Jason F. Sellards, better known as Jake Shears, is an American singer and songwriter. He is best known as the male lead singer of American pop/rock band Scissor Sisters.
Shears attended New York's Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, where he studied fiction writing and was a classmate of Travis Jeppesen. He also wrote pieces for the gay magazine HX. In 2000, he worked as a music reviewer for Paper magazine.
Shears performed with Erasure's Andy Bell on "Thought It Was You", on Bell's 2005 album Electric Blue. He has also collaborated with Tiga on "Hot in Herre", "You Gonna Want Me", and "What You Need" from Tiga's album Ciao!. He also worked on Finnish house musician Luomo's "If I Can't". Together with Babydaddy, he co-wrote with Kylie Minogue on her hit single "I Believe in You" for her greatest hits compilation Ultimate Kylie. Shears and Minogue also co-wrote "Too Much" with Calvin Harris for Minogue's number one album Aphrodite. In 2011, Shears collaborated with John Garden to write the music for a musical version of the book Tales of the City. The show is directed by Jason Moore. Shears was featured on the track "Metemya" of Amadou and Mariam's 2012 album Folila. Shears also wrote the foreword to the award-winning '80s 7-inch vinyl cover art book Put the Needle on the Record. In 2013, Shears also appeared on the Queens of the Stone Age album ...Like Clockwork, providing backing vocals on the song "Keep Your Eyes Peeled". He duetted with Cher on the track "Take it Like a Man" for her 2013 album Closer to the Truth. In October 2017, Shears released his first song as a solo artist, "Creep City", which he described as a "pretty theatrical jam, with quite a few twists and turns." In January 2018, Shears made his Broadway debut starring in Kinky Boots. The next month Shears published his autobiography, Boys Keep Swinging. Shears released his eponymous debut solo album on August 10, 2018. In March 2019 Shears toured with Kylie Minogue as part of her Golden Tour. In January 2020 he appeared as the "Unicorn" on ITV's The Masked Singer, finishing in 6th place. Shears released the single "Meltdown" in February 2020.
Personal life
Shears came out as gay to his parents at the age of 15 at the urging of Dan Savage, who later called his advice "the worst I've ever given" due to the negative reaction of Shears' parents. In 2010, Shears participated in Savage's It Gets Better Project. In 2012, Shears was interviewed about his experience. He spoke about his good friend Anderson Cooper and said he felt gay celebrities "at least have the responsibility to come out". Shears was in a relationship with Chris Moukarbel from 2004 to 2015.
