Profile: Davey Havok of AFI

I'd like to begin this with a warning. Remember around 2004? The hordes of girls obsessed with the band AFI, particularly their lead singer?

I, uh, I was in that horde. Still in that horde, actually. I even have the t-shirt for it. So bear with me. I'm talking about an idol here.

Davey Havok has been slowly cutting his hair shorter since 2003, which makes me terribly sad since, when I first fell in love, he looked more like this:The lead singer here was an idol for me in terms of playing with gender. Sure, lots of guys in the rock scene wore eyeliner, but few did it with the elegance and, well, feminine style that Davey Havok did.Not to mention the fact that the man used to walk around Warped Tour with a parasol, or that his hair, when it was long, looked utterly gorgeous.

But lately, Davey Havok has seemed to become more masculine, cutting his hair shorter, letting his eyebrows grow out- cutting down on the fabulous glittery eye shadow:And the masculinity doesn't end there. I purchased AFI's latest album ( Crash Love from September 2009) and, while I loved the music instrumentally and was pleased to hear Havok's voice improving a little since his surgery to remove vocal cord nodules in 2004, I was also disappointed in the lyrics.

Davey Havok has a reputation for writing vague lyrics rich with imagery. And Crash Love doesn't stack up to his previous works in terms of lyrics. His lyrics are more blunt and obvious, less interpretive and, well, pretty.

The little hipster kid inside me wants to say that Havok is trying to assimilate into mainstream culture and is dropping is genderqueer ways to gain popularity. But really, he reached the height of popularity when he was covered in glitter with waist length hair, so I think his change in fashion is just a progression of his own tastes. Besides, if you look at photos of Davey Havok going back, you realize he's the Madonna of his scene, reinventing his look every few years. I mean, the photos I used here are from the past six years alone, and AFI has been together off and on since about 1993. Who knows, maybe five or six years from now Davey Havok will return to his pretty boy ways.

Until then, I have to stay a faithful fan, particularly when he says things like

Q: Actually, a lot of your fans don't know what to make of your sexuality.

A: It is a huge topic. I've found that at times that question and the dubiousness that I seem to exude has given people something -- not simply gossip or whether God is going to smite them for liking our band, but actually they've found strength and become more comfortable with who they are as a person. It's pansexual, that sort of reach. It's a wonderful side effect of what we're doing, to give someone the strength to come out of the closet to their family, or simply present themselves aesthetically in a way they feel happy with, whether or not their friends are going to be allowed to like them anymore. So it's actually a really cool side effect to all the rumors.
-From an interview originally posted on Buzznet