As a young boy, Mike Hadreas remembers seeing a news report about two kids getting kidnapped in a white van. It was obviously frightening, but Hadreas was also intrigued.

“I kind of started fantasizing about getting kidnapped,” he says.

Ever since, getting into dangerous situations “for the story” has been an attractive prospect for Hadreas, who performs as Perfume Genius .

“I knew I was going to do that when I got older,” he says. “I was, like, ‘I’m going to move to the city, and I’m going to be an alcoholic and an artist.’ … I kind of engaged in a lot of things at first for the story — to be the wild artist that I thought I was, even though I was making zero art. I was just doing a lot of drugs.”

Hadreas, now nearly 20 years sober, has adopted a different outlook on life, and his m

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