Lucy Dacus’ reaction to Janelle Monáe’s time travel claim is everything
Lucy Dacus had a hilarious reaction to Janelle Monáe claiming she time-travelled to see David Bowie. (TikTok/@RollingStone)
Lucy Dacus had a hilarious reaction to Janelle Monáe claiming she time-travelled to see David Bowie. (TikTok/@RollingStone)
Janelle Monáe travelled back in time to watch David Bowie perform, and Lucy Dacus believes her. Sort of.
“Lipstick Lover” singer Janelle Monáe and Boygenius band member Lucy Dacus were in conversation as part of Rolling Stone’s ‘Musicians on Musicians’ series earlier this week when Monáe, 39, made the big reveal.
In a video that has since gone viral on TikTok, Monáe, who identifies as non-binary and uses all pronouns, claimed that they used time travel to go back to the 1970s to watch music genius David Bowie perform his fifth album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
The record was released in 1972, 13 years before Monáe was born. Bowie died of liver cancer aged 69 in January 2016.
“I think when I saw David Bowie,” Monáe says at the beginning of the clip.
“You saw him?” Dacus, 30, responds, with slightly raised eyebrows.
“I did,” Monáe confirms. “I travelled back into the 1970s and I saw him do Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and it was incredible.”
Dacus then shifts her eyes and with a small smile repeats: “You… travelled… back?”
Monáe, who remains impressively deadpan throughout, replies: “Yeah, and I was backstage.”
“I was like, this is what I wanna do. And so I jetted back to, you know, the 2000s, and I was like, I can have the musical, make the music, create the lyrics, and create community around transformation and being queer and not even just in sexuality, but just in how we see the world,” they continued.
“Let’s go outside the mundane and what people know us as every day. Leave room to allow yourself to transform.”
The hilarious encounter has racked up a quarter of a million views on TikTok and counting, with a flurry of social media users flocking to voice their support for Monáe’s time-travelling lifestyle.
“It’s always ‘believe women’ until Janelle Monáe tells you she travelled back to the 1970s to see David Bowie perform backstage,” wrote one joker.
Others were enamoured with Dacus’s subtle response to Monáe’s claim.
“I know the Boygenius chat was going OFF after this,” one person guessed.
“The way [Dacus] locked in after realising she was serious is frying me,” wrote a third, as a fourth added: “Very thankful I was not put in the situation Lucy Dacus is in here.”
Elsewhere in their chat, Monáe and Dacus spoke about their gender and queer identities.
Monáe asked Dacus what was going through her mind when she was thinking of her “look” as an artist, as she often presents as “masc”.
“For just going between — I say water and rock. Soft and hard. Being non-binary, I think of it in energy,” Monáe said.
“I feel this deeply,” Dacus responded. “If I was told ‘You have to be one way forever,’ I would be like, maybe life’s not for me. It’s very important every day to wake up and be like, ‘Is it boy day or girl day?’ Or on tour, especially if we do two nights in the same city. I’ll have boy night, girl night,” Dacus said.
“In the ‘Ankles’ video, I have this big gown, and that obviously feels like a costume because it is one, but whenever I’m doing a really feminine look, I feel like I’m putting on a costume, but for fun. And then I feel more myself in more traditionally masculine clothes. But I want both. I want it all,” Dacus continued.
“I don’t think you need to choose. Even if the words don’t follow. For some people it’s really important to find the words, and for me, it’s more important to find the inhabiting. That took a while.”
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