INTERVIEW: Enigmatic Brandon Hilton opens up about Cher offering to buy him a car, his new album, The Legacy Collection and 2026 MySpace Tour
"This album is about legacy, survival, and coming back louder than ever, it’s my magnum opus!"
Pop artist, fashion provocateur, and LGBTQ+ cult icon Brandon Hilton has released The Legacy Collection, a massive 50 track career spanning album. Part greatest hits, part victory lap, the release debuted at number one on the iTunes dance charts. A major moment for an independent queer pop artist in 2025!
If you had a MySpace account back in the day, the name Brandon Hilton alone is enough to trigger instant nostalgia, it certainly does for me. His return to music marks a new chapter rooted in legacy, resilience, and unapologetic queerness. The Legacy Collection acts as both celebration and reclamation: a definitive anthology charting Brandon’s evolution across eras, from fan favourite hits and underground cult classics to defining tracks from his MySpace era (my personal fave era), right through to his present day resurgence with new cuts like ’Til The AM and Internet Celebrity.
Within days of its release, the album skyrocketed from outside the Top 200 to the top spot, a testament to fierce fan loyalty and a renewed cultural moment. Now, let’s dive headfirst into an exclusive conversation with Mr Hilton himself.
DALEYPOP: For our readers new to the name or weren't addicted to MySpace like us, who is Brandon Hilton? And huge congratulations on the number one!
BRANDON HILTON: THANK YOU Dale, I appreciate you! Well, Brandon Hilton is a little bit of everything. I started as an "internet celebrity” back in 2007 (like you said, the MySpace days) doing crazy photo shoots in a garage with my grandma and posting them online. Within a year of signing up for MySpace I’d become the 7th most popular user and had over a million friends. I used that popularity to launch myself in music, TV, movies, fashion and branding. I was the first to drop a makeup collaboration called Hard To Heel (on MySpace) before any other personalities did. I just kinda took the internet by storm, no one was using it as a marketing tool like I was. A lot of people really hated me for it but they just didn’t understand at the time, now everyone’s doing what I laid the blueprints of, which is kinda wild looking back for this interview!
From there everything else just kinda fell into place, I worked at Radio Disney as the voice of Disney XD for a minute and I met some music producers who wanted to work with me, one being Nate Bosley who was also working with Selena Gomez and Hollywood Records at the time, working with all the major Disney kids. He produced my songs Hollywood, So Ready and Secret Lover and we recorded even more but they were never released. My success online also caught the attention of some TV and film folks who reached out to put me in various things, I did a Saving Britney Spears documentary and a Paris Hilton TV show pilot that never aired and that’s where I got to meet Paris, a dream come true! I also became kind of iconic for hanging out with Lady Gaga a lot in the early pre The Fame days. And then I landed my first movie role in the LGBTQ+ cult classic Midnight Cabaret that I star in. (Streaming free on YouTube, hopefully on Tubi soon). I’ve since done some other movies but this is the one I’m most proud of, I’m an executive producer on it!
I’ve had a crazy life, and then at the height of my “fame”, in 2015, my grandma committed suicide and that pretty much derailed everything, she was my world and that sent me into a dark depression that I stayed in for years.
I disappeared from the world, started using drugs and doing sex work to survive, it was a rough time.
I completely lost my will to create after she died and it took me years to get it back. Doing COVID I started dabbling in music again and within a few months and finding a new producer (JNC0CAT) we were able to revive me and get me singing again.
I also launched a fashion brand (THE HOUSE OF MANN) that I run with my partner and we make costumes for artists like Slayyyter, Dorian Electra, Kim Petras, Alyssa Edwards, Allie X and tons more.
See, Brandon Hilton is a little bit of everything!
As far as my sound is concerned, I’m an electro pop dance girly all the way. I had my “gay music awakening” in high school with albums like Fever, X and Light Years by Kylie Minogue, Living Proof by Cher, Ray Of Light and Music by Madonna and of course Britney Spears Blackout really shaped me a lot. I also love artists like Mika and Melanie C, I’m all over the place.
DALEYPOP: Oh wow, you’ve got TASTE. MySpace really was a moment. How did that era and the platform itself shape the early days of your career, from finding your sound to building an audience and connecting with fans for the first time?
BRANDON HILTON: MySpace is the reason I have a career, it gave me a platform to get my creativity out there and truly launched me. It also scarred me in a lot of ways because I got a ridiculous amount of hate back then, which primarily came from other people who caught on and were trying to do the same thing as me. There used to be this Perez Hilton style blog website that was dedicated to spreading gossip about all the top “internet celebrities” at the time and I was on it daily. It got to be a lot and is the reason I think a lot of people still view me a certain way. I was very young back then and I’d post pics of me with my butt out laying in bed full of stuffed animals and people would go nuts, it was a much different time. At the same time I’m thankful for those days because they kinda soft launched me into the public’s consciousness and also thickened my skin up a lot to deal with the real industry years later. I mean I’m a gay kid from the south who’s father is a multiple murderer, my skin was already pretty thick.
📸 Abraham Luna (exclusive to Scene)
DALEYPOP: You were blazing trails long before the word influencer was even part of the vocabulary. What challenges did you face as one of the original internet celebrities and how did you navigate that uncharted territory while building your career?
BRANDON HILTON: I kinda touched on it earlier but the biggest obstacles I faced were the amount of haters I had back in those days, people really just couldn’t understand what I was trying to do, or were either jealous of me for doing it, I don't know, but it would’ve been a lot easier then if I’d had the amount of supporters I do now.
I have such an incredible fan base that I talk to daily and DM and there’s some OG’s that have been with me since MySpace and then there’s so many new ones that have found me along the way.
Ayesha Erotica covering my song I Wanna Meet You kinda refreshed me to a new audience and made that song really blow up for me. I’ve had a lot of cool moments that came from my time on MySpace so I always look back on it fondly.
DALEYPOP: Are there any musical icons you’ve always looked up to or maybeee some unexpected sources of inspiration that might surprise or even, shock us?
BRANDON HILTON: Well like I said, it’s been Cher since I was very young, I grew up listening to her songs and singing them in the car with my mum and then one day in 2012, she followed me on Twitter out of the blue and DMed me. I felt like I was having a panic attack but I DMed her back and then we started talking daily, for months, it was so surreal! She gave us a nickname (the diva sisters) and her fans made fan art of us together and she tweeted several of my songs and even offered to buy me a car when mine was totalled in a crash, it was a wild time!
Then she began working on a new album and her label took over her Twitter and we stopped talking as much and now neither of us use Twitter anymore. Stevie Nicks also followed me out of the blue, I was one of like 80 people that she follows, I guess she still does, I’m not on there anymore, I tried DMing her too but she never replied.
DALEYPOP: If you could team up with anyone in the world, living or dead, who’s your top dream collab? The one that would absolutely blow your mind?
BRANDON HILTON: Yeah, it would be Cher! We used to talk about it and even joked about making a song together but it never happened, I think that would’ve been a huge moment for me and for the gays but I’m actually in the process of working on a song with another big name for my next album. I wrote it and the demo is complete, I’m just waiting on her vocals.
DALEYPOP: Oh my god, who is it?! Can we have a clue?
BRANDON HILTON: She’s iconic and known worldwide, that’s all I’m gonna say for now....
DALEYPOP: Oh alright then! In 2025, well and probably in 2026 now too in a few days, when authenticity still feels revolutionary, how does fully embracing and expressing who you are, as a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community shape your journey? What does it mean to you to live loud, proud, and completely unapologetic in a world that’s still catching up and sometimes even taking steps backward?
BRANDON HILTON: This has definitely been an issue for me, not personally, but in the public.
My new album was rejected by every label I shopped it too for being "too gay" and me being “too old” to be a successful pop star at 38 years old.
So I self funded and self released it and now here we are two days after its release and it’s at the top of the charts! My first album to ever chart number one, it doesn’t even feel real but it’s a testament to the fan base I’ve built up over the last 18 years and they truly had me back and wanted to help me make this moment happen, they gave me my flowers. It’s been an incredibly emotional couple days watching it soar to the top of iTunes and stay there, my friends and fans are truly the best!
I think one reason that people resonate with me is because I've always been my gay old self and never let anyone change me or water me down for the sake of success.
I’ve always been 100% authentic, transparent and genuine with people and I guess they like that?!
DALEYPOP: I reckon so. So when you're not crafting bangers, serving looks, tending to your farm or slaying in drag, what do you get up to in your downtime?
BRANDON HILTON: Well, those things do occupy 99% of my time but recently I’ve started getting into painting. I want to paint men and I’d like to do a collection and gallery showing at some point but I’m in no rush, it’s a past time not a main focus, but I do find art to be very calming. I was big into drawing and painting in school and they actually framed several of my pieces and put them up in the halls, so I have that as a backup plan for when I’m too old to shake my booty on stages anymore I guess.
DALEYPOP: From one millennial to another, what’s your secret to keeping your energy up and fitting so much into a single day?!
DALEYPOP: That’s a great question, I truly don’t even know how I do all the things I do. All my friends are constantly telling me this, how I do too much. I really don’t feel like I do enough to be honest. I have so much more that I want to do. I’d say getting sleep is very important but I’m an insomniac so I’m usually going to bed as the sun comes up and I sleep a few hours then hit the ground running again. B12 gummies and hopes and dreams I guess.
DALEYPOP: Do you have any plans for trips or shows in the UK?
BRANDON HILTON: Funny you ask, well the promise was that if my new album went number 1 I would tour again (I haven’t toured since 2015) and it went number 1, so now I’m in the logistics stage of planning a 2026 summer tour. Aside from that another one of my producers Joe Himuro lives in London and he’s been trying to get me to come over and do some shows, I think this could be the push we need to make that happen!
I absolutely love UK culture and would love to bring my MySpace Tour to the UK in 2026, I’ve never been and I think I have a pretty decent fan base over across the pond so I’d love to come meet everyone. I’m in my manifesting era right now.
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