50 Songs That Define the Last 50 Years of LGBTQ+ Pride

The stories after Stonewall, starring Frank Ocean, Tegan and Sara, Jobriath, Troye Sivan, Grace Jones, and more
Frank Ocean Grace Jones Madonna and more
Grace Jones photo by Getty Images, Frank Ocean photo by D Dipasupil/FilmMagic, Boy George photo by Ebet Roberts/Redferns, David Bowie photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images, Madonna photo by Frank Micelotta/Getty Images.

The Rainbow Is a Prism: The Many Facets of LGBTQ+ Pop Music History

By Jes Skolnik

LGBTQ+ people have always been at pop’s vanguard, as performers and audiences; the history of pop music is queer history. Blues originators like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, both openly bisexual, helped form the foundation of what would become R&B and rock‘n’roll. In the 1920s and early ’30s, Prohibition’s end gave way to the “Pansy Craze”: cabaret drag performances that brought gay nightlife to the masses and carried their aesthetics into mainstream musical theater. In the mid-’30s, at the edge of the Great Depression, moral backlash—sometimes disguised as economic conservatism but usually explicit in its bigotry—shut down many of these clubs and formally criminalized gay sex at a scale that had never before been seen. The closet door, which hadn’t even existed as we know it now, slammed shut.

This didn’t stop LGBTQ+ musicians from shaping American pop culture. Jazz can’t be imagined without the contributions of giants like Billy Strayhorn (of Duke Ellington’s band), who was openly gay, and, later, Cecil Taylor, who found that three-letter word was too limiting. Even in the prescriptive world of ’60s pop, where teen rebellion was anticipated and pre-packaged, there were artists like Lesley Gore and Dusty Springfield. In fact, Springfield was one of the first pop icons to come out to the public (as bisexual, in 1970)—and, notably, she covered Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me,” as subversive a song as there ever was, on her debut album. The ’70s brought glam and disco, gender play, and explicitly queer nightlife back to the mainstream; we can’t forget that decade’s great gay pop icon, Elton John, and its great bisexual ones, David Bowie and Freddie Mercury. Despite its great appeal to many a very hetero man, many of punk’s early groundbreakers were LGBTQ+, from Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks, who was never shy about his sexuality, to Darby Crash of the Germs, who was sadly closeted during his short life. Undergirded by punk’s jagged energy and the electric, over-the-top styles of glam and disco, new wave made space for unconventional queer personalities and for pop to address the AIDS crisis. And so it has evolved, with the late ’80s and early ’90s giving a particular showcase to lesbian and bisexual women in pop (Meshell Ndegeocello, Melissa Etheridge, k.d. lang, the Indigo Girls), all the way to today, a moment that young pop star Hayley Kiyoko teasingly refers to as “#20gayteen.”

This Pride month, Pitchfork editors and contributors have assembled a list of 50 songs from the past 50 years, post-Stonewall riots, that speak to the impact of LGBTQ+ culture and perspectives on the mainstream. Most of the songs here are by LGBTQ+ artists, with a few exceptions we included because they were too notable not to; most of our critics who wrote these entries are LGBTQ+, as well. But this is not in any way meant to be a definitive list; the field is just too wide to narrow to 50 songs.

Instead, we’re trying to tell as many stories within this community as we can. Some of the ones I would have loved to tell, personally, didn’t make it—like Gary Floyd of the Dicks, whom I’ve written about before for Pitchfork, or the endlessly talented Dee Palmer of Jethro Tull, who, like me, is trans and intersex. We’ve tried to get as big a range as possible, though, from classic chart-toppers to genre notables from hip-hop, punk, house, and so on—and we’ve also gotten some wonderful musicians to reflect on their personal soundtracks, too.

Pride month itself has a number of meanings and uses: a party, a chance to reflect on our history and think about the challenges we have in the present and going forward, a reason to connect with others and think about how all of us view community, a fierce legacy of radicalism and liberatory praxis. There are millions of different ways to be LGBTQ+, after all. I hope you find something meaningful in this list—a history you might not have known, a song you loved that you’d forgotten about, a new favorite—and that you’re able to tap into the powerful well of emotions that pop can engender in us and let that push you on. Let’s get free.

Jes Skolnik is a writer, editor, and musician who splits their time between Chicago and New York. Their first gay kiss was in junior high, with someone wearing a matching flannel, while listening to Peter Murphy’s “Deep” on shared Sport Walkman headphones.


Listen to selections from this list on our Spotify playlist and Apple Music playlist.

Photo by Harmony Gerber/FilmMagic

Atlantic

Roberta Flack: “Ballad of the Sad Young Men” (1969)

For decades, gay bars offered their male patrons one of few safe havens. But “Ballad of the Sad Young Men” looks below that comforting surface to offer a view of the scene that’s both poignant and pained. The song wasn’t written with an exclusively gay audience in mind—though the straight woman who wrote its lyrics, the beat poet Fran Landesman, surely knew of that world, and her words have resonated deeply with many gay people. With music by Tommy Wolf, the song was popularized by Anita O’Day in 1962, and found its most knowing interpretation in the 1981 version by the openly gay jazz singer Mark Murphy.

Still, Roberta Flack offers the meatiest reading on her 1969 debut album, First Take. Proceeding through the arcs of its melody with granular attention, Flack finds weight in every word. And brilliant and brutal words they are: In Flack’s elegant reading, we linger over seven minutes with all the sad young men who pass their time “drinking up the night” and “missing all the stars,” as a “grimy moon” watches them grow old. Flack’s version culminates in a crescendo of Streisandian power, idealizing a gay bar ode that pierces the heart. –Jim Farber

Listen: Roberta Flack, “Ballad of the Sad Young Men”


Pye / Reprise

The Kinks: “Lola” (1970)

Initially among the most popular and influential British Invasion bands, the Kinks were refused work permits for four years by the American Federation of Musicians in 1965—which meant no U.S. tours and, after 1966’s “Sunny Afternoon,” no U.S. hits. Most groups would’ve pursued a comeback by writing about something universally accessible. True to contrarian form, leader Ray Davies gambled on what was then utterly forbidden love, and saved the Kinks’ careers.

Deftly leading listeners along a gradual path of discovery, Davies sings from the perspective of a rube who finds himself falling for a trans woman who affirms his masculinity and helps him accept himself. Smarter still is the arrangement, an earthy roots-rock sing-along that accentuates the naturalness of what had only recently been decriminalized in the UK, and would still be illegal for decades in much of the U.S. While pioneering films of the era like The Killing of Sister George reflected the difficulty of British LGBTQ+ life, “Lola” emphasizes its joys. That positivity marks it as the crucial awakening song of a new era: the first post-Stonewall smash. –Barry Walters

Listen: The Kinks, “Lola”


Warner Bros.

Wendy Carlos: “March From a Clockwork Orange” (1971)

With the release of her hugely successful album Switched-On Bach, Wendy Carlos demonstrated that Moog synthesizers could be as expressive as a piano. Then, while reading Anthony Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange, teenage protagonist Alex DeLarge’s passion for “a bit of the old Ludwig Van” inspired her to begin composing music based on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Fourth Movement. “March From a Clockwork Orange,” which appears in Stanley Kubrick’s infamous film adaptation, is a synthesized choral symphony in which a single voice is transformed by vocoder into an eerily rapturous electronic chorus of “Ode to Joy.” A groundbreaking moment in the history of synthesized sound, the song is a classical symphony cracked open to reveal technological machinery, a marvel as queer as the titular clockwork orange.

In the late ’70s, Carlos changed her professional name and image in reflection of who she was; the media handled this badly, causing her to shy away from identifiers, but she became an inspiring figure to many queer people. Now her legacy continues on her own terms; her pioneering work remains an inspiration to the many women working in electronic music to this day. –Lorena Cupcake

Listen: Wendy Carlos, “March From a Clockwork Orange”


Pye

Labi Siffre: “It Must Be Love” (1971)

“It Must Be Love” is pure sweetness, a lovely pop gem about that rush of emotion in a young relationship. It manages, with its plangent chords, to feel real instead of syrupy—after all, a new love feels amazing, but its power can also be so intense as to be frightening. The original was a hit in the UK, and its writer and performer, Labi Siffre—a jazz guitarist, singer-songwriter, and poet—was a rarity in the 1970s pop pantheon, an out gay man born to a Nigerian father and a Barbadian-Belgian mother who refused to tamp down his advocacy against apartheid at a time when that was a severely unpopular view to have.

Though Siffre is not actively recording these days, many of his ’70s and ’80s hits have been covered or sampled by a wide variety of artists, from Olivia Newton-John to Kenny Rogers to Kanye West. (The two-tone ska band Madness even covered “It Must Be Love,” scoring a hit both in the UK and the U.S.) Siffre continues to meditate on art, power, and politics in poetry and essays, still vitalized decades on. –Jes Skolnik

Listen: Labi Siffre, “It Must Be Love”


Reprise

Fanny: “Charity Ball” (1971)

Initially billed as a “novelty act”—how else, cynically, would one market an “all-girl” band in the early ’70s?—Fanny proved to the doubters that they were (surprise!) a damn fine hard rock band with enough harmonies and hooks for pop chart appeal. (David Bowie was an enormous fan, as are Amy Ray from Indigo Girls, Bonnie Raitt, and Jill Sobule.) Led by the Filipina-American sisters June and Jean Millington, the group scored an early hit single with “Charity Ball,” from their second album of same name, a party-ready boogie-rocker with a swinging backbeat and a blistering guitar solo. It would still make for a perfect, swaggering drag king lip sync performance. Though three out of four members were lesbian or bi, Fanny wanted to be categorized as a lesbian or feminist band about as much as they wanted to be seen as novelties; what they wanted was to just play, to be given the same space and gravity as any of their “all-boy” counterparts. –Jes Skolnik

Listen: Fanny, “Charity Ball”

Photo by Harmony Gerber/FilmMagic

Mark

Madeline Davis: “Stonewall Nation” (1971)

Madeline Davis, a lifelong gay rights activist, wrote this lilting folk song with its undercurrent of steely strength after attending her first gay civil rights march. (Davis was also a key member of the early gay rights organization Mattachine Society.) “Stonewall Nation” is widely regarded as the first gay liberation record, and its uncompromising lyrics, which demand freedom rather than acceptance, celebrate the resiliency and potential power of radical gay activism. (Her line about her sisters not wanting “their lovin’ called a sin no more” is particularly poignant.) Davis came to the lesbian folk scene through choir participation and then jazz, and the fullness of her voice and delicacy of her fingerpicking here belie her background. This is a song meant not just to be performed by Davis herself but to be sung together at potlucks and at protests, voices raised in unison with love for the community, and all power to the people. –Jes Skolnik

Listen: Madeline Davis, “Stonewall Nation”


RCA Victor

David Bowie: “Starman” (1972)

It really is impossible to exaggerate the importance of “Starman” to a generation of young, sexually-questioning British kids. When Bowie draped an arm around Mick Ronson in the summer of 1972, on the hugely popular music show “Top of the Pops,” a nation was outraged. But the indignation of parents would only help endear the otherworldly Bowie to their children. For the generation that would spawn the out-gay pop stars of the 1980s, Bowie’s outrageous campery and sexual androgyny was a revelation, and for many watching that Thursday evening, life would never be the same again.

Now, almost half a century after it happened, David Bowie’s admission in the British music press that “I’m gay, and always have been” seems like no big deal. And after Bowie himself retracted his statement, first becoming bisexual and then resolutely straight, it has been seen by supporters and critics alike as nothing more than an aberration. But for some—the style-makers, the trendsetters, the icons of the ’80s and ’90s—Bowie’s fauxmosexuality opened up a whole new world, and his performance of “Starman” was a pivotal moment in the lives of a whole generation of British musicians. –Darryl Bullock

Listen: David Bowie, “Starman”


RCA Victor

Lou Reed: “Walk on the Wild Side” (1972)

On his most indelible song, Lou Reed narrates New York’s 1970s queer scene with the cool eye of a documentarian. The former Velvet Underground frontman had worked with Andy Warhol in the late ’60s, and “Walk on the Wild Side” names several of the gay men and trans women who ran in the art icon’s inner circle. Actresses Holly Woodlawn, Candy Darling, and Jackie Curtis all appear in Reed’s archly delivered lyrics, having flocked to New York as the one place where they could embrace their femininity openly and be lauded for it.

Produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson, “Walk on the Wild Side” plays like glam rock with its engine cut out, dropping the bombast for an easier, more casual feel. It’s as if Reed didn’t feel that his “wild side” was so wild after all—to straight people, maybe, but not to him. He’d already incubated in the city’s queer underbelly, and he had enough affection for it to memorialize the era. Reed’s runaway hit was among the first pop tracks to celebrate trans women by name in the Billboard Hot 100, but he never sang it like he was making history. He just called it the way he saw it.
–Sasha Geffen

Listen: Lou Reed, “Walk on the Wild Side”


Elektra

Jobriath: “I’maman” (1973)

While Bowie was touting his fauxmosexuality in the press, actor and musician Bruce Wayne Campbell was reinventing himself as Jobriath Boone, the space cowboy who was going to out-Ziggy our David and show the world what the “true fairy of rock” could do. Sadly, no one took him seriously, and although today Jobriath is recognized as an influence by Morrissey, XTC’s Andy Partridge, and many others, his importance—as the first out-gay rock singer to sign to a major label—is largely overlooked.

The swaggering pomposity of “I’maman,” a single from Jobriath’s eponymous debut album, is a fantastic example of his talents. It’s a slice of theatrically high-camp glam rock, in which he makes a pitch for acceptance while looking and sounding like an alien being, something that all LGBTQ+ people can relate to. Yet the press hated him, seeing him as little more than a Bowie clone, and before long, he was headed down the road to self-destruction. But watch his appearance on the late-night TV show “Midnight Special” (where he is introduced by a clearly confused Gladys Knight), and then compare it to Bowie’s later performances with Klaus Nomi. Who was leading whom?
–Darryl Bullock

Listen: Jobriath, “I’maman”


Casablanca

Donna Summer: “I Feel Love” (1977)

The first time Nicky Siano played “I Feel Love” at the Gallery, New York’s most important disco club and queer-friendly space, the crowd “exploded.” Ever since, the song’s legacy has had less to do with its creators and everything to do with the people who were dancing that night—and every other joyous dancefloor filled with brown, black, and queer bodies after.

In 1977, Donna Summer and producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte were not the likeliest of LGBTQ+ allies, or even aware they’d kicked off a revolution. While the sleek disco Summer made with Moroder and Bellotte resonated with queer audiences—their self-possessed, proudly erotic songs just jived with the sexual revolution and the flowering of the gay public imagination—none of them were clubgoers. They weren’t there to see the bodies that writhed to “I Feel Love,” to its Moog-powered melody and cyborgian drumming. But queer crowds immediately knew it was special: It’s a song about loving your body and your desires, a powerful sentiment for people whose urges were once seen as deviant. Four decades later, that power over crowds is undiluted, as is the freedom and recognition in its every beat. –Kevin Lozano

Listen: Donna Summer, “I Feel Love”


Polydor

Gloria Gaynor: “I Will Survive” (1978)

“I Will Survive” probably would’ve become a gay anthem even without the specter of AIDS. It has an undeniable flair for the dramatic: After moving through that filigreed piano intro, you can imagine a lone spotlight shining on Gloria Gaynor as she drags the man dumb enough to break her heart and crawl back for more. It was released as disco’s wave was beginning to break, topping the Billboard charts a few months before the infamous Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park. Had the story ended there, it’d represent the last, best gasp of a culture beaten into temporary irrelevance by thinly-veiled racism and homophobia. (The out lesbian diva Alicia Bridges’ “I Love the Nightlife” stands out as another hit from this time.)

A few years later, when a generation of queer people was ravaged by a disease dismissed as “the gay plague,” “I Will Survive” made for the perfect rallying cry. It burns with righteous indignation and celebrates resilience, qualities well-suited to a community that scrapped for recognition and banded together even as it was condemned and ignored as a matter of policy. (You can imagine the marginalized asking the same rhetorical questions Gaynor poses in the pre-chorus: “Did you think I’d crumble? Did you think I’d lay down and die?”) Even after decades of progress, many LGBTQ+ people are still made to grapple with daily assaults on their personhood. “I Will Survive” remains there for them, ready to galvanize in moments when asserting your basic humanity feels like an act of defiance. –Jamieson Cox

Listen: Gloria Gaynor, “I Will Survive”


Fantasy

Sylvester: “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” (1978)

It’s still stunning, the sheer radicalness of Sylvester: an out-and-loud, gospel-singing, gender-nonconforming queen among queens who not only revolutionized disco in the late ’70s, but affirmed her identity so intensely that few people dared question it. This track from her second album, Step II, was originally written as a gospel song for the piano; it was then remixed and produced into perfection by Patrick Cowley, another disco pioneer lost to AIDS. His version married Sylvester’s take-you-to-church vocals with the synthesizer, then still considered a revolutionary instrument. Packed skyward with handclaps, tambourine shakes, and lazer synths, not only is “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” a stone-cold classic of the disco era, it’s a revelation of queer desire. When Sylvester sings, “I feel real when you want me” to her dancefloor paramour, it’s not just a simple admission of want. The song is about singing the praises of someone—whoever, whatever they happen to be—who make us feel good, seen, validated, and alive. –T. Cole Rachel

Listen: Sylvester, “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)”


EMI

Queen: “Don’t Stop Me Now” (1978)

This shamelessly jaunty, piano-pumping karaoke killer wasn’t a big hit at first, by Queen standards. It hails from Queen’s also moderately popular Jazz, which inspired Rolling Stone’s most suspiciously scathing review ever. (Sample dis: “Indeed, Queen may be the first truly fascist rock band.”) The song’s wan initial reception may have had something to do with the genders of its love interests, which flip from male to female and back again to assert that frontman Freddie Mercury was bisexual—and it was released just days before the gay visionary Harvey Milk was assassinated.

But like Elton John’s originally neglected “Tiny Dancer,” “Don’t Stop Me Now” is today considered quintessential. It’s the giddy, fun-loving flipside to the forcefulness of “We Are the Champions,” and though it similarly acknowledges outside resistance, it does so with a flick of the wrist from a shy guy still hiding behind the sybarite self he strutted onstage so legendarily. In the early ’80s, Mercury indulged that pleasure-seeker, and he prematurely and cruelly met his mortality. But this song, with its poignant and high-Fahrenheit fantasy of enjoyment without end, will live forever. –Barry Walters

Listen: Queen, “Don’t Stop Me Now”


Casablanca

Village People: “Go West” (1979)

Most music fans would be forgiven for dismissing the Village People as a disco novelty act—and they wouldn’t be completely wrong. After all, their relentlessly gaudy “YMCA” remains inescapable to this day, providing manufactured glee at everything from bar mitzvahs to baseball games. In hindsight, however, it’s amazing that such an openly, flamboyantly gay act was able to reach popularity at all in the late ’70s, let alone earn household-name status within months of their formation.

“Go West,” the title track of the Village People’s fourth studio album, stands alone among the band’s most famous songs: It’s a passionate, lustful ode to queer community and spirit. Released a few years after the staunch conservative Anita Bryant launched her despicable “Save Our Children” campaign, which became the blueprint for the next 30 years of anti-LGBTQ+ politics, “Go West” imagined a utopia free of homophobia and discrimination. The rousing choral chants of “Together!”—blasting over joyous horns and hi-hats—don’t just describe a man and his lover, but all queer folk yearning to find their tribe and flourish in the sun. –Cameron Cook

Listen: Village People, “Go West”


West End

Loose Joints: “Is It All Over My Face (Female Vocal)” (1980)

The gay, avant-garde musical prodigy Arthur Russell, working with DJ Steve D’Acquisto, hustled up money in 1979 from the disco label West End Records for an experimental studio project. Hoping to capture the propulsive energy of their favorite New York hotspot, the Loft, Russell and D’Acquisto invited musicians and singers into the studio and subjected them to Buddhist-influenced improv and DIY recording practices. Thus, Loose Joints were born.

DJ genius Larry Levan kidnapped the master tapes, taking it upon himself to remix the record with his connoisseur nightclub crowd at the Paradise Garage in mind. Levan’s reworking of the track is a masterpiece of throbbing, risqué, suspenseful funk—an off-kilter confluence of electric keys, propulsive bass, sinewy drumming by Philadelphia’s John Ingram, and a blasé, haughty Melvina Woods vocal (“Is it all over my face?/You got me love dancing”). No song better captures the vibey, druggy, slightly dissociated erotics of downtown New York in its post-disco thrall. To this day, Russell, D’Acquisto and Levan’s mutant baby remains a staple of black and Latino gay ballroom scenes. In fact, a limber dancer with loose joints is probably fiercely voguing to “Is It All Over My Face” as you read this. –Jason King

Listen: Loose Joints, “Is It All Over My Face (Female Vocal)”


Warner Bros.

The B-52’s: “Private Idaho” (1980)

Outrageous, kitschy, definitively Southern, and unmistakably queer, the B-52’s in their ’80s prime wove surreal imagery into irresistible technicolor new wave dance jams. While “Private Idaho,” their second hit, inspired Gus Van Sant to name a film that’s now become a part of queer cinematic canon (My Own Private Idaho), the song itself shares little thematically with that drama. Instead, it’s a classic B-52’s party song with expectedly bizarre and dark edges, Fred Schneider’s yelped lyrics conjuring a deep state of paranoia and surveillance (“private eye-daho,” get it?) as they clash with Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson’s lush harmonies. Guitarist Ricky Wilson—an integral part of the band’s early success, and Cindy’s brother—particularly shines here with his ferocious playing; tragically, he would pass away from AIDS a few short years later, spurring the band to activism in honor of his memory. What better way, too, to celebrate life than to soundtrack a club floor where every weirdo can feel safe enough to dance this mess around? –Jes Skolnik

Listen: The B-52’s, “Private Idaho”

Photo by Johnny Nunez/WireImage

Motown

Diana Ross: “I’m Coming Out” (1980)

Disco appealed to pretty much everybody except the straight white dudes who ran the music industry; they got tired of gay/black/Latino club DJs calling the shots, just as disco’s reigning band Chic morphed into an equally fierce songwriting, production, and instrumental team. One night, their leader Nile Rodgers spotted three Diana Ross–impersonating drag queens at GG’s Barnum Room, a Manhattan disco where transgender acrobats on trapezes flew over the dance floor. He had the ingenious idea to have Miss Ross herself sing a roof-raising LGBTQ+ anthem as a thank-you to all those queens for supporting her (and Chic, too).

This meant Rodgers—a revolutionary in designer duds—was never upfront about the fact that “I’m Coming Out” was obviously about sexuality. Indeed, it’s also about being your truest self and throwing aside shame’s shackles. Ross rose to the occasion, turning in a triumphant performance as exacting as Chic’s sashaying accompaniment. But Motown hated the album, demanded the tapes, remixed them to downplay Chic’s instrumentation, and released diana in 1980 without so much as a single for the first month. Rodgers and collaborator Bernard Edwards nearly disowned what they’d originally considered their crowning achievement. Then “Upside Down” went No. 1, “I’m Coming Out” hit No. 5, and *diana—*ultimately her biggest solo album ever—sold nine million internationally. Disco wasn’t dead yet; queers still had clout. –Barry Walters

Listen: Diana Ross, “I’m Coming Out”


Some Bizzare

Soft Cell: “Tainted Love” (1981)

When Ed Cobb wrote “Tainted Love” in 1964, he never could have imagined its grim repurposing two decades later. In the ’80s, the song came to represent the fear and dread that gripped the gay community at the very start of the AIDS crisis. The soul singer Gloria Jones first recorded a manic version of the song in 1965, and in the early ’70s, it became a favorite of the U.K.’s Northern Soul scene. Then Soft Cell’s Marc Almond changed the piece radically in 1981 by taking a much slowed-down and sleazed-up approach, and it became an unlikely smash in the U.S.

At that time, AIDS had not yet been given that name, though gay men knew all too well of a mysterious new “cancer” ravaging the community. The key lines in the song, “Once I ran to you/Now I’ll run from you,” were the first to capture the new terror surrounding sex and connection. At the same time, Soft Cell’s shadowy version embraced the darkness, capturing the complex amalgam of pitched attraction and deep angst that marked earlier eras of gay life. In 1985, when AIDS was overwhelming the community, “Tainted Love” appeared once again, this time via the British group Coil. Their video for the song cast one of their own members as a man dying of the disease, finally putting the plague into full, savage focus. –Jim Farber

Listen: Soft Cell, “Tainted Love”


Island

Grace Jones: “Pull Up to the Bumper” (1981)

The subject matter of “Pull Up to the Bumper” has been interpreted widely as anal sex, oral sex, and, well, simply parking a car. But therein lies the sly, transgressive power of Grace Jones: Between her cutting sense of humor and relish of outré spectacle, the Jamaican pop iconoclast has never been hemmed in by flimsy, pearl-clutching moral codes, even if those same codes most likely played a role in the song’s mainstream radio swift ban for its “lewd content.” (It was released the year of Reagan’s inauguration, after all.)

Jones’ genre-hopping artistry earned her a diehard LGBTQ+ fan base from day one, largely because of her very uncommon divadom. By gleefully toying with masculine and feminine conventions, she offered her queer audience a constantly evolving performance in which they could recognize their own sexual fluidity. “Bumper” succinctly captures Jones’ protean mix of playfulness and aggression, simultaneously tongue-in-cheek and dead serious. It’s a masterstroke of double entendre that, with its sinuous reggae-disco backdrop and Jones’ snarled vehicular puns, really only demands one thing from you: that you move. –Eric Torres

Listen: Grace Jones, “Pull Up to the Bumper”


Genetic

Pete Shelley: “Homosapien” (1981)

Pete Shelley shared private lusts to which the shame clung like incense on priestly robes. Embracing synthesizers just when everyone else in England did, the former Buzzcocks singer-guitarist coaxed out of them what everyone in England wasn’t: writing without a hint of code-switching about homo superiors in his interiors. The clinking-clanking “Homosapien” made an excellent solo debut for a songwriter whose previous works relied on the all-purpose second person pronoun yet whose prissy, epicene vocals, on desperation moves like “Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldntve” and “You Say You Don’t Love Me,” gave the game away. This is a vignette by an orgasm addict, out and loving it, of understanding that life is as much performed as it is lived, of cruising for losers because it’s fun. Not as fun: the BBC banning it for its “explicit reference to gay sex.” Their loss. –Alfred Soto

Listen: Pete Shelley, “Homosapien”


Rough Trade

The Smiths: “This Charming Man” (1983)

Before Morrissey became the poster boy for sad, doe-eyed wallflowers, he introduced himself to America as a “prophet for the fourth gender.” And abruptly here, in a decade of conservative straitjacketing, was this proto-hipster Victorian ghost of a pop star who gushed over Oscar Wilde bon mots and cruised a male automobile driver right on back.

“This Charming Man” was the Smiths’ first major hit in the UK; it’s spoiled for riches with one of Johnny Marr’s greatest pop guitar lines, a jaunty wink of an Andy Rourke bassline, and some of Morrissey’s most lavishly antique overtures. (Try typing “it's gruesome that someone so handsome should care” at your next reticent Tinder match!) And fittingly to Wilde, the most eccentric asides spoke volumes; Morrissey’s most inexplicable line, “a jumped-up pantry boy who never knew his place,” references the homoerotic 1972 thriller Sleuth, which starred Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier. Ensuing years would prove Morrissey a disturbing icon for anyone, including LGBTQ+ people, but his debut was faultless; oh, for the halcyon days when Morrissey didn’t have “a stitch to wear,” before he wore so many woeful opinions densely on his sleeve. –Stacey Anderson

Listen: The Smiths, “This Charming Man”


Virgin / Epic

Culture Club: “Church of the Poison Mind” (1983)

Writing for Rolling Stone in 1983, the critic Stephen Holden contrasted the queer stylings of Boy George and David Bowie circa Ziggy Stardust. “George was no icy alien parading at a safe emotional distance,” wrote Holden. “Instead of concealing his ‘girlish’ feelings, he flaunted them, putting his heart on the line along with his fantasies.” His assessment rings true when you hear “Church of the Poison Mind,” a song that proposes countering the hateful ideology suggested in its title with radiant spirit and undeniable melody.

“Church of the Poison Mind” rings with the buoyant joy of the finest Motown hits; it’s not a secret that its beat and wheedling harmonica are pilfered from Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight (Everything’s Alright).” (George once sang Wonder’s hit over his own, putting on a show for a writer on Culture Club’s tour bus.) It’s one of a few songs on Colour by Numbers in which George faces off against ferocious backup singer Helen Terry, whose wailing electrifies the chorus. Together, they pose an important question: If you’re living in a society distorted by prejudice, why not take a chance on joy whenever you can? Lock eyes with someone across the street and let infatuation take over; embrace love, whatever form it takes. It’s an irresistible suggestion, and for a moment, it made an unrepentantly queer frontman a pop icon. As George said in 1984, while accepting the Grammy for Best New Artist, “Thank you, America. You’ve got good taste, style, and you know a good drag queen when you see one.” –Jamieson Cox

Listen: Culture Club, “Church of the Poison Mind”


ZTT

Frankie Goes to Hollywood: “Relax” (1983)

Most humans of a certain age have heard “Relax” so many times, it’s easy to forget that it’s totally, explicitly a song about having gay sex. It’s also remarkable that a song about gay sex would, in 1984, go on to become one of the highest-selling singles in the history of the UK pop charts. “Relax” may be relentlessly ’80s in its production and design—synthy, bombastic, slick beyond measure—but it remains one of the catchiest pop songs of its era. Bolstered by an infamously kinky video featuring live tigers and an S&M sex dungeon—plus a subsequent fashion craze inspired by Katharine Hamnett’s “Frankie Say Relax” t-shirts—the song and all its attendant imagery would push the envelope even by today’s standards. At a time when gay sexuality was still mostly communicated via clever allusions and nonthreatening feyness, “Relax” was not only a raunchy, sex-positive middle finger to the establishment, it was also—despite being banned by the BBC and MTV—the biggest pop song in the world. –T. Cole Rachel

Listen: Frankie Goes to Hollywood, “Relax”


Forbidden Fruit / London

Bronski Beat: “Smalltown Boy” (1984)

The British synth-pop trio Bronski Beat specialized in turning the subtexts of disco into text. Pinning singer Jimmy Somerville’s gender is hard at first—in his long cry that is “Smalltown Boy,” it feels like it could come from queer youth anywhere who were eager to escape their small towns. Released in 1984, the year the AIDS epidemic hit its crisis moment, Bronski Beat’s debut album The Age of Consent presented itself as a political document—the sleeve lists the ages of consent around the world for gay men, as if to say, this is the real politics of dancing. “Cry, boy, cry,” Somerville sings, the besieged kid as subject and object.

Any doubts about what “Smalltown Boy” concerned itself with should turn to the video, in which Somerville plays the escaping kid, finding sanctuary in the city and in scoping out a cute diver. Maybe he hooked up with the diver in a club that was playing the same Hi-NRG disco that Bronski Beat specialized in. Still, as those synthesizers continue their chimes of doom, it’s difficult to hear solace; there was still too far to go. –Alfred Soto

Listen: Bronski Beat, “Smalltown Boy”


Mute

Erasure: “Oh L’Amour” (1986)

Arguably the most outré gay synth-pop band of all time, Erasure’s now three-decade discography is like a mirror of contemporary gay culture. “Oh, L’amour”—the third single from the band’s 1986 debut—is Erasure doing the absolute most. Queeny, campy, catchy, and swooningly romantic, it wrapped up all the typical lost-love trappings already so ubiquitous in pop music (“Oh l’amour, mon amour/What’s a boy in love supposed to do?”) and refracted them through an unapologetically gay lens, complete with throwing yourself down on the floor when the boy of your dreams doesn’t remember your name. Though it was considered something of a flop upon release, the song was rescued by the now-legendary “Funky Sisters Remix,” which made it a hit in the clubs and a forever staple in Erasure’s setlist. A gay classic for the ages, “Oh L’amour” is a song that proves that the best place to get over the heartbreak of being ignored and misunderstood is the middle of a dancefloor. –T. Cole Rachel

Photo by Venturelli/Getty Images for Gucci

Elektra

Tracy Chapman: “Fast Car” (1988)

In 1988, the Cleveland-born contralto Tracy Chapman delivered her haunting debut single, “Fast Car,” a four-and-a-half-minute glimpse into the horror show that was Reagan’s America. Ever since, queer folks have seen themselves mirrored in Chapman’s tale of a high school dropout-turned-supermarket-checkout girl living in a homeless shelter, desperately hoping to hop in her lover’s fast car and escape her small-town confines, lest she “live and die this way.” The socially outcast couple—Chapman sidesteps gender pronouns—clings to romantic intimacy (“Your arm felt nice wrapped ’round my shoulder”) as they strive for quality of life in the face of cosmically cruel odds. The irony is that the dreadlocked, butch-outfitted, androgyne Chapman has never officially come out of the closet (ex-lovers, including author Alice Walker, outed her in subsequent years).

The song’s immortality has much to do with the persistence of class tension: One out of every five LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. who live alone still live at or below the poverty line, at a disproportionate rate to straights. With her ability to conjure the blues in songs like “Fast Car,” when we most need to hear them, Tracy Chapman remains a cherished icon in LGBTQ+ circles, regardless of which side of the closet she happens to be on. –Jason King

Listen: Tracy Chapman, “Fast Car”


Atlantic

Ten City: “That’s the Way Love Is” (1989)

Spearheaded in the 1980s by Midwestern innovators like Frankie Knuckles, Ron Hardy, Jamie Principle, and Marshall Jefferson, Chicago house was dance music created in, and intended for, black gay clubs. It featured programmed drums, sequencers, bass modules, and eerie synthesizers, these sometimes married to traditional gospel keys and churchy, uplifting vocals. Of its small handful of standalone classics, Ten City’s R&B chart hit “That’s the Way Love Is” stands above. Foregrounding a bittersweet lyric about marriage vows gone sour, plus a whole lot of wah-wah guitar and thumping Sunday morning piano, the track remains a singalong party-starter. (Club Shelter DJ Timmy Regisford’s mix places the strangely out-of-sync synth strings front and center; it’s become the gold standard.)

Though the production will always have a quaint late-’80s tinge, “That’s the Way Love Is” still feels like a sophisticated ’70s throwback in the style of the Spinners’ “Mighty Love” or Double Exposure’s “My Love Is Free.” Ten City’s each-man-take-a-turn vocals are really the star here—especially those of plaintive Byron Stingily, whose post-bridge Pentecostal falsetto howl is still the fastest ticket you can purchase to gospel-house paradise. –Jason King

Listen: Ten City, “That’s the Way Love Is”


Sire

Madonna: “Express Yourself” (1989)

In the glittering, self-actualized utopia of “Express Yourself,” Madonna reached an early, pivotal career high. Through clearly feminist self-affirmations, a charging and muscular club-pop groove, and a homoerotic art-deco masterpiece of a video inspired by Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and helmed by David Fincher—the most expensive clip of its time—she crafted a symbolic salve for LGBTQ+ people everywhere. Madonna’s longtime, well-documented support of their community may be most palpable in 1990’s “Vogue,” with its ballroom-lifted choreography, or 1992’s “In This Life,” a somber remembrance of friends lost to AIDS, but “Express Yourself” is unique in how it speaks to a distinctly LGBTQ+ experience: living your truth in the clearest terms possible. By gleefully encouraging her fans to lay bare their wants and needs, she makes it plain that it’s within each of us to have transparent, even-footed relationships—whether with ourselves or other people. That the hit song simultaneously laid out a musical blueprint for Lady Gaga’s unabashed LGBTQ+ anthem “Born This Way,” 22 years later, is the deliciously reductive cherry on top. –Eric Torres

Listen: Madonna, “Express Yourself”


Columbia

George Michael: “Freedom! ’90” (1990)

Teenybop idol” and similar epithets had dogged George Michael since his time in Wham!, as had rumors about him being gay. Like the solo album it arrived with, Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1, “Freedom! ’90” was Michael’s attempt to prove his pop virtuosity and reclaim his image, stifling all that gossip. (He only succeeded at the former.) “Freedom! ’90” is a stripping-down but no slash-and-burn; an electric bass still snakes its way under the track’s otherwise acoustic first four minutes. “There’s something deep inside of me/There’s someone else I’ve got to be,” sings Michael, closet subtext no doubt intended, over gospel-dense vocal layers—not only asking fans to have faith in his new sound, but demanding that they have it.

Michael appeared on neither the cover of his own album nor in the David Fincher–directed music video for “Freedom! ’90,” leaving a sextet of supermodels to lip-sync in his stead while a jukebox and other Faith-era iconography burst into flames. Michael lived privately out as bisexual and, later, gay for over a decade before a much-publicized cruising arrest in 1998 forced him to come out more publicly. Released at a time when out gay men couldn’t be pop stars, “Freedom! ’90” was a fascinating peek at Michael’s mind and the complexities of living life authentically. –Harron Walker

Listen: George Michael, “Freedom! ’90”


Parlophone

Pet Shop Boys: “Being Boring” (1990)

In 1990, when the number of gay men dying of AIDS in the West approached its hideous zenith, the Pet Shop Boys released a song that, more than any other, captured the cost. “Being Boring”—which opens the duo’s fourth album, Behaviour—takes place in three eras: First, the 1920s, with a quote from Zelda Fitzgerald that lends the song its title. Then, the narration switches to the 1970s and turns autobiographical, tracing the moment when singer Neil Tennant “bolted through a closing door” to a new gay life (something he had yet to declare publicly when the song was released). The song ends at the start of the 1990s, when Tennant finds himself in a strange and shrinking world, haunted by “all the people I was kissing,” many of whom are now missing.

Madonna’s song “This Used to Be My Playground,” released two years later, has often been cited as the great elegy to vanishing gay friends during the AIDS crisis. But if Madonna’s song expressed empathy from an ally, the Pet Shop Boys’ proved even more consequential by coming from men whose own lives were on the line. –Jim Farber

Listen: Pet Shop Boys, “Being Boring”


Sire / Warner Bros.

k.d. lang: “Constant Craving” (1992)

After over a decade in country music, k.d. lang broke out of conservative Nashville with her yearning, flowing torch song “Constant Craving.” When she won the Best Female Pop Vocal Performance Grammy for it, religious groups protested outside the ceremony. The World Health Organization had only just declassified homosexuality as a mental illness; coming out of the closet, as lang had just done in The Advocate, was considered a career-killer. But lang was unafraid to invite controversy with her embrace of her own desire, an electric current that hums through every note of the song.

With her unlikely, erotic pop hit, lang helped usher in the ’90s era of so-called “lesbian chic.” She immediately became an icon—splashed across provocative magazine covers in androgynous clothing, creating visibility for homosexual women in a time when the focus was often on gay men. Small-town queer women used her as a guiding star to navigate their own identities; lang’s soaring vocals soundtracked countless slow dances and sexual awakenings in hole-in-the-wall gay bars. To this day, “Constant Craving” continues to provide connection for those who need it.
–Lorena Cupcake

Listen: k.d. lang, “Constant Craving”


Island

Melissa Etheridge: “Come to My Window” (1993)

Four years before Ellen DeGeneres’ famous “Yep, I’m GayTime magazine cover, Melissa Etheridge defiantly declared Yes I Am, as both the name of her fourth studio album and a thinly veiled response to the rumors that had been dogging her since the beginning of her career. Where the record’s title may have been coy, its hit single, “Come to My Window,” was anything but: a scorching mid-tempo ballad of longing, heartache, and dependency.

The iconic video for “Come to My Window” stars a young Juliette Lewis, in a tank top and shag haircut, screaming the song’s lyrics while suffering a mental breakdown in a dingy psych ward. She writhes and splutters in her bed, dramatizing Etheridge’s comparatively subdued delivery—until near the end of the bridge, when Etheridge lets out a guttural wail to match her white-hot desire. Of course, all human beings deal with wanting each other, but here, Etheridge gave a new face to that particular brand of young queer yearning, with all its excitement and doubt and fear, without succumbing to the cliché of “the love that dare not speak its name.” –Cameron Cook

Listen: Melissa Etheridge, “Come to My Window”


Tommy Boy

RuPaul: “Supermodel (You Better Work)” (1993)

One of pop’s most subtle subversives, RuPaul used the charm, hooks, and wit of his breakthrough hit to become the first mainstream-approved drag queen. His debut single, which sold over 500,000 copies, brought elements from three key subcultures—drawn from black, gay, and drag experience—onto suburban dancefloors. It also popularized declarative tag lines like “sashay/shantay,” taken from the demimonde of drag balls. Three years earlier, that culture had been tipped to the outside world by Jennie Livingston’s documentary Paris Is Burning; that same year, Madonna amplified the scene with “Vogue.” But Ru had, by far, the deepest understanding of the milieu, as well as the most at stake in representing its realities, beauty, and power. –Jim Farber

Listen: RuPaul, “Supermodel (You Better Work)”


Groovilicious

Junior Vasquez: “If Madonna Calls” [ft. Franklin Fuentes] (1996)

If it weren’t for Junior Vasquez, Madonna may not have learned to vogue. The house producer and DJ introduced her to New York’s ball scene, and before long, the hyper-queer dance made its way into her 1990 hit “Vogue”—stripped of its context, of course, upsetting its original community.

Vasquez maintained a working relationship with Madonna for several years after “Vogue,” continuing to remix her work. But 1996’s “If Madonna Calls” signals a break in their friendship; it’s an uptempo “bitch track” featuring what is ostensibly a message left by the pop star on Vasquez’s answering machine. However the beef may have originated, guest vocalist Franklin Fuentes makes feelings plain with his bitter instruction to let Madonna know he’s not around if she calls. The voicemail is the centerpiece of the track, with Vasquez expertly splicing Madonna’s words into the club banger. By the time the track draws to a close, we’re left with a caustic punch line: “Actually, if Madonna calls, disconnect her.” While Vasquez has since claimed he has no hard feelings, “If Madonna Calls” is plenty vindication for the queens left in “Vogue”’s wake. –Michael Siebert

Listen: Junior Vasquez, “If Madonna Calls” [ft. Franklin Fuentes]


Kill Rock Stars

Sleater-Kinney: “One More Hour” (1997)

Sleater-Kinney’s third album, Dig Me Out, is full of desperation and heartbreak, and on “One More Hour,” they’re at their most vulnerable. Corin Tucker’s lyrics frankly address the end of her relationship with bandmate Carrie Brownstein, details of which were published in a disastrous Spin article that outed Brownstein without her permission.

It’s a song full of dichotomies, offering a hint at how the delicate interplay between Tucker and Brownstein’s guitars and vocals might have mirrored their personal lives. Brownstein’s jittery lead riff quickly locks into Tucker’s bright chords, and before long, Tucker’s trademark vibrato bursts into the fore with details that are as painful as they are relatable: clothes left behind, the prospect of other future girls, the urge to hold each other close before it’s over for good. Brownstein plays the comforter, anchoring Tucker’s howls with gently sung affirmations. In other hands, “One More Hour” could have just been another breakup song. Instead, Sleater-Kinney created a master class in heartache, a queer anthem that is at once deeply personal and universal. –Michael Siebert

Listen: Sleater-Kinney, “One More Hour”

Photo by Wendy Lynch Redfern/Redferns

Self-released

Limp Wrist: “I Love Hardcore Boys, I Love Boys Hardcore” (2001)

Limp Wrist’s spazzier take on straight-edge punk—an aggressive, hyper-masculine movement with members dedicated to a drug- and alcohol-free lifestyle—hit that community hard in 1998. Featuring Martin Sorrondeguy, erstwhile frontman of the shambolic Latinx crust-punks Los Crudos, Limp Wrist quickly set about challenging notions of sexuality and gender within punk. The band uses queer sexuality and often explicit gay male imagery on their album covers, fliers, and merchandise, in an effort to help LGBTQ+ punk rockers find a voice for their social frustrations.

First appearing on the band's demo tape Don’t Knock It Til You Try It, “I Love Hardcore Boys, I Love Boys Hardcore” is a wiry, brash punk spectacle. It breaks down the band’s attraction to dudes across all the punk and hardcore sub-scenes, from the whiny emo guys to the skinheads in tight pants and boy in between. Martin’s raspy, sassy shouts over a pummeling drumbeat and loud, fuzzy guitars set Limp Wrist in line with hardcore, but it's their message of LGBTQ+ acceptance—sorely needed in their community—that makes them truly punk. –Alex Smith

Listen: Limp Wrist, “I Love Hardcore Boys, I Love Boys Hardcore”


MCA

Common: “Between Me, You & Liberation” (2002)

In its spacious, sax-laded groove, “Between Me, You & Liberation” allows Common plenty of space to parse a then-taboo topic in hip-hop: queer acceptance. In the final verse, the Chicago rapper relates a story about a friend coming out to him as gay, a revelation he doesn’t handle well at first: “This is how real life’s supposed to be?/For it to happen to someone close to me?” Common raps, setting the emotional scene. “So far we’d come, for him to tell me/As he did, insecurity held me/I felt like he failed me.”

Despite hip-hop’s history of queer intolerance, and Common’s own participating lyrics in the past, “Between” is a story that ends with acceptance. Common renounces his past hostility, ultimately delivering a powerful statement a little clumsily; after questioning his biases, he finally declares, “Through sexuality, he liberated himself.” While earnest, it didn’t eradicate homophobia overnight; in fact, the singer on the hook, Cee-Lo, has since made antagonistic remarks to the LGBTQ+ community. But “Between Me, You & Liberation” opened a door in a scene that needed it badly, and challenged the orthodoxy of mainstream rap in its own delicate way. –Alex Smith

Listen: Common, “Between Me, You & Liberation”


Polydor

Scissor Sisters: “Take Your Mama” (2004)

The mainstream gay rights movement took a hard right in the new millennium, with issues like marriage and adoption coming to the forefront. San Francisco briefly issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2004, and Massachusetts became the first state to recognize same-sex marriages shortly after. Around that same time, Scissor Sisters released “Take Your Mama,” a raucous, backwoods dance track about coming out to your mom and showing her a gay ol’ time. “Take your mama out all night/So she’ll have no doubt that we’re doing the best we can,” sing Jake Shears and Ana Matronic in their best Bee Gees falsetto.

“Take Your Mama” came from an unmistakably queer perspective, one with broad appeal; queers straddling New York’s rock and electroclash scenes, as well as those in other cities worldwide, saw a familiar slice of nightlife elevated to a greater stage, while the baby gays watching the music video in their parents’ houses got a taste of what life might be like in the great, grown-up world beyond. It also reflected a growing anxiety among queer people: In this new era of blending traditional family structures with ones created out of want and necessity, could the two ever coexist without the former swallowing the latter whole? –Harron Walker

Listen: Scissor Sisters, “Take Your Mama”


Interscope / Stream Line / Kin Live

Lady Gaga: “Born This Way” (2011)

Four years before gay marriage became legal across the United States, Lady Gaga put out her most unabashed LGBTQ+ anthem. She had cultivated a queer fan base since 2008’s “Just Dance,” and even hinted that 2008’s “Poker Face” was about her own bisexuality, but “Born This Way” cut out the subtlety: This was a dance-pop banger about how every queer kid on Earth was born perfect. The stomping four-on-the-floor beat and triumphant hook make “Born This Way” an irresistible, adrenalizing ride, and Gaga’s snarling vocals add some high camp flair. By 2011, Pride had already become a high profile affair, but no other star had instructed their massive fan base to “just be a queen” in a No. 1 hit, nor had anyone this big in pop explicitly proclaimed that queer people were not a curse upon the Earth but a blessing. Gaga was at the peak of her powers, and she used the moment to preach the gospel of Mother Monster: The gayer you are, the closer to God.
–Sasha Geffen

Listen: Lady Gaga, “Born This Way”


Def Jam

Frank Ocean: “Forrest Gump” (2012)

It was a Tumblr post that hit popular culture like an earthquake, and Frank Ocean wrote it in such filmic fashion: on a plane from New Orleans to L.A. after a “marred” Christmas. If the mythical, American story of Frank Ocean should ever be set to film, this will be the opening scene: Frank with a laptop and a window seat and his internal monologue, typing out the note to say that his first love was a man, and that he now felt free. These two miraculous paragraphs closely preceded the release of 2012’s Channel Orange, and monumentally disrupted what we thought we knew about Ocean.

“Forrest Gump” is the penultimate track of Channel Orange, as if Frank knew that placing it earlier would reveal too much too soon. He flips the gender script of the titular film, and in its uneven romance of Forrest and Jenny, he is Jenny. But the truth of “Forrest Gump” is spelled out perfectly clear, so corporeally. “You run my mind, boy,” Ocean sings on this spare soul ballad, his voice disarmingly close, letting through the occasional cracked and vulnerable note. “You’re so buff and so strong/I’m nervous, Forrest.” If there is any confusion that “Forrest Gump” is an ode to Frank’s first love, he echoes his Tumblr post verbatim: “I won’t forget you.”
–Jenn Pelly

Listen: Frank Ocean, “Forrest Gump”


Vapor

Tegan and Sara: “Closer” (2012)

Tegan and Sara are already an iconic singer-songwriter duo—not just charismatic and Canadian but out, and lesbian, and twins! with impeccable haircuts!—and they had been indie stars since 2007’s The Con, a collection of alternatively dark and melancholy pop-folk. But it was 2013’s Heartthrob—and specifically its lead single, “Closer”—that provided audiences with a timeless queer anthem, as well as the duo’s first U.S. chart hit. Written by Tegan, “Closer” combines nostalgic emo and pop-punk notes with an unrepentant four-to-the-floor beat, making it work both as a dancefloor-filler and as music to make out to (or just fantasize about making out to).

“Closer” is a song about the anticipation before the kiss, before anything gets physical. It’s a love song that conjures adolescent longing, no matter how old you are, with impossibly catchy, cleverly rhyming lyrics. And it’s that cherishing of that gap between anticipation and release—asking to be closer, not touching; cherishing the moment before you realize you’re in too deep—that seems to speak to that particularly queer feeling of wanting something you know you may never get. –Larissa Pham

Listen: Tegan and Sara, “Closer”


Total Treble

Against Me!: “True Trans Soul Rebel” (2014)

When Against Me! lead singer Laura Jane Grace came out as trans in 2012, she wrote an album of diamond-sharp punk songs to carve her emotional process into stone. The album is often her in the throes of depression, alone, on some godforsaken frontier; she screams about the rapture of self-acceptance into the black void of a world who views her as a stranger. The tone of the album ranges anywhere from black to pitch black.

On Grace’s ode to outcasts, “True Trans Soul Rebel,” self-love mutates into fear, doubt, loneliness, and anger. She squares off against God and asks who blesses the unchanging hearts of trans men and women. Out of this despair comes one of the best hooks of the decade: “Who’s gonna take you home tonight?” It is a rebuke and a catharsis, a whisper and a scream, all surrounded by huge guitars and drums trying to bring down an arena. Love wages a constant battle with our worse angels, and it’s inspiring to hear Grace’s tale from the frontlines. –Jeremy D. Larson

Listen: Against Me!, “True Trans Soul Rebel”


Matador

Perfume Genius: “Queen” (2014)

Mike Hadreas had already emerged as a powerful queer voice in music by the time of 2014’s Too Bright—not least for his tearful 2010 ballad “Mr. Peterson,” in which told the devastating tale of a troubled teacher who “let me smoke weed in his truck/if I could convince him I loved him enough.” On “Queen,” Hadreas channeled a lifetime of cold stares from strangers and draped them in sheets of glitter. In seven words, within a slowly-churning glam-pop daydream, he wrote a generation-defining anthem and sang it resiliently: “No family is safe/When I sashay.”

This refrain cleverly, thrillingly skewered the very notions of gay panic and “family values,” making “Queen” a classic upon arrival. It is the sound of defiantly being femme in public, and it immediately topped the pantheon of Hadreas’ best songs. “I sometimes see faces of blank fear when I walk by,” Hadreas has said of the song. “If these fucking people want to give me some power—if they see me as some sea witch with penis tentacles that are always prodding and poking and seeking to convert the muggles—well, here she comes.” –Jenn Pelly

Listen: Perfume Genius, “Queen”


Bella Union / Partisan

John Grant: “Snug Slacks” (2015)

His religious parents thought he needed to be “fixed,” he developed an anxiety disorder after facing homophobic bullying during his youth, and he battled with drug and alcohol abuse. In 2011, he discovered he was HIV positive. It’s a wonder John Grant is producing music at all, let alone receiving such critical acclaim for it.

“Snug Slacks” is sleazy dance music that makes no bones about the sexual predilections of its singer. It’s a leering come-on from a mature male who’s happy in his own skin (entirely at odds to the way Grant felt about himself for most of his life) to a younger, prettier, self-obsessed man. The message is simple: You may think you’re God’s gift, but I’ve been around a lot longer, and there’s nothing that I haven’t seen before. Irresistibly filthy, bordering on the obscene, “Snug Slacks” could not have been written 50 years ago. It takes decades of bump‘n’grind macho posturing and flips it on its head (and on its back), beautifully demonstrating how far LGBTQ+ musicians—and audiences of all sexualities—have come. –Darryl Bullock

Listen: John Grant, “Snug Slacks”


Odd Future / Columbia

The Internet: “Girl” (2015)

“Girl” sure sounds familiar at first listen. Soulfully sung by the former Odd Future member Syd, and produced by Kaytranada with a bouncy, low-key beat and a sunny Neil Merryweather sample, “Girl” is a tender ballad for long, hot summer days. And what makes it so laid-back is also what makes it so revolutionary. It’s a song about a woman, sung by a woman; it’s unapologetically, openly queer. But it’s also an ordinary love song, concerned with the intimate universe that can exist between just two people—a song where Syd, who may be a fickle lover, sings about making and breaking promises.

“Girl” is equal parts bravado and pleading for love to be returned, pared down into a relaxed R&B jam that goes on for so long, it’s almost like a daydream. Near the end, Syd has a change of heart, wondering if she’s really in love. “Can we just live in the moment?” she asks. In other words, instead of marching toward something, let’s just hold hands—something that, for LGBTQ+ people, finally feels possible. –Larissa Pham

Listen: The Internet, “Girl”

Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/WireImage

M.A Music

Young M.A: “OOOUUU” (2016)

In hip-hop, there is inevitably a song of the summer. It’s that inescapable joint heard booming out of passing cars, that easily recognizable beat at the block party. It’s the track teenagers play from their phones as if they were tinny, handheld boomboxes, and the omnipresent jam spun by every DJ worth their salt. In 2016, that song was Young M.A’s “OOOUUU,” three minutes and 55 seconds of native Brooklyn swagger with no discernable hook and bars upon bars of clever bravado and slick talk. The artist behind it was a queer young woman from East New York who had captured the attention of the streets with ferocious YouTube freestyles; now she had a track so undeniable, radio legend Funk Flex bestowed it with the ultimate FM laurel, putting his signature bomb-drop sound effect on it as he played it again and again.

While it’s likely that there have been other hit rap songs by queer artists, what makes the triple-platinum “OOOUUU” even more special is that it was penned by a rapper who was out, proud, and unambiguous about her identity (the “M.A” stands for “Me, Always”). What’s also notable is hip-hop’s reception: For the most part, M.A wasn’t othered or marginalized as a ”gay rapper.” She was accepted and celebrated as a talent. This is what being yourself sounds like. –Timmhotep Aku

Listen: Young M.A, “OOOUUU”


Mad Decent / NA$A

Starrah & Diplo: “Imperfections” (2017)

In the 2010s, more than ever, we’ve seen pop’s hybridization with rap. The influence is clear in pop singers’ rap-inflected phrasing, song lyrics that borrow words from the hip-hop lexicon, bass-heavy beats and, of course, guest verses from the MC du jour. For the past four years, Starrah (aka Brittany Hazzard) has been at the creative forefront of this intersection and one of the premier songwriters behind the scenes, crafting constant hits for pop icons; she’s lent the sauce to Camila Cabello (“Havana”), Rihanna (“Needed Me”), Travis Scott and Young Thug (“Pick Up the Phone”), and Drake (“Fake Love”).

As Starrah steps into the spotlight herself—albeit with a K-pop-inspired mouth mask—her fingerprints on today’s hits are becoming more visible. “Imperfections,” from her collaborative EP with Diplo, is exemplary of all the touches that make her songwriting so appealing. Here, she is a woman singing to a woman about putting her past relationships (with fuckboys and lames) behind her. The counterpoint to the sweet melody and sentiment are brash, rapper-esque boasts that qualify Starrah as a superior partner. Pop’s elite seek out Starrah with good reason. If you know, you know. –Timmhotep Aku

Listen: Starrah & Diplo, “Imperfections”


XL

Arca: “Desafío” (2017)

A lot of queer people have waited a lifetime for a love song as honest and complicated as “Desafío.” Its hook—“Love me, bind me, and slit my throat/Search for me, penetrate me, and devour me” (translated from its Spanish)—is a gripping, direct description of queer desire. Its tempest of hot, undulating synthesizers and drums set a scene of sex and love that feels unfettered and free. It also reveals hidden inhibitions in its creator: Before “Desafío,” Arca’s experimental electronic songs were intense, but he hid a percolating sensuality beneath fractured noise. Up until the release of his 2017 self-titled album, Arca had never sung on his music before—and on “Desafío,” the yearning sensuality of his voice strikes its most passionate note.

But “Desafío” is more than just a new classic of queer music; it is that rare love song that continues to feel revelatory and new. Arca’s music sounds like it comes from a future we still haven’t reached—one where the way we love will be fluid and liberated and uncompromising, rejecting every single convention of the here and now. –Kevin Lozano

Listen: Arca, “Desafío”


Wondaland / Bad Boy / Atlantic

Janelle Monáe: “Make Me Feel” (2018)

When Janelle Monáe arrived in 2007 with Metropolis: Suite I (The Chase), it was as if a second P-Funk mothership had landed and Klaus Nomi stepped out of it. Following releases soldered her high concepts (Octavia Butler’s Afrofuturism, Donna Haraway’s visionary techno-feminism, and Fritz Lang’s glamorous world-building) to the boogie of Grace Jones, OutKast, and James Brown. And while Monáe publicly refused to pin down her sexuality, queerness was all over her interface. But a decade later, coyness no longer computes. And so, with racism and homophobia run amok in our leadership and a generation refusing to live by the binary, Monáe rebooted with two crucial updates: first, in pansexuality, she’s found an identity that suits her. Second, she’s celebrating realness, in both the humanistic and Sylvester sense of the word.

“Make Me Feel” is Monáe’s biggest hit in years, but isn’t a return to form; she’s yet to slip. Instead, it’s a tribute to form—the shivering, shuddering pop made by Prince, her sometime-mentor and collaborator on the track, who before his death had a pretty controversial relationship to queerness (ask Wendy and Lisa). It’s an ode to queer joy and an ode to the human form, delighted with delight and fully turned on. Now, for Monáe, pleasure is her operating system. –Jesse Dorris

Listen: Janelle Monáe, “Make Me Feel”


EMI Australia

Troye Sivan: “Bloom” (2018)

In some ways, the Troye Sivan type has always been with us: a boyish beauty with a voice to match, a lineage that includes Fabian, Michael Jackson, and the Justins Timberlake and Bieber. In other ways, Sivan could only exist in 2018: a kid who made tracks on a laptop, became a YouTube sensation, starred in an X-Men movie, and became a pop star. And all along, his work has been explicitly, celebratorially gay.

Indeed, Sivan is not only pop’s ne plus ultra of the Elio gay archetype—a naughty boy who’s not really that naughty, and about to be no longer a boy—he’s also proof that cis, white gayness can be a selling point. If “Bloom” were really about flowers, it could have been a hit for any artist from Doris Day to Taylor Swift. But it’s 2018, and so this beautifully made song about the power of love reveals itself as a power ballad for power bottoms, irresistibly sung by a twink with a wink. Just watch him perform it on “The Today Show,” of all places, for a crowd of mostly ecstatic women, and glory at this fey fellow in a fetching yellow blouse. “Bloom” is a ruthlessly catchy song that took a piece of gay slang for the relaxing of the anus during sexual activity and made it a mainstream romantic anthem. What a time to be alive. –Jesse Dorris

Listen: Troye Sivan, “Bloom”


Contributors: Timmhotep Aku, Stacey Anderson, Darryl Bullock, Cameron Cook, Jamieson Cox, Lorena Cupcake, Jesse Dorris, Jim Farber, Sasha Geffen, Jason King, Jeremy D. Larson, Kevin Lozano, Jenn Pelly, Larissa Pham, T. Cole Rachel, Michael Siebert, Jes Skolnik, Alex Smith, Alfred Soto, Eric Torres, Harron Walker, Barry Walters