Queer pop sensation Jake Wesley Rogers shines brighter than the sun at ACL Fest

Jake Wesley Rogers is a luminescent bundle of positivity and love in an era of division and darkness. He’s a remarkable popsmith who elevates profound wisdom with simple metaphors. He’s a golden-toned vocalist who packs massive swells of emotion into singalong hooks. He’s a queer sensation from the Midwest who dazzled an adoring crowd in his 1:15 p.m. set on Sunday of Austin City Limits Music Festival's first weekend.

“Hate on me, hate on me, hate on me, hate on me/ You might as well hate the sun/ For shining just a little too much,” Rogers sang, his voice soaring across the field as he sat at the piano and channeled his inner Elton John for set closer “Pluto.”

If his audience, baking in the brutal afternoon heat, did in fact hate the sun at that moment, it did not show. Rogers’ radiance was irresistible. The sizable crowd cheered wildly.

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“Pluto” is a bold statement of self-love that grew from a childhood preoccupation with a rejected planet. Rogers had just fallen in love with planetary science in third grade when the icy dwarf on the far edge of our solar system was declassified.

“It affected me,” he said backstage after the set. He saw in Pluto an outsider’s story. Ridiculed for its inadequacy, it was deemed not good enough to be a planet.

“I think we've all felt that at some point in our life,” he said.

As he wrote the song, it became a metaphor for inner darkness and the parts of ourselves we’re afraid to show.

“When you bring (those parts) forth, beautiful things happen,” he said. “When you bring forth what's inside you, what's inside you will save you.”

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The self-assurance he projected from stage, clad in a white bell-bottom jumpsuit with grandiose Renaissance-esque sleeves, was not always so easy for Rogers, who grew up in Ozark, Missouri.

“I was a little rhinestone in the Bible belt,” he quipped from the stage, before performing his “all-time favorite little prayer,” Madonna’s 1989 hit “Just a Prayer,” a siren song for young queers in America in the years before the 25-year-old was born.

“When you grow up in a pretty conservative place and you want to shine, it can be hard,” he said backstage, adding, “I'm sure a lot of people can relate to that, being in Texas.”

He holds inside himself a residual sense of friction with a world that rejects his decision to live within the power of his full truth, in all its flamboyant glory. He uses it to help shape his art. “You know, beautiful things happen in friction,” he said.

Backstage, Rogers padded around the festival’s media area in socks, because the fabulous ruby sequined boots he wore on stage were the only shoes he brought as he jetted in from his arena tour dates opening for Panic at the Disco.

And if you had to miss him at ACL Fest, don't fret: He has a new EP scheduled to drop on Oct. 21, and he hopes to do a headline tour in the not-too-distant future.

Ebullient despite the heat, he said it has been “a dream come true" to share his music and his positive vibes with audiences around the country. It helps reinforce his mission as an artist.

“This is to spread love and my story and (to) connect to other people's stories,” he said.

At ACL Fest Weekend 2

Jake Wesley Rogers plays at 1:15 p.m. on Sunday at the Miller Lite stage.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Queer pop breakout Jake Wesley Rogers takes ACL Fest to 'Pluto'