Salt Lake City-based musician and TikTok star, Addison Grace, announces the release of “I Wanna Be A Boy,” a fan-favorite song that’s now getting a proper single release. The act of writing this song led Addison Grace to discover their pronouns – he/they – and come home to themselves in a way that provided freedom, comfort and genuine love. As he sings “I guess I wanna be a boy,” the realization that they are a boy overcomes his heart and powerfully makes the heartfelt message impossible to ignore.
Never having expected to release the song outside of social media, the outpouring of love for this song made Addison Grace choose to finally give “I Wanna Be A Boy” a proper launch. In an interview with B Drop, he explains the birth of the song and says, “I initially started writing it when I was questioning a lot of things about myself. I’m very open with how I identify online and I’ve always openly been a queer creator, queer musician, and at that time I was really not understanding how I identified with my gender and how I felt about it, and so it started off as a song about gender roles and how I was jealous of guys and how they got to have certain things I couldn’t have. With time, I realized it was very much me explaining — in song form — that I wasn’t a girl and that I was nonbinary instead.
Speaking to fan reactions prior to the official release, he says, “A lot of people ended up relating to the song. I had trans men relating to it saying “I’ve always felt like that.” I’ve had trans women being like “I used to deny I was a woman and I wanted to be a boy; I wanted to be “normal” — quote, unquote. I even had my friends who were born female and identify as female feel that way because they felt they were a tomboy and never fit in with the “girlie girls” so to speak.” He adds, “Even though, for me, it’s a song about gender identity and finding myself in that way, I think really at the core — it becomes a song about not understanding yourself and wishing so desperately that you could and it’s a very vulnerable song for that reason.”
Speaking directly to the cover art for the single, Addison Grace adds, “I feel like a lot of my work recently has been about growing up and about those awkward moments in your life, so for this song, I wanted it to be a collage of my face growing up. I didn’t want it to be something someone had drawn. I wanted it to be realistic so I searched through a bunch of scrapbooks and I found pictures of two-year old me, 10-year old me, 15-year old me and a picture of me from last year and we ended up crafting it all together because I’ve always loved the idea of putting photos together and it makes something else. I wanted to put stickers and all that because when you’re finding yourself, it feels like these weird puzzle that don’t fit quite right, so I wanted it to look slightly off… I really love it and it feels really nostalgic to me.”
Coming out as non-binary, Addison Grace seeks to share his experience in hopes that their story can inspire others to embrace their true, authentic selves. He provides not only a permission slip, but also a helping hand by letting listeners into his world, laying out the intimate details of their journey and understanding of their own gender identity through diary-entry-like songs and social shares. He saw people he loved and respected sharing their truth, and that inspired him to do the same. His work is an act of passing the torch and spreading acceptance by embracing their path, step by step, and publicly asking himself questions and finding the answers.
Humble to the core, Addison Grace doesn’t believe he’s any different than anyone else, despite his 3.8 million followers on TikTok, almost 400,000 followers on Instagram, or nearly 200,000 YouTube subscribers. He refers to his loyal fanbase as “friends” rather than “followers” on purpose and he believes anyone (yes, anyone) can do what he does and make music and it’s not about having money, either. Addison Grace started with an iPhone 6 and no silver platter, as he recorded himself and began his music journey. He is living proof that you’re an artist if you call yourself one, and says, “You’re enough and what you’re doing is enough.“
Not only an advocate of the LGBTQIA+ community and budding artists, Addison is also often on record about mental health awareness, as he regularly shares his thoughts on life with ADHD. Through many social media posts and thoughtful messages, Addison once again gets personal enough to prove that “normal” doesn’t exist. Truth, however, is very real and that’s what Addison Grace brings to the table with “I Wanna Be A Boy,” which is now available to stream everywhere.
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