What makes Tsycophant compelling isn’t just its emotional candour, but the way that Tsatsamis refuses to over-explain those emotions once they enter the music. The project revolves around the uneasy proximity between admiration and resentment, envy disguised as admiration, and the ambivalent competitiveness that can emerge inside queer social scenes built on mutual recognition – tensions that feel notably less guarded than they did in his earlier work.

There’s a similar sense of expansion in the music itself. His previous releases often framed queerness through distance or retrospection, written from the edge of experiences that still felt too immediate to fully process. On Tsycophant, that perspective feels noticeably more settled, far less driven by self-definition than immersion. Much of that shift can be traced back to his relationship with London — clubs, friendships, lust and gossip all filtering into the record, alongside the ongoing cycles of projection and reinvention that come with them.

Sonically, Tsatsamis extends that same fluidity, pulling from the spacious pacing of ‘80s pop while concurrently resisting nostalgia-bait. The references are legible – George Michael, Pet Shop Boys, Janet Jackson – but the execution feels strikingly contemporary, a balancing act between homage and immediacy.

Below, Tsatsamis reflects on queer adolescence, emotional contradiction, and why patience in pop is indispensable.

The word “sycophant” often has negative connotations. What made you want to center a project around that, and at what point did it become the title?

It started with “Spit or Kiss.” Actually, a song before called “Infamous,” which I reused half of the lyrics of for “Spit or Kiss.” I was writing a lot separate from music (in my notebook) and got really into this idea of bitchiness and how I found myself infatuated with people and then would bitch about them. Not even badly, just talking about them all the time. It made me feel closer to them. 

I’d then find myself being different to them in person, or being a hypocrite. It made me start thinking about the complexity of idolizing someone in the social scene. What did that mean about my self worth? About my confidence?

I was really drawn to the idea of being playful with these typically negative themes because everyone has them. I’ve victimized myself in a lot of my music, so it was fun to flip the narrative.

Did writing this project make you more aware of those kinds of behaviours in yourself?

Absolutely. All of these songs started from quite an organic place. I’d be journaling or writing to clear my head about some situation I was anxious or wrapped up in, then I’d go back or revisit those thoughts from an outside perspective when I was writing the songs.

Does writing about these vulnerable traits help you process and work through them, or are you more so just documenting these phases or your life and growth?

For sure. I mean, they really all started from journal entries that were completely separate from the music. I found it useful to not only process all of these emotions and thoughts, but it also just helped develop my writing. I love that I can think of very specific anecdotes, nights, or even entries that later inspired a song. It’s like a little sonic diary. When I think of the tracks too, there’s some that I stand by and some where I definitely feel more mature or distant from how I was feeling at the time I wrote it.

Your earlier work dealt a lot with shame, and this project feels more like indulgence — what led you to make that shift?

After the Our Shame tour in 2024, I was so energized by the “fun” music. That, along with the actual release of Our Shame, felt like the closing of a chapter for me. I also just fucking love being gay. It’s the best thing about my life. My friends, where I live, where I go out, I wanted to celebrate that. After the last project, I felt really ready to go into a room with other collaborators or open up my laptop and make something about that present moment. Previously my writing process had been much slower, over days or weeks, and often written retrospectively.

You’ve talked about this period of your life being a kind of “delayed adolescence” — what has that actually looked like for you, and how did it feed into the music?

Moving to London only a few years ago – after having commuted or always lived on the edge of it – was such a huge shift for me. I was surrounded by people that were queer, and it was their normal, so it became my normal. Going out and constantly meeting new queer people as a baseline, not having to search for the one other undercover gay person in a 10 mile radius, I think you can hear it in this new music.

The more I write, the less literal queerness comes across in my music. I’m not defining what it is to be gay for myself, because these relationships and the social scene feels ordinary rather than something that I was visiting. I wrote my first EP’s when I was still living away from London, Our Shame was just as I’d moved, and Tsycophant was what I started writing once I felt settled.

Is there a specific song on the project that you feel captures that “delayed adolescence” feeling most vividly? 

I’d say that “Maybe I Should Be More Like You” captures the weird period where you compare yourself to all of these new people that you’re meeting. There are a lot of themes in that song and “Spit or Kiss” that mirror those weird rivalries you have in high school. I’ve used that analogy quite a bit, about how queer adolescence can bring you back to a time where social scenes and sex and gossip can get a little messy. That and maybe “Think About You,” that’s my “Teenage Dream.”

In your experience, what is it about nightlife that makes it become a kind of second teenagehood in queer communities?

It’s just fun and messy. In high school and college we’re not really able to have that full liberation because we’re either still closeted, in a minority, or both, so we’re just voyeurs to hedonism. Also moving away from home and being able to fund your freedom and recreation helps.

Your sound, especially this project, pulls heavily from ‘80s pop — what do you think that era understood about the way that pop music should make you feel that modern pop sometimes misses?

Bring back the middle 8! Music in the ’80s had so much more patience. In the tempo, in the length of writing, in the lyrics. The production and mixes have so much air to them, and a lot of them feel underproduced but still so full of life. There’s a simplicity that I find really inspiring and I love marrying with more modern production influences.

You’ve moved from a pretty DIY way of working into collaborating more with other writers and producers — how has that transition been for you? Do you have a hard time letting go of control?

At first I found it really weird to have input from other people on the production side. With songwriting I’ve grown to be a little less precious because the idea oftentimes just started in the room. With production, I’d spend days or weeks or longer with something, so by the time that I eventually would hand it over I was so attached. At first, when anything new came in, I was like, what the fuck. Now, I really value the outside perspective and input.

To be honest though, I’d say it remained pretty DIY. Songs like “Angelina” or “Violent Thoughts” started with other writers and producers, but other tracks like “Think About You” or “Recreational,” Clarence Clarity helped toward the end of things. The middle was a lot of me trying shit for months at home on my laptop. 

Has working with other writers ever changed or made you think twice about what you allow yourself to say in your music?

If anything it’s given me more confidence. To sing something in a room with conviction you have to really believe in what your voice is. It’s taken a moment to get there, but now I’m like “Fuck it, let me be as honest as possible.”

Looking ahead, do you feel like this project is more of a “closing statement” on this chapter — or more like the beginning of a new version of you as an artist?

It really does feel like I’m just getting started, so maybe the latter? Maybe that’s the reason that I wanted it to be a mixtape, not an album. 

I’ve grown so much as an artist and I understand myself far better than I did when I started making it a year and a half ago. Thematically, the Our Shame EP was me shedding off all of these songs that I wanted to write that were maybe weighing me down emotionally. Tsycophant is me being like “Okay, I’m fucking happy with where I am right now.” Sure, there are things that I’m struggling with, but it’s not because I’m gay. I wanna explore all of the good and bad and write as it happens, rather than looking back.