Tucker Pillsbury has enough to deal with as it is – an ordinary person passing through the self-doubt of their mid 20s, he now has to navigate the hype that comes with being ROLE MODEL, perhaps the year’s defining future-pop phenomenon.
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“I’d like to go over some ground rules,” a voice booms at London’s O2 Forum Kentish Town. “Please be kind to the people around you in the crowd. Your safety is our first priority. And lastly: it is absolutely mandatory to sing every word of every song.”
This is no Disneyland parade; it’s the intro to the ROLE MODEL world tour, and that’s the voice of Tucker Pillsbury himself. Thousands of teenagers have piled in on a Friday night to see the 25-year-old singer-songwriter in London. The buzz in the crowd suggests they’re more than willing to obey his orders.
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Tonight, Pillsbury is dressed like Where’s Wally, e-boy edition: a cropped red-and-white vest exposes his tattooed arms, paired with white flared jeans and Converses. It’s a judicious balance between inoffensive gender play and zeitgeisty edge.
He’s five months into his global trek, TourX, and he shows no signs of slowing down tonight. Little do the audience know what he’s endured behind-the-scenes for the entire tour.
Perched on a kerbside in Zurich, Pillsbury is surprisingly self-effacing for someone who calls himself ROLE MODEL. It’s that humility that’s garnered him a devoted following; even today, a fan recognises him on the street.
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Born and bred in Maine, Pillsbury began his journey making syrupy, stoner-pop with his debut EP ‘Arizona In The Summer’ (2017). It delved into the monotony of his life; stuck in a relationship where both parties had fallen out of love, but still addicted to summer exploits like getting high and having sex. It caught the attention of the late Mac Miller, who flew him out to L.A. to work together.
By 2020, Pillsbury’s music had taken a sharp turn – suddenly, he was writing love songs about a mysterious figure, which blossomed into his debut album. ‘rX’ celebrates the transformative power of that relationship on his mental health. He’s keen to keep his girlfriend a secret, but it’s highly speculated that his muse is social media mogul Emma Chamberlain. This was further teased by a music video for ‘neverletyougo’. Chamberlain walks, back turned to the camera, as Pillsbury serenades her with lyrics like: “respectfully, I think about you sexually…” Naturally, TikTok had a field day with this.
“It’s not actually about the music,” he proposes. “I think it’s about the fact they listen to it thinking about who the song is about. That makes them uncomfortable. I think it’s much more sexy when there’s mystery – and unfortunately, it’s not really a mystery.”
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Though he may have been ridiculed online, people scream that exact same lyric at the show tonight. Say what you want, but Pillsbury has consistently sold out shows on TourX. His success has led him to travelling to Europe for the first time.
“It’s much more about music out here, and it’s not about outfits and fuckin’… TikToks,” he surmises. “People go to these shows for the music and I love that, especially at festivals. It’s very refreshing after playing Coachella.” Coachella shade, you say? “It just felt like no one was there to see people playing music”, he says carefully.
Some may argue this perspective of European festivals is a little romanticised. After all, certain festivals are just expensive excuses to get gloriously pissed. But Pillsbury was eager to start playing in Europe; he brands Europeans “the trendsetters of America”, describes the crowds as “out of control”, and proudly professes how “eye-opening” playing Sziget Festival was.
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It was the UK which Pillsbury was especially excited for. It’s home to much of his music taste: Charli XCX. Holly Humberstone. beabadoobee. Declan McKenna (“my girl put me onto him,” he tells me proudly). It was also his time at Reading and Leeds which led to a pivotal meeting with a musical hero of his: Matty Healy from The 1975. “I met him for the first time at Coachella, and he was super sweet. We had some mutual friends that hooked me up.”
When it was announced that The 1975 would replace Rage Against The Machine as headliners, many festivalgoers demanded refunds. But Pillsbury? “I fucking flipped. I got to run over to their set and it was the first time I had seen them live. I immediately started crying like a baby for the whole forty minutes that we were watching.”
Europe also brought the benefits of better mental health. “When we tour America, I don’t leave the tour bus, I don’t leave the hotel room. It’s a much darker existence”, he says. “Whereas here in Europe, this whole tour has felt like a vacation. How could you not want to use your time out here to go explore?”
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However, touring has been fundamentally challenging for Pillsbury, who is diagnosed with Type I diabetes. It causes high and low blood sugar levels, both of which present their own delightful cocktail of problems. High blood sugars, he tells me, are manageable in the short-term: irritability, aches, and lack of focus. Down the line, consistent high blood sugars can result in heart disease, kidney disease, blindness, and loss of limbs.
But it’s the low blood sugars that really frighten Pillsbury. “You can have a seizure,” he explains. “If no one’s around to give you sugar or inject you with glucagon, you can die. A lot of those deaths happen in the middle of the night, which is the scariest part for me.”
“I’ve had some of the scariest moments of my life, close calls in the middle of the night, on tour,” he admits.
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Managing diabetes on tour is difficult due to two factors. Firstly, healthy diets are a must for coping with diabetes. “Arguably the hardest part is you finish shows and nothing’s open except for pizza, McDonalds, and gross shit. I really try to keep myself very healthy – apart from the five coffees a day I have. It’s really hard on tour.”
The biggest struggle is antithetical to the rough and tumble of tour life: schedules. “Type I diabetics rely so much on routine and consistency and being able to predict what you’re going to do in a day,” he says. “You want to have a schedule so that you know what to expect of blood sugars. On tour, that’s just not the case: you have no idea.”
It must be a lot of unnecessary stress, I say. Do you ever feel like there’s a time limit to your ability to be a musician?
He’s still trying to figure it out. Pillsbury texts Danielle from HAIM, another diabetic, and he contacts his specialist in L.A. to coach him through touring. But it’s almost futile, he shrugs. “It’s near impossible to have those perfect, healthy blood sugars when you’re doing a job like this and touring. I think it’s okay to suffer for those couple of months at a time and just make sure everything is much healthier when you get back home and get back into your routine.”
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Watching Pillsbury perform on stage, it’s easy to forget the immense physical pressure he’s under. But it’s also clear that he does a good job convincing everyone to have a good time. He’ll jump, twerk, bounce – anything to get the crowd going.
There’s antics abound at the London show, which sets his mischievous spirit free. He’ll affect a Cockney accent with glee, and when phones are thrown on stage, he’ll happily search their contacts to FaceTime mums (which sadly didn’t work). Pillsbury will even encourage booing if he sees the phone opened onto BeReal.
“Listen – during the hour I’m onstage, people can do whatever they want to me; use me, abuse me,” he chuckles. “But the BeReal thing is insane. Every night during our meet-and-greet, everybody gets the notification in the half an hour timeframe of our meet-and-greet. I don’t even know how to use it, to be honest. But it’s become a huge part of concert culture now.”
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Pillsbury isn’t afraid to egg the crowd on, either; if a crowd isn’t doing well enough, he’ll let them know, to vigorous boos: “Manchester jumped a lot higher… and Birmingham…”
“I like to bring out the craziness in people,” he tells me. “Americans would start screaming if I say someone’s jumping higher than them! Europe is much cooler and relaxed about it. I like to try and bring out the Americans in the Europeans.”
The tour has also had the knock-on effect of improving his songwriting, and it’s resulted in a new song, ‘cross your mind’. “I wanted something with that sort of energy and messy, sloppy rock-n-roll type of thing”, he says. “I wanted something that was not supposed to be super introspective and intelligent, something really fun.”
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At his core, Pillsbury is a natural showman. Towards the end, he asks: did you have fun? Did you get won over? He believes it’s a unique challenge presented by being a pop musician. “I want to show them that I have personality”, he explains. “I don’t show a lot of personality, maybe, on the internet. So maybe I’m trying to show it off on stage. I haven’t analysed it yet.”
By the time the show ends, Pillsbury has already announced extra tour dates till December, where he’ll finish with his biggest headline set at the Hollywood Palladium. He’ll have spent eight months in a repeating cycle of fragmented sleep, meet-and-greets, high-octane performances, and tour bus tedium. His wishes to keep the crowd safe are embedded from the first second of his show; hopefully, ROLE MODEL continues to honour his own ground rules.
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Words: Alex Rigotti
Photography: Eliot Morgan
Fashion: Harry Clements
