‘How I made peace with my voice changing as a trans singer taking testosterone’

I’m wrapping up my chat with musician Ash Johnston, better known by his alias BB Sway, because one, we’ve covered a lot (London’s oppressive intensity; how testosterone changes the voice; fragile family relationships), and two, Johnston is a little “delirious”.

He laughs as he confesses and puts his mild delirium down to a day spent being kissed by the first sunshine of the season in Melbourne, where he moved to from London a few months ago while the Australian city was at its winter peak. “The sun has finally started showing in Melbourne after what has felt like a really long winter,” he says. “So I’ve just been, like, soaking it in.”

You can feel the sun on Becoming You, his new three track EP, despite the fact the bulk of it was written while still under London’s gray haze. It’s a sound Johnston has cultivated since his debut EP cosy in 2019 (on which “soaking up the sun” is one of the track names). His music pirouettes in your ears, and leaves life just that bit brighter than it was three minutes earlier. It’s lo-fi, airy production dusted with twinkly strings and ethereal vocal distortions, with a slight dissonance between the winsome hooks and tougher lyrics. 

Becoming You is his first EP in two years. Life’s changed a lot in that time. He needed to catch his breath. The bitesize project “is all about change and being on a very fast moving journey,” he says from his new Melbourne apartment. Locational change, yes, but also romantic relationships ending, parental relationships changing, and his experience of beginning to transition in late 2022.

First, the location change. His move out of London was preempted by Johnston’s 2021 EP Pearl on the opener “Baby Wants Out of the City”, but it took several years for him to depart. He moved to the UK from Hong Kong, via a few years in Los Angeles, aged 14, and spent time in the West Sussex countryside before moving to London for university. The now 27-year-old studied music at Goldsmith’s University and lived in New Cross, where the blare of ambulance sirens kept him awake. “In that first year, I was like, ‘This is too much,” he says with mock overwhelm. “It was such a chaotic environment. I was like, ‘OK, get me out of here! I’m good!”

He knew London had one of the world’s best creative scenes, but with that comes a constrictive “hustle and grind culture”. “I found it quite stressful after a while,” he admits. “It was kind of just wearing me down a little bit.” Melbourne, as its own artistic oasis but one framed by beaches and forests, had been tugging on Johnston’s brain for years. “Road”, the cinematic finale on Becoming You, started production in London and was finished in Melbourne, and reflects on the journey between the two.

Prior to leaving London, Johnston took time away from making his own music, writing and producing for others including his friend, “STARFACE” singer Lava La Rue. In early 2023, he began feeling – and most crucially, hearing – the impact of taking testosterone. He told his label and agent that he would need to take a break from recording and performing. 

“I knew that I was basically going to go through a second puberty and my voice was going to break and not sound very sexy and not be easy to control for quite a while. That was honestly one of the harder things to accept when I chose to start transitioning,” he shares. Prior to taking testosterone, Johnston says he had “a lot of dysphoria” around his talking voice, but his singing voice, he had deliberately honed to sound caramel sweet. 

“When I would try to sing the things that I used to be able to sing, I just couldn’t do that anymore, and it was really heartbreaking for me,” he says. “I’m feeling positive about it now but for a while it was f**king terrifying.”

When he did try and record new music, he’d squeeze out a maximum of three takes before he’d be in pain. He mourned no longer being able to sing some of his earlier work in the same way, and he had to remind himself why he had put himself through the process in the first place. “It was just really a process of trying to trust myself that the pros outweighed the cons essentially. There were so many other things that I wanted to gain from transitioning and from being on testosterone. I felt so eager to feel more at home in myself and I told myself that I’ll be able to sing again, it’ll just be different.”

On Becoming You, his falsetto has retired, but what’s left is drier and more gravelly, a husky compliment to the EP’s breezy production. Besides, the record makes clear that he had other elements of his transition to navigate too.

On opener “Why’d You Think I Called You On The Phone?” Johnston details trying to tell his father, who lives in the US, about his plans for top surgery, but he’s met with distance and unanswered phone calls. On the title track, over incongruously delicate strings, Johnston reflects on the strained relationship between his parents and how, after he began taking testosterone, he would remind his mother of his father.

“I think that was a bit triggering for her in some ways, you know, without saying too much. They had a very challenging relationship and I think whenever I remind her of him, I don’t think it felt very good for her,” he says. “I guess I’m scared that I’m becoming you,” he frets on the song, before ultimately digging around for the positives.

“We have a complicated relationship as well as I think a lot of people have with their dads,” Johnston says today. “It was interesting accepting that and learning to love the parts of me that remind me of him.”

Johnston has previously said that it felt “euphoric” working on new music with a new register to his voice. Still, there’s a lot of joy to be found in the music he made beforehand. New music is on the horizon, some of it was recorded pre-transition, “which I still really love, but my voice sounds very different and I’m figuring out how I want to release that into the world and share that with people,” he says. There’s a lot for him to consider, but first, a trip to the beach for that next dose of Melbourne sunshine.

“Becoming You” by BB Sway is out now.

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