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Spending the Night at Miguel’s Wildheart Motel

To see more of Miguel’s Wildheart Motel, check out @miguel, @willoperron and #wildheartmotel on Instagram. For more music stories, head to @music.

“I am going to ask you yes or no questions.” You’re seated inside a seedy motel room that’s dressed up as an interrogation facility. Thick wires are strapped across your stomach and chest and a blood pressure cuff is wrapped around your left bicep. You begin to answer queries about your sex life, whether you can drive a stick shift, whether you’ve traveled or lived in another state. There’s no actual downside to lying right now, but that sort of defeats the purpose. If you can’t be truthful with yourself, why even exist in the first place?

Because this 21-room exhibit, somewhere in the middle of Los Angeles, is just as much about experiencing the art and influence of the singer Miguel (@miguel) as it is about finding yourself (as Miguel says, “it’s super clichéd, but what the f— else is life all about?”). Made in conjunction with artist Willo Perron (@willoperron), the Wildheart Motel, named after Miguel’s latest album Wildheart, is a place to explore the record’s message and themes in a living, breathing environment.

“I was so in love with the idea and the intention, I wanted to find any way to make it happen,” Miguel tells @music, 30 minutes before the doors open, about his conception behind the exhibit. He’s wearing a customized, unbuttoned Wildheart Motel jean jacket; his clavicle tattoos peek out from underneath his T-shirt. “It’s really a f—ing miracle that we are here.”

That miracle led to the aforementioned polygraph room, a room with a stripper pole and jungle vines, a room for karaoke, a room for sex therapy, a room of minifridges filled with miniature liquor bottles and fake limbs, a room with body part cushions. There was also the live band room, covered in burgundy shag carpet, where Rihanna would perform a surprise set later in the evening alongside Miguel.

“Every room here is intended to give people something to talk about,” he says. “I just wanted to create a space that gave people a moment –– to just forget all of the reality-based walls that we built for ourselves and just have a good time.”

You can check out more photos from Miguel’s Wildheart Motel, which runs through this weekend, here.

My bestie was a hired stripper for this event