Perfume Genius Premieres 'Natural High' Single — SkimNews
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Perfume Genius premiered "Natural High," the first new music from Mike Hadreas since his 2025 album Glory
- "Natural High" is drawn from The Lesson, a live music-and-dance performance reuniting Hadreas with choreographer Kate Wallich, who previously collaborated on 2019's The Sun Still Burns Here
- The Lesson is inspired by Elfriede Jelinek's novel "The Piano Teacher" and its Michael Haneke film adaptation, features an original score from Hadreas, and was co-produced by Fashion Club's Pascal Stevenson
- Wallich said the piece explores "the dynamics between what is good and what is bad...how we're supposed to behave, and how we aren't, how to balance desire and restraint"
- Hadreas framed the collaboration as inhabiting a sonic world differently "when you are actually in a room holding the other person," extending his long-running idea that his albums are "soundtracks to films that do not exist"
- The Lesson tour runs February through April, opening with a work-in-progress showing at MASS MoCA in North Adams (Feb. 6) and including engagements at Los Angeles's Redcat, New York's Baryshnikov Arts Center, Paris's Philharmonie de Paris, London's Barbican Centre, and Dublin's National Concert Hall
Why it matters: The premiere marks Perfume Genius's most ambitious move into staged dance-music work since The Sun Still Burns Here in 2019, and the choice of Jelinek's sexually charged, power-laden "The Piano Teacher" as the source text signals a continued interest in erotic and moral tension that ran through Glory. For fans, it extends a six-year creative arc with Wallich into a full international tour rather than a one-off.
Ask SkimNews
.jpg)
