Songs About Ugliness

Oliver Sims sings about his HIV status in his new song, 'Hideous'.

The first two words in ‘Hideous’, Oliver Sim’s new single from his upcoming album, Hideous Bastard, are ‘I’m Ugly’.

People are not comfortable around the issue of ugliness. We celebrate beauty and denigrate ugliness, even though you’ll find statements like ‘there’s no ugly person in the world’. But how often have we said on social media, and offline, how ugly someone is?

It’s brave for Oliver Sim to sing such words, but still he questions himself. There’s no finality to his words, as he questions himself – ‘Am I ugly?’

I guess this speaks to how one can accept being ugly while at times choosing to reject that.

The issue of ugliness and beauty is one that Oliver Sims sings about quite a lot. In ‘Romance With A Memory’, another single from Hideous Bastard, he sings

I’d only wanted to feel handsome

‘Hideous’ speaks to another kind of ‘ugliness’, if you can call it that. It talks about HIV. According to Pitchfork, Oliver Sim released a statement saying he had been living with HIV since he was 17.  

The publication them quoted Oliver Sim from the statement as saying

Two thirds in, having a good idea of what the record was about, I realized I’d been circling around one of the things that has probably caused me the most fear and shame. My HIV status

‘Hideous’ features Jimmy Somerville, and came out on May 23.