his discography to date is multifaceted. First off, he wasn’t really sure in the beginning whether he wanted to make music just for himself – even keeping his talents a secret from his family for a while – or try and make a career of it. He struggled with the idea of putting songs out “to be judged and perceived by others”, and when he did begin releasing music, he got sucked into a whirlpool of validation seeking. “So much of it’s like, ‘Oh, well, who played you on the radio? And did they put you in some playlists?’ It kind of took me away from like, ‘I love this’.”
He’s now working with a life coach on recentring his passion for making music, but it’s still hard. Even after chatting with Elton, he found himself thinking about the next major achievement. “I’m not saying that [Elton being a fan isn’t] absolutely insane because if I take a step back, I can acknowledge it’s insane. You’re constantly just like, ‘OK, next thing’,” he says. “I’ve been trying so much more to just be in the moment.”
Another friction point came in the music he was actually making. Growing up, he would listen to the brooding, occasionally sullen work of Lana Del Rey, FKA Twigs, and Lorde (“Melodrama always has such a place in my heart,”) and decided that he should probably make his music melancholic too. Much of his earlier output, such as the 2022 single “Orbit” and 2023’s “Bodybag”, were alt-rock dirges about atrophying relationships. “That’s not to say that the songs aren’t me because all of those songs I’m really proud of,” he caveats, but he could sense that the veil of mystery he was hiding behind stemmed from something more sinister.
“I was really horrendously bullied in school for being gay for my entire school career and so I think that really probably fed into why the first few years of my music was so, like, mysterious and just very closed off,” he reflects. He was the only gay kid at his school, and his peers were “vicious” in their takedowns. He uprooted and moved to Berlin aged 17 to escape the suffocation, working in the city as an au pair to triplets, and realised he had some healing to do. “My entire adult life has been dedicated to undoing all of those feelings of having to suppress myself and to not be as loud and to not be as vibrant.”
While working on his 2024 EP Love, Throw Me A Bone, Bosch was recovering from a “pretty horrendous” break up (on “Funny”, he tells a story of his boyfriend dumping him – on his birthday – because he’d found someone else). The period marked a turning point.
“I was like, I’m actually really sick of feeling miserable and making miserable music. I just started listening to the music that I was listening to when I was 12 again,” he beams. The first album he had on his iPod Touch was Katy Perry’s sugary magnum opus Teenage Dream, and he began re-listening on repeat. Girls Aloud, Diana Vickers, MARINA’s Electra Heart all pumped into his ears. He went into the studio and told his producer, Duncan Mills, his mission statement: “I just want to make 2012 pop.”
The result was his latest EP Popstar of Your Dreams, released in April, and “Summer of Love” – his best song yet – which arrived two months later. On both, Bosch’s previously dour whisper is transformed into something livelier, caramelly, and all together more fun. The lyrics too: on the EP’s title track, he impishly joshes at the music industry, daring it to put him on a pedestal (“Listen to the music and you’ll hear it,” he goads today).
The production is all squelchy, abrasive synths in that distinctly early 2010s way; think MARINA’s “Primadonna” or Kesha’s seminal debut Animal, with hints of 3OH!3 or Twenty One Pilots. It’s probably not coincidental that this sunnier disposition arrived hot on the heels of him entering a new relationship with his current boyfriend. But, whatever it took, it feels like Kai Bosch has found his vibrancy.
“The thing that you can hear that’s different to the music that I was putting out three years ago is I’m very, very proud to take space now. I’m very OK with being loud and vibrant. I am here and I can say with my chest that I want to be the biggest gay pop star in the world,” he says, his smile being practically pulled towards his eyelids by the thought of his own dizzying aspirations. “I’m not ashamed to say that anymore.”
As the music got more effervescent, so too did his overall artistry. Early single artwork depicts him morose in candlelit rooms or standing in fields at the dead of night. Popstar of Your Dreams instead sees him flipping his hand into a finger gun, dressed as “this, like, gay cowboy club diva.” For “Summer of Love” he’s crawling on the grass, arched back, dripping wet, a rainbow glaring above him.
“So often there’s people whispering in your ear ‘You shouldn’t be doing that’ or ‘Actually this is wrong’,” he says, but he’s now become “so much better” at standing his ground. “It’s just been a lot of trial and error of realising, actually no, I know what’s best for my artistry.”
He thinks of a quote by Charli XCX, another idol, given as she collected the Songwriter of the Year accolade at last year’s Ivor Novello awards. She said that great music wasn’t enough to captivate an audience and “instead, a song with a distinct identity coupled with a point of view… and above all, conviction,” is what’s needed for superstardom. “That really struck me because I feel like I’ve so often let myself be the biggest barrier to my own success,” Bosch says. Now, he’s settling comfortably into his sound, like a pair of new trainers that gradually adjust into the perfect fit.
He’s enjoying incremental growth. There’s the Elton John patronage, “Summer of Love” placing near the top of Spotify’s New Music Friday list the week of its release, and a burgeoning support base on social media. Earlier this month, he was flown out to Sweden by Spotify for Stockholm Pride, where he got to work “with all the Swedish pop writers” – he can’t name names – but while there, he later told his fans via Instagram, he wrote his “best” song yet.
“Actually,” he says, “since I’ve gotten loud about it like, ‘Yeah, I’m a f**king sick gay pop star,’ I’m really beginning to find my crowd.”
“Summer of Love” is streaming now.
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