LGBTQ music
[3][4] Recently, popular music has "provided an arena where marginalized voices can be heard and sexual identities shaped, challenged, and renegotiated".
Much of the music created by straight queer icons is enjoyed in LGBTQ+ spaces, with artists such as Judy Garland, Janet Jackson, Donna Summer, Kylie Minogue, Madonna, or Cher, among others.
[citation needed] American pianist Liberace was famously closeted and vehemently denied allegations of homosexuality until his death in 1987, suing a Daily Mirror columnist for insinuating his sexuality.
[14] While the entertainment industry now more openly discusses the role of gender identity both in the press and within music compositions, there is still reticence for many in the business to advocate for LGBTQ+ acceptance.
Notable gay men involved in the production of Broadway shows include Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart, Noël Coward, Marc Blitzstein, Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, and Stephen Sondheim, to name a few.
In these revolutions, gender and sexuality became less rigid and more fluid, as evidenced in the performances of musicians like Freddie Mercury,[9][10] David Bowie,[10] Grace Jones, and Prince.
[17] The disco, glam rock, and industrial music cultures offered a multitude of platforms for expression for gender and sexual non-conforming individuals throughout the 1970s.
[18] "Disco Pluralism" partly led to the inclusion of different perspectives in the genre, thus creating a category of music representative of the intersectional identities of queer listeners; such as race or socioeconomic status.
Marc Bolan of T. Rex is still the subject of s speculation (a friend who worked at Creem remembers him coming on to just about everyone when he came through Detroit, but this clearly isn't definitive)."
[21] Tim Bowers of The New York Times recalls that "glam's vocals had a fruity theatricality, supporting lyrics that presented as a boast: "Your mother can't tell if you're a boy or a girl."
[24] A song from the show, "Sweet Transvestite", was noted as "the first big, glam rock aria of the musical" in the book Trans Representations in Contemporary, Popular Cinema.
These genres of music were often played in underground queer clubs in many cities such as Los Angeles and New York and New Romantic subcultural movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s, which spawned the Blitz Kids in London.
[10] Gay icons during this decade included Cyndi Lauper, George Michael, Loleatta Holloway, Gloria Gaynor, Bob Mould, Melissa Etheridge and Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford.
He continues a deadpan tone in the video by monotonously singing about advantages men experience derived from the patriarchy ("you can wear a uniform", "learn to drive and everything", and "Life is a pop of the cherry when you're a boy").
In Argentina, new wave band Virus, led by singer Federico Moura, made references to 1980s gay men culture, such as cruising for sex, male prostitution and underground parties; and Moura displayed a flamboyant, sexualized stage persona that caused a homophobic reaction by much of the Argentine rock culture at the time.
Bands such as Pansy Division and Tribe 8 led the queercore offshoot of hardcore punk that helped solidify LGBT arts in the decade.
The 2000s saw LGBT music branch off into its own genre, and new artists like Lady Gaga, Christina Aguilera, Will Young, Scissor Sisters, The Gossip, RuPaul, Mika, Dario, Adam Lambert, Lauren Jauregui, Sakima, Dawnstar, Neon Trees, and Miley Cyrus supported a growing industry, spreading the message of equality and positivity.
[34] Openly gay artists such as Tegan and Sara gained popularity; the duo produced a pro-tolerance advert jingle for Oreo in 2014.
The self-publishing features of social media have allowed queer artists to share their music while also being open about their identities without having to risk their careers.
For example, Lil Nas X became a sensation when he released his country rap "Old Town Road" that went viral on the short-form video app TikTok.
[39] Since becoming famous, Lil Nas X has used his platform to elevate gay representation, and has carved out space for himself in the music industry as an unapologetic messiah for today's young, queer generation.
Artists like Garth Brooks, Carrie Underwood, Tim McGraw, Kacey Musgraves, and Maren Morris to name a few, have all come forward as allies for this community.
[42] Artists such as Prince, David Bowie,[10] Cher, and Madonna have incorporated gender-bending into their music and performances to blur the lines between male and female, gay and straight.
[45][46] Early examples of this arose with the sexual liberation movement, with artists such as Sylvester,[47] Tom Robinson,[47] Janis Ian,[47] Boy George,[47] and others.
One of the earliest US top 40 singles to feature a positive depiction of the LGBT community was bisexual rocker Lou Reed's 1972 song "Walk on the Wild Side", which detailed the lives of gay, bi, and trans members of Andy Warhol's social circle.
[64] In April 2018, Janelle Monáe[65] came out as pansexual[10] with her album Dirty Computer,[62] and released the song "Make Me Feel"; the music video detailing a woman's attraction to two club goers.
The second verse was originally written "the only fire's in her darkness, the way it flickers when she goes down on me", and now it's "he" because her girlfriend at the time liked to be referred to in the male-pronoun, and had been dating a guy when she re-recorded.
In the 2002 book Queer, the following ten main themes were listed that are common among many, if not all gay anthems:[85][79] Through the first decade of the 21st century, chart-topping popular songs became a "refuge of unambiguous support for gay rights" in a time when legal support for LGBT rights in the US was lagging (Don't Ask, Don't Tell would be repealed in 2011, and same-sex marriage would only be fully legalized in 2015).
Even before its single release, Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" was predicted by Elton John to replace Gloria Gaynor's classic gay anthem "I Will Survive".
OUTMusic Inc., a 501(c)(3) organization founded in 1990 by Michael Biello & Dan Martin, was re-founded as the LGBT Academy of Recording Arts by Diedra Meredith in 2007.
