Stewart Taylor Gets Darker With ‘Dark Summer’

Stewart Taylor is ready to take us into his darker side. With his new single Dark Summer, the LA-based singer, songwriter, dancer, and model trades some of his usual pop energy for industrial synths, heartbreak, and a little bit of horror.

Released alongside a cinematic new music video, Dark Summer finds Taylor looking back at the relationships that left their mark on him, particularly the ones that came out of his years dating in Los Angeles. And judging by the song, there were quite a few of them.

“I wrote ‘Dark Summer’ about all of the men who have let me down in my life, specifically the ones I’ve dated in LA,” Taylor reveals. “Dating in Los Angeles has been Hell. It’s definitely not an easy city to find a long-term relationship in; lots of broken promises and lies and heartbreak resulted in the song.”

There’s something particularly fitting about turning queer dating frustration into a dark pop song. Anyone who has spent enough time navigating modern gay dating knows that heartbreak, situationships, questionable decisions, and the occasional man who should have stayed in the past can provide plenty of material. For Taylor, those experiences became the foundation for a song that sounds considerably moodier than his previous work.

Taylor co-wrote Dark Summer with longtime collaborator and producer Stevie Beerkens, with the song eventually evolving from a piano ballad into something much more dramatic. He cites influences ranging from Lady Gaga’s Mayhem and Nine Inch Nails to David Bowie and Lana Del Rey, while describing the finished track as “industrial-pop” and “a lot darker than anything I’ve done in the past.”

That darkness carries over into the music video, which Taylor co-directed with Benjamin Farren. Taking inspiration from classic horror movies and Rebel Without a Cause, Taylor appears as a kind of undead James Dean, complete with a red jacket and animatronic angel wings, as he returns to Hollywood to revisit old vices and familiar locations.

It’s a fitting visual for a song about being scarred by love. Taylor has described James Dean as a figure with whom he has felt a longtime connection, and the video gives him a chance to explore that connection through a decidedly supernatural lens. “I wrote the song about feeling beat up and scarred by love, or lack thereof, and the music video was a way of exploring my connection to him,” Taylor says.

And yes, there is dancing. The choreography by Julie Vegliante Knight brings a deliberately eerie, almost zombie-like quality to the video, while Emmy-nominated makeup artist Kályd Odeh helps complete Taylor’s horror-inspired transformation. So, if industrial-pop, queer heartbreak, undead James Dean, and a little Hollywood gothic drama sound like your kind of thing, you can’t miss this release. 

Watch the music video for Dark Summer below:

The new single also marks another step toward Taylor’s long-awaited debut album, a 12-track project that brings together pop, rock, and R&B and has been years in the making. Taylor sees Dark Summer as a particularly important part of that evolution, showing a side of himself that doesn’t necessarily fit into the bright pop persona we may have seen from him before.

“I’ve always been very important to me, and ‘Dark Summer’ is definitely a new chapter for me musically,” Taylor says. “I’m not just the fun, twenty-something pop singer who released ‘Mess Your Hair Up’ in 2019. I have so many layers as a person and as an artist, and ‘Dark Summer’ really explores and embraces my dark side.”

And you know us, folks, we’re always here for an artist embracing a little darkness.

---

Dark Summer is available to stream wherever you get your music. Follow Stewart Taylor on Instagram and TikTok at @imstewarttaylor, and visit stewarttaylorofficial.com for more. Follow us on X and Instagram for all queer stuff!

Featured Image: Image Courtesy of Project Publicity. Photo by Benjamin Farren