Nick Hissom Makes Liberation a Spectator Sport on 'Hot Boy Things'
There are two ways to respond to having your private life become public entertainment. You can retreat, or you can put on cowboy boots, climb onto a mechanical bull and make the spectacle considerably bigger yourself.
Nick Hissom, aka Hizzy, chooses the latter on Hot Boy Things. Across five tracks of glossy synth-pop, European dance energy and unabashed theatricality, the UK-born American artist turns the aftermath of a highly publicised breakup into something resembling a liberation party.
The excess is very much intentional. Hissom describes his aesthetic as “classy, with a little yeehaw”, and Hot Boy Things gleefully commits to the philosophy. There are cowboys, chair choreography, breathy vocals, booming synths and even a male-gaze reimagining of Paris Hilton's famous car-wash commercial.
Yet beneath all the camp spectacle sits a more interesting question: who gets to control the way Hissom is seen?
The title track provides his answer with all the subtlety of a nightclub strobe. ‘Hot Boy Things’ turns dating and newfound freedom into explosive pop theatre, with Hissom stepping confidently into the role of provocateur. Following a relationship in which he felt constrained, becoming a “hot boy” sounds less like vanity than permission to enjoy himself again.
‘Sexify’ makes that reclamation more explicit. Inspired by the relentless club energy of Benny Benassi's ‘Satisfaction’, it transforms objectification and scrutiny surrounding Hissom's sexuality into something he can control. Rather than rejecting the attention, he redirects it on his own terms.
Then comes ‘Yeehaw’, perhaps the EP's purest expression of glorious ridiculousness. Drawing on Hissom's Texan family roots, Western imagery collides with polished synth-pop as cowboys, desert fashion and mechanical bulls become part of his queer pop playground. It works because Hissom doesn't treat camp as something requiring justification. Sometimes a cowboy is simply improved by choreography.
Importantly, Hot Boy Things knows when to drop the performance. ‘Amazing’ strips away some of the sexual bravado for a dreamier, more vulnerable glimpse of the songwriter underneath, while ‘Dangerous (Get Locked)’ closes proceedings by confronting the less glamorous realities of public scrutiny and career ambition.
Those moments prevent the spectacle from becoming armour. Hissom isn't using outrageous imagery to pretend the difficult experiences never happened; he's deciding what those experiences become once they belong to his art.
That distinction makes Hot Boy Things more compelling than its deliberately provocative surface initially suggests. Heartbreak becomes freedom, objectification becomes self-expression and public attention becomes raw material for the next performance.
With European shows following in October, Hissom now has the opportunity to translate that maximalism onto the stage, where the project's collision of choreography, fashion and club-pop should feel particularly at home.
At its core, Hot Boy Things is less about being looked at than deciding how you want to be seen. If everybody is going to watch anyway, Hissom might as well give them a show.
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