Marco Palou, aka Baby Yors, the NYC-based Latinx singer-songwriter and Out100 alum, has been hard at work while in quarantine…quite literally.
Over the past handful of years, Baby Yors has given his dedicated fans a steady string of eclectic singles and hi-art, hi-glam photoshoots, as well as stints walking runways during NYFW, including for corset-wizard Garo Sparo. Yors’ intense good looks, strong vocals, and unashamed sexual energy have kept him ahead of the curve creatively for years, and so it is little surprise that the Argentinian provocateur would be busy in a lockdown.
To wit, Yors is now back in the spotlight with a new track and music video for his latest single, “Like a Gun.” Originally written some years ago, Yors has brought this track out of his closet for this new world of 2021. Proudly flaunting his heavily-homosexual love for trouser snakes and slinky, sweaty dance moves, Yors is showing off his calling cards here: a crooning falsetto, hearty high notes, sexy lines in Español, and the ever-present and overt sexual tension. Sung in both English and Yors’ native Spanish, “Like a Gun” proves itself to be a hot and heavy song in any language.
The music video — filmed during New York’s lockdown in a massive and eerily empty Brooklyn warehouse and office space — shows the queer singer-songwriter grasping the titular gun while dancing freely about the high-ceilinged rooms. The visual effect is invigorating, but lets viewers understand the ache Yors feels for sexual congress… yet he dare not. Because guns are dangerous. And so is COVID.
We sat down with Yors to chat about how he’s been handling the continued lockdown in NYC, how “Like a Gun” has changed since its inception, and what the future may hold for his country of origin, Argentina, now that the usually very traditional and Catholic country has dropped finally legalized a woman’s right to an abortion.
Hi Baby! How has quarantine been treating you so far?
It started very slow. I was reading and writing a lot. Very passively singing and playing the guitar with no real goal in mind. But I have so many projects which I’ve yet to finish, so I also started looking through all these songs and other works that I had lying around the house. It was just a lot of creativity, basically, because I was locked in. But thankfully, I have a creative outlet. And I was able to design and build a tiny studio in my home, so now I can record here. Quarantine forced me to start finishing projects… “Like a Gun” is actually a three year old song, but being shut in like this sort of forced me to finish it.
So is “Like a Gun” actually ABOUT a gun?
“Like a Gun” is actually about a sexual fantasy of mine. I thought about that scene in Titanic when Jack is painting Rose nude. I was thinking about what it was like for her, having a guy in front of you wearing just his underwear… There’s obviously sexual tension. What he’s got in his pants is something dangerous, like a gun. I’m in a committed relationship, so what guys have in their pants is literally dangerous to me. So it’s about my deep love for male genitalia and its weapon-like qualities. But the song is old, and things are different now, so at the same time, it has another kind of feeling — if you have COVID, it feels as if you have a gun in your hand.
The music video is quite entrancing — how did this one get made?
So I was planning something with a much bigger production and sponsors and things like that. But during the photoshoot for the cover of this single, my friend who was shooting some behind the scenes footage turned on “Like a Gun” on a speaker, and I started dancing, I just couldn’t help myself. And I was like, Okay, wait, this feels like it could be a real music video. And since the entire building was vacant because of COVID, there were all these empty rooms, so we took advantage of that too. We were very nervous, of course, about using a gun in the video… but I was thinking, if artists don’t reflect what’s happening in culture, even if that reflection is something negative, then we’re not doing the right thing. So many people told me we should probably not use a gun… but I’m like, this year was very much about guns and violence and fighting. Using this prop, yes, I’m talking about my sexuality, but I’m also talking about the virus, and the fight for social justice, and the fight for equality. And yes, I’m talking about guns, too!
Once we’re all safely vaccinated, are you excited for “Like a Gun” to inspire newfound queer sexuality?
Yes, I am, but in the meantime, I think queers can be sexy in their own house! Masturbation is awesome. You can do it on your own, you can do it with your phone. Before the quarantine, just for an example, I would spend upwards of seven hours per week making my way from Brooklyn to the Upper West Side and back for dance classes. But now I can take those same classes from my living room over the internet, and save a ton of time. And that’s just one small aspect of my daily life. So I have a lot more time now, as most people do, to think about my sexual fantasies and just like, be horny. And “Like a Gun” is a reflection of that reality.
Your songs are usually in one language, but “Like a Gun” is in both Spanish and English. How did you come to the decision to write it that way?
While in quarantine, my fiance and I became friends with our neighbors in our building… unheard of in New York City before the pandemic. But one of our neighbors is from Uruguay, and we would speak Spanish with each other more often than English. And then I also have a close friend here in NYC who is from Argentina, like me, and he started coming over as one of our quarantine bubble friends. So basically it was the three of us speaking Spanish together all the time, something I haven’t really done in years. And that’s really where the bilingual thing stems from. I updated the song with both Spanish and English to reflect what’s actually happening in my life.
Speaking of Argentina, back in December of 2020, the Argentinian government announced it will drop criminal charges against women accused of having abortions and will finally legalize the procedure itself, which is great. And that actually makes Argentina only the second democratic country in Latin America to legalize abortions, which is surprising. I know that you experienced a lot of homophobia while there, and generally, Argentina is known as a pretty conservative, Catholic country. Yet in light of this news, do you feel that Argentina is finally starting to change?
Here’s the thing with Argentina: I was at the UN last year, and it was an international conference about gender and sexuality and all these things. So the ambassador of the Argentinean embassy was on the panel. And Argentina was seen as a reference for the rest of the world. It’s one of the first countries that legalized gay marriage. It’s actually so progressive on paper, even more than a lot of European countries. And this guy was boasting about how they do this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this. And with such an ego… And I was like, dude, you’re straight, you’re white, you’re sitting there with literally no clue. Like, what the fuck, who are you talking about? Because in reality, Argentina is a faggot killing society. It’s so misogynistic, so homophobic. The fact that the law is helping, like, Okay, great, whatever. The culture needs to change. I don’t know how to do that, but that’s the real problem there. So this is a great move for them but I just hope that things change from a deeper way.
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story / Alex Blynn