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This profile is part of Queerty’s 2022 Out For Good series, recognizing public figures who’ve had the courage to come out and make a difference in the past year, in celebration of National Coming Out Day on October 11.
Name: Peach PRC (Sharlee Curnow), 25
Bio: The Australian singer-songwriter impressed judges on Australia’s Got Talent, The X Factor, and The Voice before blowing up on TikTok in 2020. But it’s been far from an easy road for the artist who counts Britney Spears and Katy Perry among her top influences. Years before working with Spears and Perry collaborator Bonnie McKee, Peach PRC was having a rough adolescence.
Midway through high school, she dropped out of school due to troubles at home. She went to live with her biological father and started dancing at clubs to make ends meet. Her father found out about it and kicked her out, leaving PRC homeless. She danced for 4 years, during a time she calls “a series of unfortunate events, with one thing happening after the other.” She wound up in the hospital without a safe place to land. She found a spare room and lived off pieces of defrosted, stale bread, a grim time that inspired one of her early TikTok hits, “I”m So Broke,” in which the singer contemplates selling coke and a kidney just to survive.
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@peachprca lil tune I made a while back (I kno I look serious but it’s not meant to be lmao)♬ Im so broke – Peach PRC
She thought about quitting music, but came back to her practice after realizing how much she needed it. Without it, she would have “fallen apart.” After not writing for a year, she posted lyrics to an original song on social media. To her surprise, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive. Months later, she flew to America and started recording her first single.
The rest is almost history– except for a few pertinent details. Her fans found her on TikTok, and so did the major music labels. But there was one thing missing from Peach PRC’s story…
Coming Out: On TikTok, Peach PRC is unmissable. The first thing you notice is her aesthetic: she’s rarely seen without her trademark pink ensemble, and describes her addiction to the color as compulsive. It’s also unabashedly queer, as is PRC’s whole vibe. After a conversation on Australian commentator Abbie Chatfield’s podcast, the singer spoke about being unsure about her queerness. The conversation sparked controversy as fans tried to out both PRC and Chatfield, who’d identified as bisexual long beforehand.
But Peach PRC wasn’t about to come out on anyone’s timeframe but her own. Just before her hit “God is a Freak” dropped this January, she decided to come out. “Since this song is blowing up, I guess now is a good time to tell you all, I’m a lesbian,” the video proclaimed in baby pink TikTok font.
The coming out was apt, considering that “Freak” stems from PRC’s discomfort at being told by a Christian camp counselor that God “sees everything.” She found a way to queer God, and in doing so, pried open her own closet door.
@peachprcthe people on my private account already know this but pls be nice 💖 any negative comments will be deleted♬ God Is A Freak – Peach PRC
On Instagram a few days later, she proclaimed that she’d shattered the glass closet. “Came out as a lesbian today,” the caption reads, in the understatement of the century. “God is a Freak” soon took over TikTok, becoming an anthem to all the queer kids who’d been told their queerness was wrong, hated, and freakish.
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From early music videos that feature the singer begging an ex-boyfriend not to call to her recent hit “Forever Drunk,” about numbing the pain of a breakup, there’s something unmistakably real about her. Her goal for the future is to be the “next Ariana Grande,” and honestly, we can see it.
She’s not hiding behind the pink and the latex and the glitter highlights: she’s using it to show us who she is. And queerness is a big part of that.
