PHOTOGRAPHY BY COURTNEY NATHAN PHILLIP

“I’m very proud [of my sexuality], and I’m no longer afraid,” Matt Terry tells GAY TIMES. With his poignant new power ballad ‘His Car’, the singer-songwriter is publicly opening up about his sexuality for the first time by issuing an apology to the first man he ever fell in love with. As a result of his burgeoning fame from winning the 13th season of The X Factor in 2016 – a time Matt describes as “f**king hard” due to relentless speculation over his sexuality from British tabloids – societal pressures forced him to keep their romance a secret. “I said to him, ‘You’re not allowed to tell anyone about this’ and he loved me enough to do so,” he remembers. “It’s such a regret of mine, and I’m just really sorry.”