Calum Scott says he was ‘abandoned’ by friends after coming out as gay
Scott recalled: "I had a lot of internalised homophobia because I was abandoned by my friends when I came out as being gay"
By Gary Grimes
Britain’s Got Talent star Calum Scott has spoken out about the negative experience of coming out as a young teen.
In a recent episode of the We Need To Talk podcast, Scott tells host Paul C. Brunson that he lost all of his school friends after coming out to another boy aged 14. “I had a lot of internalised homophobia because I was abandoned by my friends when I came out as being gay,” he told Brunson.
“We were just talking and it would come up again and I was just so down and fed up of the questioning, when he asked me I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m interested in girls’ and he was like ‘What? Are you trying to tell me you’re gay?’ Scott recalled. “So I made the decision to say ‘Maybe’ and he was like ‘Alright’ and he skated away and told all the other boys and then we all went home.”
“The next day nobody came to call for me, nobody came to walk me to school and I went up to school and none of them wanted to talk to me at lunch,” the singer revealed.
“My whole life was my friendship group at that point, so for me my life was ruined from something I didn’t really understand and that was horrible, probably one of the lowest times in my life I’d say personally.”
“Because of the loss of I’d had with my friends I resented that part of myself and had done for a long long time” – Calum Scott
The artist added that his experience in school affected his relationship with his sexuality for a long time. “Because of the loss I’d had with my friends I resented that part of myself and had done for a long long time,” he said.
“I think I would say the last five years have just gone full 180 on it and I’m like, ‘I love who I am’.”
Scott famously competed on Britain’s Got Talent in 2015, aged 26, eventually going on to place sixth in the competition. He later released a cover of Robyn‘s hit single ‘Dancing On My Own’, which became a smash hit of his own, becoming the best-selling single in the UK in summer 2016, peaking at number two on the UK singles chart.
Later in the episode, Scott talks about the experience of coming out publicly through an interview with Attitude after consulting with his record label.
“[The label] said we could go to a gay publication and we could give them an exclusive but we make it very much about the music,” he remembered. “Or we don’t talk about it at all – it’s up to you.”
“So we chose to do a piece with Attitude magazine and the piece was so well written that it kind of went under the radar,” he laughed. “So by then I’m like, ‘fuck, I’m gonna have to do it again!'”
Scott later released the song ‘No Matter What’, which he co-wrote with John Legend collaborator Toby Gad, which details his experiences coming out.
“I knew more than that it wasn’t just my story, it would be millions of people around the world”
“As soon as I wrote that… I feel like that gave me a suit of armor, it was like the holy grail for me because it enabled me to be truly myself without any judgement on myself, without any hatred on myself,” he said. “I knew more than that it wasn’t just my story, it would be millions of people around the world.”