Everything ‘Old’ Is New Again: Brian Falduto Goes Country

Admit it: your formative years were awkward af. Parachute pants, mullets, a minefield of pimples – cringe to the max!

And when you sprinkle a healthy dose of queerness atop the adolescent salad, the bitterness blossoms.

Now imagine projecting your gayest moments to the world in a pop culture time capsule that movie fans can exhume over and over again. That’s the surreality of being Brian Falduto. You may remember him as the gloriously catty, Liza-loving kid in School of Rock who uttered one of the sickest burns in modern cinema.

“You’re tacky and I hate you.”

But Brian quickly went from burner to burnee. He was mercilessly bullied for his orientation until he resented the very fabulosity that made him famous.

Thankfully, Brian survived his turbulent youth and emerged as a formidable voice for his generation. But surprisingly, that voice has a backwoods twang.

“People always seem shocked that I love country music so much and yet I always have,” Falduto explains in a press release.

His new tune, Same Old Country Love Song, paints a familiar picture with a refreshingly rainbow-flecked brush. Brian describes a couple canoodling in a pickup truck near a lake, but – surprise, they’re guys!

For Falduto, country music is a passport to the past that reconciles his upbringing with his brilliant future.

“I’m really proud of what I’ve done here. Don’t get me wrong – I am loving all the new and exciting sounds that are out there these days, particularly much of what’s coming from emerging queer artists who are pushing the envelope… But with this project, I wanted to return to the classic 1990s/early 2000s vibe that ‘little me’ used to bop around to but could never quite find himself in. I’ve always wondered what it would have been like if smack dab in the middle of the latest Rascal Flatts and Jo Dee Messina hits, a song came on the radio that I didn’t have to search for myself in but that normalized who I was. My new single does just that. I hope it provides some joy, some laughter, and some sense of belonging to those who need it most. If nothing else, it’s certainly done so for the little kid inside of me.”

Not tacky. We don’t hate it. No notes.

Photo: Instagram @brianfalduto