Though she was already in the process of trying to heal her body, when the pandemic hit in early 2020, Kiyoko was largely forced to focus on her health-something she hadn’t fully dedicated the time to do beforehand. “There’s not a lot of support, and everyone’s just guessing.”
“I was in a rabbit hole of not figuring out what was wrong with me and had all of these emotions covering up what the root of the issue was, but it’s it’s really hard when people have health issues because the health system is really challenging,” she says. While Kiyoko could easily go into “a four-hour deep dive” about the aftermath of her concussion, the condensed version is that she ended up on so much medication-a gallon-size Ziploc bag of them, to be precise-that she was getting side effects that could only be alleviated with more medication. After hitting her head at a Real World/Road Rules birthday party in 2016, she found herself battling post-concussion syndrome and depression, among other health issues that had hindered her daily life. Since the release of Kiyoko’s 2018 debut album, Expectations, the singer has earned a rabid fanbase that christened her as “Lesbian Jesus.” Along the way, she even performed with Taylor Swift live onstage and earned a spot in the singer’s music video for “ You Need to Calm Down.” But during the height of her success, the pop star was struggling.
Kiyoko has come a long way from that mall gig in Oregon. “It was just a casual pool party at the vice president’s residence,” the singer quips over Zoom, tucking a strand of her light blonde bob behind her ears. The night before Kiyoko speaks with SPIN, however, was notably the first time since then that she had played a gig on a stage that small-and it happened to be her most memorable one yet-the first-ever Pride performance at Vice President Kamala Harris’s residence where rainbow balloons, streamers and lights adorned the home. It was around 2013 and she was promoting one of her earliest records, A Belle to Remember. The first time Hayley Kiyoko performed on a two-foot-wide stage, she was playing at a mall in Oregon for five people.
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