Building on the foundation created by XO and its critical acclaim — an album MTV says “rejects easy categorization” and what NYLON calls a “much needed perspective on the how and why of everything.” —To Build Me a House is a collection of 15 songs (13 standard, plus 2 bonus tracks) diving deeper into Michael’s psychology – from themes of home and family to trans identity – and establishing a fresh, eclectic musical identity in the process. Michael executive produced the album with Reuben Butchart, a Brooklyn-based musician and composer. Michael and Reuben recorded most of the songs over a two year period in his Brooklyn studio, with Michael starting some demos in Los Angeles, Paris, and Berlin, and bringing in other writers and producers, including the aforementioned Chelsea Wolfe, Mood Killer, Jesse Saint John, Venn Smyth, Natti Vogel, Blew Velvet, Sam Sparro, Medusa, and Will Shishmanian, to name a few, to round out the album’s eclectic soundscape.
Of the new album, as Michael recently toldV Magazine: “My stylistic and topical diversity remains, but this time, I'm focused more on things like family, spirituality, rising above the bullshit, and going deeper into my roots, and why I am who I am. The sound is largely in the pop and R&B side of things, which I didn't expect, but it's all the music I loved, that I grew up with. I'm playing guitar on several of the tracks, which I picked up at the start of 2022. The album is a beautiful, delicate, but a fierce body of work.”
Michael's lyrics and messaging hinges on the idea that the personal is one's most powerful political tool. Michael's ultimate aim, aside from helping people awaken to social ills so as to address them, is to encourage people everywhere — who've been made to feel like who they are isn’t enough — to unlock their voices and raise them to the rafters.
