Pop music — the gayer the better — has always been good for escapism. Since JoJo Siwa created the genre back in April 2024 with her “Karma” Spring, the doors were opened for many artists to play with form, experiment with sound and take risks. In the past two weeks, no one encapsulates this more than your favorite celebrity’s favorite celebrity, Jordan Firstman, who dropped his first album SECRETS on April 11. A genre-bending, compilation CD of 16 songs, each track on SECRETS was inspired by Firstman’s running text-box Instagram series where people literally just tell him deeply personal and — at times — questionable tea.
Now I know what you’re thinking, because I thought it too. How good can this comedian’s album really be? My answer: way better than it needs to be, thanks in part to Grade A production, famous features including Rufus Wainwright and Suki Waterhouse, and Firstman’s determination to really go there. With songs like “I’m hoarding cum” and “Poop is pee and pee is poop,” unabashed irreverence is SECRETS’ true standout strength. And who better to discuss the merits of that than music’s own prince of profanity, Mickey Avalon, fresh off releasing his own Postcards from Hell back in February (because who doesn’t want to listen to a song called “I Wish I Was Dead” on Valentine’s Day).
We babysat while Firstman and Avalon went on a first Zoom date to talk about SECRETS and their respective dick anthems, “I Wanna See My Friends Dicks” and “My Dick.”
I really want to give you guys the opportunity to chat and goon out, and I’ll just be here as a voyeur in the background.
Jordan Firstman: Do you know what gooning is, Mickey?
Mickey Avalon: Is that like [when] you watch a lot of porn?
Jordan: Yeah, you’re on the right track. You edge for so long that your eyes start crossing and you’re like, drooling. It’s kind of big with Gen Z, straight boys, kind of–
Mickey: So from jerking from porn? Or from playing video games?
Jordan: They’re watching porn for a while, but they’re not cumming. So they get to the edge of cumming for hours until their vision goes blurry.
Mickey: That sounds… rough. I’m gonna take off my sunglasses. You’re talking about the eyes going. They’ll think I’m an undercover gooner.
Jordan: You were doing it before it was cool.
Mickey: Well, no, I try to get the poison out as fast as possible. I’m not trying to get it to the edge, and I want to be in and out and on with my life. But I feel bad for a lot of these kids. You know, it’s a rough time.
Jordan: Yeah, I think they don’t really know how to have sex either. That’s a big issue. They’re not fucking and they’re very scared of it.
Mickey: I heard this is the first generation where they have sex less than their parents. Do you think this is by design, or do you think naturally the universe does population control on itself?
Jordan: I like the existential POV of it. I think they’re scared of doing it wrong. Everyone’s always been scared of doing it wrong, but I think they’re scared that they’re gonna get in trouble. They’re scared that they’ll push it too far. They can’t test their limits because they’re afraid of the repercussions. And then I think generally Gen Z is very embarrassed about everything, and they’re very judgmental too. So then that makes them also very insecure.
Mickey: See, when I was a kid, that’s pretty much all I could think about, but in a good way. And then the only porn we had was that sticky magazine… you couldn’t goon on that.
Jordan: No, you can’t be gooning to a picture.
Mickey: I’m sure there’s little pockets of weird kids, doing fun shit somewhere, maybe in the Midwest, in cornfields.
Jordan: I feel like when you were starting your career, you [could] say anything you want[ed], and didn’t have the fear of people judging. I’m sure you got judged for different [things], but it felt cool. Now saying something that’s too far will get you canceled by your own peers and the people [who] are technically on your side. It becomes this trickier situation.
Mickey: That’s probably got to be a big part of it because I think we’re a little past cancel culture. But yeah, if it’s your crew, that’s probably even worse.
Jordan: I had a minor stint with cancellation in 2020, over some old tweets. And it’s not that your friends are canceling you, but they don’t want to get close to you, because then they’re associated with being canceled.
Mickey: Guilt by association.
Jordan: Yeah.
Both of you guys are relatively well known for pushing the boundaries and at times, veering on making controversial stuff. Mickey, your entire discography, Jordan, obviously, Rotting in the Sun, with real sex and whatnot. So I’m wondering, when you’re deemed to be a controversial person, has it been better in your experience to charge through the noise, or wait for it to die down?
Mickey: I’ve always charged through. It just depends [on] what your goal is. A lot of times when you’re not just yourself, and then you do what you think might be the right thing, that backfires. Then you’re double fucked because you didn’t even do the move you wanted to make. You did what you thought was the right thing. I never tried to be controversial. We just made music, just me and my friends messing around. I really don’t know how to be anybody except myself.
Jordan: I have a similar thing. A lot of the stuff I do doesn’t seem controversial to me. And then when it filters out into the world, it’s deemed as controversial, but it seems so normal to me and I get confused about it a lot. I’m like, Wait, they think that’s controversial?
Mickey: Yeah let me show you.
Jordan: I’m a sensitive boy and I have this forever conundrum in my life where I’m a natural troublemaker, but I hate getting in trouble and I’ve been that way since I was a kid. I can’t help it. I’m always waiting for the shoe to drop. And even when things are going well in my life, I struggle. I hate the feeling of it, but I just can’t help it.
Jordan: Were you part of any major press controversies back in the day?
Mickey: I dressed like Hitler for Halloween and I lost a lot of money for that. I just got a deal with Monster Energy drinks. So I got $5,000 a month, but I only got in two months, with 10 months left, so then they cut me off. But I’m Jewish.
Jordan: Yeah, where’s the line?
Mickey: I have my grandfather’s Auschwitz number tattooed on me. I was the devil the year before. It’s Halloween and I don’t really ever apologize for anything, but for that one, I’m like, I’m just not going to apologize. I’m just going to explain where I was coming from. I mean, I’ve lost 33 of my relatives to the concentration camps, and only my grandpa and my grandma and my grandpa’s nephew came out. I can dress like that on a holiday where you dress like evil people, I can put a little bit of humor into it.
Jordan: I get it, I get the take. I support.
Mickey: Did you grow up out here in Los Angeles?
Jordan: No, I’m from Long Island. Long Island Jew over here.
Mickey: Okay, that’s why someone said New York. You got Long Island Jew vibes.
Jordan: Yeah, for sure the Brooklyn Jew vibes.
Mickey: I like Long Island and I like Jews.
I guess we’re all members of the tribe here. Nazis seem like a weird way to segue into my next question. But Jordan, I was listening to the “six minute interlude,” which seems like it is clearly inspired by, “Ultralight Beam’ and Kanye’s grandiose intros. So when you were approaching each of these songs, how did you categorize which secret was gonna correspond to which musical genre?
Jordan: Honestly, the title chooses the genre. If the secret is “my sister’s tryin’ to fuck and she needs to chill,” like, obviously country song. It can’t be anything else. “Pennies in my pussy,” obviously a jazz standard. The name really does speak to the genre, and it’s a very instinctual thing. When I would do them live on Instagram, I was usually pretty drunk and I had to move so fast or I’d get in my head, and so I would just choose the secret and then go for it.
Mickey: Why do they want to tell you their secret?
Jordan: I don’t know, I was like, Tell me your secret. There’s a box that gets submissions.
Mickey: “I’ll make a song out of it.”
Jordan: Yeah. Well, at first I would riff on it and make fun of them, and then the music came later. But it’s gone through so many waves. There was an era of secrets, where one woman was like, “Please, I can’t have a baby. Please do a prayer for me to get pregnant.” And I did one, and then two months later, she was pregnant. I was getting hundreds of messages from women trying to have babies.
Mickey: That’s where the money’s probably at.
Jordan: And they were all starting to get pregnant. So there was a full year where I was this shaman pregnancy medicine person.
Mickey: Do they say anything that you need to call the police about?
Jordan: Well, yeah. I’ve gotten a lot of, like, “I killed someone once,” or–
Mickey: They’re testing your confidentiality.
Jordan: I know. The other thing is, because they got really popular, a lot of people I know are just lying for the attention. I actually have a song I do when I could tell they’re lying for attention, called “You’re Lying for Clout.” And then some people are drunk when they’re doing it, so there’s typos and I put the typos in the songs too. [One’s] called “I’m I lesbian,” which… that one really took a long time to find the genre. I couldn’t figure it out. And then it came to me. It had to be Lilith Fair, Alanis Morissette vibes.
Mickey: Nice. And then does it jump out right away? That one needs to be a song. Or sometimes the idea, you think, Oh, that’d be good. But then it’s harder.
Jordan: Yeah. Also, these are real songs and they’re three to four minutes long. So it can’t just be a stupid line. There has to be some meat there.
Mickey: It needs to be fleshed out. What’s your process, musically? Do you do that?
Jordan: I have a bunch of producers on this project. I go in with a mood board, so to speak, a playlist of the vibes I want. And I usually come in with all of the lyrics and the premise written. But yeah, there’s been a couple ones that were just really — you probably know this with music — you have the idea, and you’re like, This should work. I have one song where the secret was, “Sat on a curb, hiked dress up, diarrhea, threw my undies away, went back to the bar,” and I was like, That’s such a good pop song. [But] I could not crack it. I did like five different genres and it didn’t end up on the album.
Mickey: Maybe you throw up and then you go back.
Jordan: No, the diarrhea. The diarrhea.
Mickey: That’s a rough night. We were connected on this through dicks, right?
Jordan: We have two dick songs. I think they’re very opposite–
Mickey: We’re both circumcised, I’m assuming.
Jordan: Yeah, we’re both. “I Wanna See My Friends Dicks,” this is mine. I feel like [the songs are] opposite. They’re opposites, but they’re both masculine in a way. Mine is about the curiosity of wanting to see your friends’ dicks and yours is about the competition between dicks.
Mickey: Seeing your friend’s dick, doesn’t everyone see their friends’? Just when they’re taking a piss. There [were] three of us at the time [when writing “My Dick]. Two of us were like, “That’s the dumbest idea we could ever think of.” The third says, ”No, trust me.” So then my friend just made the beat as fast as he possibly could. We learned that even with dumb ideas, give it a shot because it doesn’t really matter. You could just throw it away. We pretty much did it to shut him up. And I mean, it’s probably good that we did it because more people know about us because of it.
Jordan: But are you asked about your dick all the time now?
Mickey: I get asked about it a lot. I mean, looking back, [the only] reason I thought it was stupid is, Robin Williams said, “When all else fails tell a dick joke,” so–
Jordan: Yeah.
Mickey: It could go on forever. Everyone could do that game. I play it last at the end of the night, bring all the girls on stage. I mean, I get my dick grabbed a lot. I guess it’s something girls could get away with, and probably gay guys could get away with more than a straight guy. I guess if I’m singing a song about my dick, everyone’s having fun, who am I to get uptight about it?
Jordan: Because I’ve invited the fact that I want to see everyone’s dicks, I’m receiving a lot of unsolicited dick pics right now.
Mickey: That could get old quick.
Jordan: It gets old quick. And also not to be that guy, but when they’re good, I like it, and when they’re not good, I don’t.
Mickey: What about at shows, does everyone whip it out?
Jordan: This is a very new venture. I haven’t done shows with this yet. That would be great, I would love that. I’m definitely a grower, so I don’t know if I can be soft on stage and feel comfortable.
Mickey: Yeah, I’m more of a grower too.
Jordan: Yeah, I think Jews tend to be growers.
Mickey: We might be, but it grows good.
Jordan: Yeah. They turn very handsome.
Mickey: That’s what I’ve heard. Most Jews tell me they got good cocks.
Jordan: Just like pretty colors and nice shape, yeah.
Focusing on the music right now, Jordan, where do you see this going? You’re just starting your pop star journey now. And Mickey, are you planning on doing any new tours with the last album?
Mickey: I just got back from Nashville and Atlanta last weekend, and touring’s a little easier now because we’ll fly out on the weekend, get a minivan or Sprinter van, hit a few cities and fly home. So it’s not 30 in a row. I have a nice, long tour coming up in May and June with this band called Rehab. But normally, I’m always out touring and I’m always making music. I make music because I like to do it, but the touring… I don’t know that I would just do it for fun. I’d probably do four shows a year instead of 50, if it wasn’t about money, but I’m super grateful.
Jordan: I don’t know. This album happened so randomly and I’m just excited to see people’s responses. I think people will be surprised, because of how many different genres are on it. I’m excited to see which tracks people like. I definitely want to try to do some festivals and see how that goes, and then just take it from there.
I finished listening to your album, Jordan, and I mean this in the nicest way possible but it’s actually really good.
Jordan: I get that a lot. The “actually” in there. And I’m like, Do we need the “actually” in there? But I get it, I get it. I was lucky to get access to the right people and I worked really fucking hard on it. It’s been all that I’ve thought or done for the last eight months. Finishing an album is really tough and getting everything to sound how you want it.
I was really ecstatic to see that you had Bloodhound Gang and Suki Waterhouse. What was it like working with people, I’m assuming, whose music you were listening to?
Jordan: Rufus [Wainwright] was surreal, because, truly, that man changed my life. As a gay teen, he was a huge deal to me. The second he opened his mouth and was singing, “Passed out drunk, making mac and cheese,” it made me emotional.
Out of all of the secrets that made it onto the album, which would you say is the most personal to you? Or the one that you relate to the most?
Jordan: The lyrics in “I cry when I masturbate” are deeply personal and I don’t know where they came from. I wrote them really on the fly, but that song, to me, is about your sexual identity and identity in general, kind of oscillating between knowing who you are, then also not knowing who you are at all.
Could you sing prior to this? Or had you been preparing with vocal lessons?
Jordan: I’ve been hiding the fact that I’m a good singer for my entire career. I sang as a kid and then I just felt like it was really uncool when I got into my twenties. So I really didn’t tell anybody and then when I was doing this I was just like, Whatever, I can sing. I can actually really sing.
Were you a theater kid?
Jordan: To some degree, yeah. But it’s hard because once the gays find that out, they don’t treat you well. So that was a big reason I’ve been [hiding], but I’m like, You know what? Fuck it. I’m booked and busy. I don’t get care what these fucking gays think anymore.
Let’s say you drop some more songs or a SECRETS 2, who would be a few dream features?
Jordan: Ultimate would be SZA, that would be insane. I kept trying to get “passed out drunk making mac and cheese” sent to Lana. I feel like Lana would really fuck with this song. I mean, you got to aim high. I asked some really fucking famous people to do it and they almost did it, so that’s kind of my strategy. I just aim high and then I’m not offended when I get rejected.
With this new venture, where do you hope to go from here?
Jordan: I hope it gets bigger than my Instagram following. I hope it really catches on in a broader way. I do feel like I try to make artistic choices and I follow my creativity, that’s the one constant. Even Rotting in the Sun, back in the day, was another artistic expression. And this is what I’m feeling right now, it’s where creativity led me. So I think there’s lore there, it adds to the lore of my career of doing innovative things.
Photography: Morganne Boulden