If you’ve ever cried at a horror movie not because it was scary but because the monster was just too relatable, welcome to Oliver Sim’s world.
“I think all my friends who love horror are really sensitive,” Sim told me, half-laughing and half-disarming, like someone who’s well aware that he’s made a debut album called Hideous Bastard and then followed it with a short film about murdering people while covered in prosthetics. “The monsters and final girls—those were the ones I related to. I was never gonna be the action hero or the Disney prince.”
Sim, best known as one-third of The xx, has stepped into the spotlight with Hideous Bastard, a record that lives somewhere between confessional therapy session and high camp B-movie fever dream. “The first words you hear are ‘I’m ugly,’” he pointed out, as if we hadn’t already clocked the title. “But I didn’t make this to punish myself. Writing about fear and shame is the opposite of shame. It’s the antidote.”
Those fears, as it turns out, are brutally personal. On the title track “Hideous,” Sim sings, “Been living with HIV since 17,” a lyric so direct it stunned most of the audience—and Sim’s mother. “My mom was like, ‘Whoa, how about some baby steps first?’” he recalled. “But she was right. I started talking to people I trusted, then more people, then journalists. By the time the song came out, it didn’t feel dramatic anymore. It just felt real.”
That slow process of disrobing—emotionally, not literally—is a recurring theme throughout the album and the accompanying film. “I’m much more honest in song than I am in conversation,” Sim admitted. “With a song, I don’t have to make eye contact.”
Still, he didn't want the vulnerability to feel preachy or sanitized. “If art is shouting at me ‘THIS IS REAL,’ my automatic reaction is to say, ‘No, it’s not. Fuck off.’” Instead, he embraced fantasy. Camp. Gore. “Horror is how I could be confessional without being earnest,” he said. “It lets me be angry.”
Sim is surprisingly funny about all of it. “Acting under two inches of prosthetics? Loved it. I got to be big and angry and kill lots of people.” The less-monstery scenes were tougher. “The earnest moments—those were hard. But Jan, the director, created such a calm space. I really needed that.”
There’s a recurring image in the film: a young boy watching Sim on an old TV, seeing himself reflected back. “That’s me,” he confirmed. “That’s what I wish I’d had growing up.” For Sim, that beacon came in the form of Graham Norton. “He was visibly gay on every TV in the country. My stepmom once told me, very casually while we watched, that Graham’s in a relationship with a man. I knew what she was doing—she’d figured me out—but it stuck with me.”
Musically, it was Placebo’s Brian Molko and Stefan Olsdal who gave him his first glimpse of representation. “They were beautiful, feminine, angry. They were in the NME. That meant something.”
So did Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which Sim refers to like a spiritual compass. “Sarah Michelle Gellar was one of my first heroes,” he said. “It was horror, but it was also high camp. Perfect.” He still lights up talking about the show’s musical episode, its monsters, its final girls—the whole glamorously gory package. “Buffy had everything I needed at that age.”
Despite breaking new ground as a solo artist, Sim’s commitment to The xx remains intact. “The xx will always be my home and my priority,” he said. “I can’t speak for Romy and Jamie—but actually, I can. They feel the same.”
Still, don’t expect the XX 2.0 just yet. “Nothing’s recorded,” he added, “but there is more music. There are lyrics.”
And maybe a few more monsters.
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
