In the music video for his new single, Billy Recce plays a gay man whose dream of reconnecting with a former boyfriend is shattered when his ex plans to marry someone else.
But the singer-songwriter insisted “Come Out,” unveiled Friday, isn’t a heartbreak anthem. Instead, he hopes the song will encourage listeners to “let loose a little” and do away with “the self-important personas we all build up for ourselves.”
“I wanted to write an opening number that captured the feeling of ‘coming out’ of so many months of quarantine that then devolved into something even deeper ― coming out of the people some of us became during that time,” Recce, who is based in New York, told HuffPost. “I hope that everyone has a great time bopping along to it, adds it to their favorite playlists, and gets the damn thing stuck in their heads!”
Watch Billy Recce’s music video for “Come Out” below.
Working with director Amanda Whiteley, Recce wanted the “Come Out” video to boast a “queer, candy-colored, ‘Wedding Singer’ vibe” that would reflect the song’s distinctly 1980s influence.
As for the video’s ambiguous conclusion, he said: “Will [the characters] allow the changed versions of themselves to prosper—even if it doesn’t feel authentic to who they really are—or will they step out of line and step back into their old selves? I think it’s something we’ve all dealt with at some point, for better or worse.”
“Come Out” is planned as the first single from Recce’s follow-up to his 2018 debut album, “The Perks of Being a Snowflake.” He’s best known in Manhattan theater circles as the composer of “Little Black Book,” a musical/theatrical concert hybrid inspired by the life of “Hollywood Madam” Heidi Fleiss.
An album featuring songs from that production was released in 2021, featuring performances by Broadway’s Mandy Gonzalez, Alice Ripley and Jessica Vosk, among others.
Recce’s new show, “Singfeld! A Musical Parody About Nothing!,” is set to premiere off-Broadway in June. He’s also at work on “Fowl Play,” a queer-inclusive musical satire of Chick-fil-A and its numerous anti-LGBTQ controversies that “has some heady stuff to say about rainbow capitalism and selling out your morals.”
And while Recce has his sights set on Broadway glory, he’s eager to build a name for himself, with Ben Folds, Billy Joel and Randy Newman among his many influences.
“I guess I just love a sarcastic, lanky dude at a piano pouring his heart out,” he said. “Personally, that’s my favorite thing to do as a performer ― just sit at the keys and tell a story that people may not have heard before, or re-contextualize one they already have.”