From a small Midwest town to the Grammys

Bilingual singer-songwriter Omar Apollo, nominated for best new artist, talks about Catholic guilt, body image issues and the musicians who inspire him

Omar Apollo makes dreamy bilingual soul music about his life as a gay man, as a son of Mexican immigrants and as a kid who grew up in small-town Indiana before moving to Los Angeles to pursue his career.

He also posts A+ tweets. Last month, Apollo went viral on Twitter after a fellow user asked whether he was “another queerbaiting singer” — a reference to the practice of implying queer relationships or attraction as a marketing ploy.

Apollo’s priceless reply isn’t publishable here, but suffice it to say it made his sexual identity clear.

Of course, the NSFW tweet wouldn’t have traveled as widely as it did if Apollo, 25, weren’t already known as a singer and songwriter of uncommon style and sensitivity. His talents are on display throughout his excellent major-label debut, “Ivory,” which spun off a Tiktok hit in the Motown-ish “Evergreen (You Didn’t Deserve Me at All)” and which led to a new artist nomination at the 65th Grammy Awards, set for Feb. 5.

He’s been thrilling fans on the road as well, including at a soldout show in November at Los Angeles’ Greek Theatre and an Oct. 21 concert at San Diego State University’s Cal Coast Credit Union Amphitheatre.

Asked whether he’d seen Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s remake of “A Star Is Born” — which used the Greek for the pivotal scene in which Gaga belts out “Shallow” for the first time — Apollo says he saw the movie but didn’t know it was shot at the same venue he’d just played. “The movie’s very sad. I cried on the plane,” he says. “I was embarrassed. The guy next to me was like, ‘You good?’ I was like, ‘No, man.’ ”

These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

You’ve been very busy lately. Two tours in one year. I will never do that again. Your circadian rhythm’s all messed up. You have to take care of two little vocal folds in your throat to the point where you have to watch what you eat. It’s so strict. I miss eating late and not worrying about my voice.

Let’s say you play a show and come offstage around 11. What happens then?

You’re supposed to not talk, but then I’m so on because I just got offstage and the dopamine release from my brain has me on this high. I can’t just go into a room by myself and be silent. So I have to interact or at least have a guitar or something by me. Something needs to be happening. I’ve gone straight into the Suburban and lost my mind, crying on the way home.

That sounds dark.

It gets dark. I see why these artists struggle on tours. It’s inhumane. I mean, it’s rewarding. You just have to really take care of yourself and learn how to do it.

You’re nominated for best new artist. Growing up in Indiana, did you feel like the Grammys were something open to you or like this mysterious, far-off organization?

From the Midwest, everything feels like that. It totally felt farfetched. Then you move to L.A. and New York, and your friend is like, “Oh, yeah, my dad directed that movie.” But over there it’s like drugs or meth — that’s the vibe.

What were you like in high school? Did you play sports at all?

I played basketball. I played soccer. I’m (6-foot-5), but I couldn’t hoop.

You’ve said The Internet’s 2015 album “Ego Death” inspired you to start playing music.

I was working at Mcdonald’s when I found that album. I got the job so I could save up for studio equipment. It was probably around three weeks into my job when I found the album and I was like, Oh, I’m gonna go to the pawn shop after work and pick up a guitar. Later I got a job at Guitar Center, and every Sunday there’d be some really good players that would come in and I’d just ask questions.

Your music has echoes of Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder and Prince. Was that music you heard in your house as a kid?

Those are the artists I was drawn to once I had access to Internet and stuff. My parents introduced me to Pedro Infante, who’s a great singer in Mexico. There’s a song called “Cien Años” that I always go back to. Then they introduced me to Juan Gabriel, Los Panchos, Los Bukis. That gave me a soulful interest, and I think that’s why I was drawn to Prince and Donny and all that stuff.

Can you remember hearing a Donny Hathaway song for the first time?

I was like 19, maybe. “You’ve Got a Friend.” I think James Taylor wrote that. (It was Carole King.) But Donny’s was the one.

Why did you move to L.A.?

I was working at Guitar Center. I put out maybe three songs, and they started doing really well on Spotify. I was making like $500 a month. Then it was $600, $800, then $1,000, then $1,200. I was like, oh, I can live off of this. My rent was $140, but I would split it because I lived with four people in an attic.

Four people in an attic? Or you in the attic and the other people somewhere else in the house?

In the attic. Beds spread out. Then I had my studio up there.

You’d have to kick everybody out so you could use the studio.

I’d tell them to please be quiet. You probably can still hear them in the recordings. I was living there and then I moved. There was a lot of smoking going on, and I was like, I can’t record here. I mean, I smoked, but not like that. My friend told me I could live with her 30 minutes away. Then I went on tour and she was like, “Hey, my brother’s moving back in.” So I lived in my friend’s basement for three months.

Which was better: attic or basement?

Basement. I was living by myself when I was in the basement. And the attic didn’t have a bathroom. It was such a cold trip to go to the bathroom, two flights of stairs.

Then L.A. at last.

I told my brother — he was working at UPS — I was like, “You wanna move to L.A.?” It wasn’t much thought. I actually like Indiana now more. Back then it felt like there wasn’t much. But now people are making music. It’s pretty sunsets there. And there’s a little lake. You just can’t swim in it.

Toxic?

Probably. I was a little kid when I would swim in it, but my friend bridge-jumped and then he got E. coli.

On “Ivory” you sing in both English and Spanish. How do you decide which language is right for a song?

There’s a song called “En El Olvido,” which is a traditional Mexican mariachi corrido. So I didn’t even think about it — it was Spanish.

But then I also have another style, which is called corridos tumbados, where kids like me — their family’s from Mexico, they were born here, they have all the culture — they’ll do the whole thing in Spanish, and then there’ll be a breakdown and there’s cussing in English. When I’m singing R&B and soul sometimes I throw (Spanish) in. The life that I live is bilingual, mostly English. But I think music’s a reflection of my life.

You grew up in the Catholic Church.

Super Catholic.

Does Catholicism have a place in your songwriting?

I used to have an insane amount of Catholic guilt. I was afraid to say certain things when I was first making music because of it. It was like, “Oh, you’re damning the world to hell.” It’s kind of scary. Eventually I was just like, These aren’t my thoughts. What does Jay-z say? “What you eat don’t make me s---.” I have my views, and I live by my own moral code.

Is religion a part of your life now?

I wouldn’t say I’m religious. When was the last time I prayed? I guess I wrote about praying last night. In a song I was saying that I was praying for somebody, which I think I do — just good intentions for somebody. I don’t know, maybe one day I’ll find something that makes sense. But for now, in the way that I know Catholicism, the way I grew up with it, I don’t think that I could live the way that I want to live if I was a diehard Catholic.

Do you wish there were a place for you in the Catholic life?

Maybe if their music was better.

Are the aesthetics of religion interesting to you at all?

I like the smells — the incense burning and all that stuff.

You’re pictured without a shirt on the cover of “Ivory.” Is being comfortable with your body a natural thing for you?

Definitely not natural. I used to swim with my shirt on when I was a kid. I’d get one of those tight little Under Armour swim shirts. What happened was, honestly, I went on tour and I think I weighed 220 pounds, and I was looking at photos of myself and I’m like, dang, I’m gonna have to be in front of people all the time and constantly look at this photo of me.

I had such a discipline in my work and in my music that I wanted my body to reflect that for me. I was just like, OK, I’m gonna maybe not eat at 2 a.m. at Taco Bell and actually take care of my body and give it healthy things. It took years to really get to where I’m at now.

Is your body something you put a lot of energy into maintaining?

Not recently. I’ve been going crazy. I think it’s anxiety. There’s food in front of me, I’m like, oh, I have to finish this.

Some people say that’s because of their mother or their grandmother.

Yeah, my mom, for sure. She wouldn’t let me leave the table unless I finished it.

What do you love to eat? Sushi. I just found out that I have too much soy in my blood. It was dangerously high. Not dangerously high, I’m exaggerating. I love Italian food, Ethiopian food. The last tour, every place was Caribbean — I had to eat jerk. I have a lot of foodie friends. I was deciding today if I was a foodie or not.

What did you land on?

I used to be. I know the spots, but it’s not like an obsession. I just need something in my body because my hands are shaking.

Michelle Yeoh was having a flashback, not of the acid variety, but it was pretty intense all the same.

She was seated in the middle of the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas, in March for the South by Southwest premiere of her movie “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” nerves frayed, worried how people would react to her performance — or should we say “performances,” since Yeoh plays half a dozen different characters in the movie. Would the audience laugh in the right spots? Would they find her funny?

And, sitting there, waiting, Yeoh thought back to the midnight premiere of her first headlining movie, Corey Yuen’s 1985 Hong Kong action classic “Yes, Madam!,” where she was perched in the balcony tier, first row, constantly peeking over the railing to see how the hardcore moviegoers seated below her, the ones given to sharing their feelings very vocally, would react. She was bracing herself for the boos and instead was ecstatic when the audience erupted into cheers.

“Forty years, man!” Yeoh says, letting out a big laugh, thinking about how long she’s been making movies — and worrying about what people think when she tries something that’s outside her comfort zone.

Star performance

Considering “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” in which she plays Evelyn, a stressed-out laundromat owner trying to save an imperiled multiverse and heal a frayed relationship with her daughter, Yeoh calls it a role she’s been rehearsing to play all her life. And as it was the first time she has been allowed to be goofy on screen — a quality that comes quite naturally to her in real life, she says — she didn’t know if audiences would buy into the act.

“When I was at that premiere and I heard that first laugh, I was like, ‘Omigod, omigod, omigod, they actually think I’m funny,’ ” says Yeoh, who, in conversation, is quite the cutup, if only for the sound effects with which she punctuates her thoughts. Perhaps the only thing better than Michelle Yeoh performing martial arts in movies like “Wing Chun,” “The Heroic Trio” and, of course, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” is hearing Michelle Yeoh describe her moves in those movies with pow-pow-pow punctuations.

“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” was celebrated at the Telluride Film Festival last year, part of a salute to Sony Pictures Classics’ 30th anniversary. There was an outdoor screening at a park in the Colorado mountain resort town and, after introducing it, Yeoh went to dinner and then circled back to watch the ending.

“She brought a quiet dignity to that movie — along with all those great fight scenes,” Sony Pictures Classics co-president Michael Barker said afterward. “That was such a star performance.”

But Yeoh wouldn’t be No. 1 on the call sheet again until “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” and that might not even have happened had Jackie Chan accepted the invitation from co-directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert to star in the movie. After Chan passed, the Daniels (as they’re collectively known) completely rethought the project, flipping the genders and offering Yeoh the lead and bringing in the great Ke Huy Quan to play Evelyn’s husband. (Yeoh later sent her old friend and “Supercop” co-star Chan a text, saying: “Your loss, my bro!”)

“You know, you get to be my age,” the Malaysianborn Yeoh, 60, says, “and you can see it literally slipping through your fingers, because you are no longer that prime age. The worst is when people think, ‘Oh, she doesn’t look like she did in her 20s, so she can’t physically do the same things.’ What they don’t understand is that I’ve learned some things over the years, and I’m more clever and smarter in how I can sustain my stamina. I’m as fit as I was before, because I know how to look after myself much better than when I was younger.”

Yeoh pauses and then grabs my arm. “You know, older women can still have these crazy adventures!” she says, laughing, letting out a whoop. “If people learn nothing else from this movie, I hope it’s that!”

Easing into her day

It’s hard to place Yeoh in any kind of AARP category. She loves to eat and has been haunting Sichuan and Cantonese restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley while filming projects in L.A. in recent months, and, as she tells me more than once, “I love my wines.” So how does she stay so fit?

“Before I even get out of bed, I start meditating and I do my mantra,” Yeoh says. “I wake my body up slowly. I’ve had injuries over the years, so I have to rectify them.”

Can you talk to your injuries and actually heal them? I’m thinking about the muscle I pulled in my lower back after sneezing the other day.

“It starts from within,” she says. “I tell my body: ‘I’m sorry. Forgive me of all the things I’ve done to you. And thank you.’ ” After that, Yeoh moves to stretching, then core exercises and then, if possible, a hike (Runyon Canyon is a favorite spot) If not, she’s on the elliptical machine. I tell her I hate elliptical machines.

“You’re like Jean,” she says, referring to her longtime partner, Jean Todt, the recently retired French motor racing executive. “You have to get past the first five minutes, and then the adrenaline kicks in and you get into a groove.”

Yeoh and Todt have been together since 2004 and engaged for almost as long. This was supposed to be the year they were going to make it official. But procuring the paperwork has been time-consuming — Todt is a Swiss resident, so blame Switzerland for the exacting requirements. Now they’re aiming for a wedding this year in Geneva. Probably. Yeoh holds up her hand, crossing her fingers.

Is it important to her? “A piece of paper doesn’t change it for me,” Yeoh answers. “But it means a lot to Jean, so it means a lot to me.”

‘I’m cool!’

An Oscar nomination for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” would appear to be in the cards, and Yeoh is definitely down with that, though she’s more enthusiastic when talking about what making the movie did for her craft as an actor.

“I learned not to judge myself,” Yeoh says. She begins to expand on the thought and then reverses and puts it in simple terms. “I learned to say, ‘What the heck.’ ”

“I have stage fright,” she continues. “I don’t do improv. I don’t know how to make up lines. And I would say to the Daniels, ‘That’s your job. You just tell me what to say.’ And then they’d say, ‘OK, say this but say it in six different ways.’ And they’d want me to max out on the comedic side. ‘How do I do that?’ I’m freaking out. But I just trusted my instincts and went with it.”

Scheinert says Yeoh kept any jitters hidden while making the movie. What he wants to talk about is how nervous he and Kwan were when meeting her for the first time, wondering if she’d be game for sporting floppy hot dog fingers or misremembering a Pixar classic as “Raccacoonie.”

“We sometimes ask collaborators if there’s something they watched recently that they really liked,” Scheinert says. “And Michelle answered, ‘I just saw “Deadpool 2.” I thought it was hilarious.’ We took that as a good sign that she’d go hard.”

“Oh, she would tease us like the way an auntie would tease her nephews,” Scheinert adds. “She’d be like, ‘Oh, my God, you boys are crazy! What are you making me do?’ But then she’d just do it and she’d kill it.”

Now Yeoh can’t run an errand without bumping into a young fan who wants to tell her how much they enjoyed all the crazy gags in “Everything Everywhere” as well as its message that maybe, just maybe, life is worth living and parents and children can (sometimes) get along.

“Teenagers will come up to me at the supermarket and say, ‘You’re cool! Can we have a picture with you?’ ” Yeoh says. “Outwardly, I’ll smile and say, ‘Of course!’ But inwardly, I’m pumping my fist, screaming, ‘Yes! Finally! I’m cool!’ ”

“You know, older women can still have these crazy adventures! If people learn nothing else from this movie, I hope it’s that!” Michelle Yeoh • above, with co-stars Stephanie Hsu (left) and Ke Huy Quan in “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

2. 3. 4. “Dreamland” by John Grisham (Doubleday) by Nicholas Sparks (Random House) 5. “Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper) 6.

“Fairy Tale”

by Stephen King (Scribner)

“The Boys From Biloxi”

“Triple Cross” by James Patterson (Little, Brown)

7. “Mad Honey” by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan (Ballantine) )

CHRISTINA HOUSE LOS ANGELES TIMES Omar Apollo, who sings in both English and Spanish, performs at Coachella last year.