Popular Music and Queer Identities PDF

Credo Reference Popular Music and Queer Identities «The ubiquity of queerness in Western popular music.» Popular music would never be what it is today without its strong LGBTQ pull. From its origins in rock and roll from the 1940s and 1950s, popular music included a wide range of styles from t...

Credo Reference Popular Music and Queer Identities «The ubiquity of queerness in Western popular music.» Popular music would never be what it is today without its strong LGBTQ pull. From its origins in rock and roll from the 1940s and 1950s, popular music included a wide range of styles from the early 1960s onward. Historically, popular music helped steer an antiestablishment cultural movement in the United Kingdom and United States that gained momentum with the civil rights movement and protests against the Vietnam War. In 1969, with the Stonewall riots and subsequent gay rights movement, music was behind the queer community's fight against government regulations that persecuted sexual minorities. Historically, musicians and bands have partaken in, and shaped, the sexual revolution, which challenged the normalization of heterosexuality and monogamy. Epic tracks testify to this, such as Dusty Springfield's “You Don't Have to Say You Love Me,” k.d. lang's “Constant Craving,” Melissa Etheridge's “Come to My Window,” the Who's “I'm a Boy,” the Kinks' “David Watts” and “Lola,” Tracy Chapman's “Fast Car,” the Beatles' “You've Got to Hide Your Love Away,” and the Tornados' “Do You Come Here Often?” LGBTQ identities were discernible in popular music long before Stonewall and are traceable back to the birth of the blues, jazz, and Weimar cabaret (the last a trend that emerged in late 1920s Germany). The intrinsic relationship between music and identity is always predicated on race, gender, sexuality, class, age, and citizenship; hence, divergences from “normalcy” have standardized queer forms of expression. Predating rock and roll, the singers Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and Ma Rainey (the “mother of the blues”) addressed topics of same-sex attraction, with Rainey often donning men's top hat and tails to express her nonheterosexuality, or rather, female-masculinity. Her hit “Prove It on Me Blues,” recorded in 1928, was the first resistance song that explicitly proclaimed a woman's sexual interest for another woman. Blues would never have been the same without these bisexual women who demonstrated the potency of gendered Otherness as an expression of human behavior. Early Pioneers: Artists and Their Managers Through the ages, musicians' identities have played a pervasive role, expanding the possibilities for self-expression. In the mid-1950s, rock and roll performer Little Richard (né Richard Penniman) employed a falsetto singing style that complemented his flamboyant look. The lyrical hook “A wop bop a loo bop, a wop bam boom!” in his song “Tutti Frutti” (1955) was borne out of explicit references to anal sex and queer men (slang: fruity) in an over-the-top mix of camp and drag. Notably, the original lyrics were censored by Little Richard's producer and not played in the United Kingdom. As one of the original pioneers of rock, he set the agenda for those who followed: Elton John, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Madonna, Prince, Morrissey of the Smiths, and Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Then there was Johnnie Ray, often considered the “father of rock and roll,” who bridged the style of Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley in an unorthodox and distinctly queer way. Ray's crooner voice, frequently mistaken for being black and female (his major influence being gospel), was transgressive. His performances stirred up a frenzy among his teenage audiences. Openly bisexual in an era when homosexuality was criminalized, he gained notoriety in the media through various arrests for solicitation. Ray's highly energetic performances were outrageous for their time, with his popularity sealed toward the end of his life in the United Kingdom and Australia rather than in the United States. Ray was also associated with the Los Angeles gay activist community, with personal friends including gay icons Judy Garland and Charles Pierce. Little Richard in 1956. In the early 1950s rock and roll performer Little Richard (né Richard Penniman) employed a falsetto singing style that complemented his flamboyant look. © MICHAEL OCH ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES By and large, the unique relationships between artists and their managers have steered queerness in popular music. During the 1960s, many managers were up-front about their nonhetero sexuality: Robert Stigwood of Cream and the Bee Gees, Simon Napier-Bell of the Yardbirds and Marc Bolan, Billy Gaff of Rod Stewart, Kenneth Pitt of David Bowie, Barry Krost of Cat Stevens, and Larry Parnes of Tommy Steele and Billy Fury. In addition, Brian Epstein's openness about being gay had a major bearing on his managing the Beatles, illustrated not only in their music but also in their politics and image; he restyled their long hair look, with mop-top hair and tightfitting single-breasted, mohair suits, which many deemed effeminate. EMI chairman Joseph Lockman, who signed the Beatles, also declared his homosexuality, as did Andrew Loog Oldham, manager of the Rolling Stones, who put the band into drag for photo shoots and placed Mick Jagger on the road to being one of the most camp and dandified performers of all time. In addition, Jagger's experimentation with glam-rock fashion and gay culture was influenced by his close contact with icons Rudolf Nureyev, Truman Capote, and Andy Warhol. Shifting Personas and Sensibilities In contrast to glam rock (or glitter rock) in the early 1970s was the English working-class mod look from the 1960s. A mod revival commenced in the late 1970s in the United Kingdom, spreading to the United States in the early 1980s. As a reinvention of the nineteenth-century Parisian flaneur, with sharp contours of tailored suits and shoes borrowed from the jazz boom of the late 1950s, the mods distinguished themselves from the rockers, a biker culture with distinctly different musical preferences. Links between the mod scene, glam rock, alternative rock, and art rock were established by David Bowie, who drew stylistically on Elvis Presley and Little Richard. While the glam rocker Jobriath became the first gay musician to sign to a major label (Elektra) in the United States in the early 1970s, Bowie was the most talked about artist in the United Kingdom. Constructed on shifting personas such as Arnold Corns, Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, Halloween Jack, Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke, and Jareth the Goblin King, Bowie's inimitable style turned to a Warholian pop-art aesthetic that was quirky, camp, and androgynous. Mostly, it was the brazen politics of his coming out to Melody Maker in 1972 that marked a watershed in rock history; greatly inspired, fans, gay and straight, would rethink their sexuality and gender roles. Contesting conventions and gender norms in his songs and appearance (clothes, makeup, hair, and mannerisms), Bowie would demonstrate the transgressive power of pop music. This was particularly discernible in his tactics of gender play evident in the albums Hunky Dory (1971), The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972), Aladdin Sane (1973), Diamond Dogs (1974), and Heroes (1977). Revolutionizing attitudes toward gender and sexuality, Bowie dismantled the boundaries that keep people apart; he proved to generations that being queer is a “natural” part of human existence. Moreover, he showed that glam rock and pop styles are about ideology and authenticity (Auslander 2006; Hawkins 2016). A close friend of Bowie was the New York hipster Lou Reed. Throughout his career, Reed sustained a degree of opacity around his sexual orientation. His song “Walk on the Wild Side” (1972), produced by Bowie and Mick Ronson, contained lyrics that unsettled normative sex roles. Referring to transsexuality, transvestites, oral sex, and male prostitution, this song was risqué, released when homosexuality was still certified as a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Reed's close collaboration with Warhol involved his importing avant-garde rock music into the popular arena as a platform for highlighting difference and sexual ambiguity. Reed would be a spokesman for transgender people, collaborating in 2004 with Antony (later to become Anohni) on the track “Fistful of Love” (2005). In line with Warhol, he addressed aspects of sexuality that broke with conventions and norms, his cause being to fight for people of minority sexualities. Albeit from a different perspective, Dusty Springfield's sexuality also drew much media attention. In an interview with the Evening Standard in 1970, Springfield came out as bisexual. A major icon of the Swinging Sixties, this blueeyed soul singer from England based much of her style on Motown, which she introduced to the United Kingdom. Springfield's style of singing, ultraglamorous look, and camp disposition turned her into role model. Janis Joplin, whose bisexuality was public knowledge, died at age twenty-seven in the same year Springfield came out, leaving behind legendary tracks such as “Piece of My Heart,” “Me and Bobby McGee,” and “Ball and Chain.” It was also around this time that Elton John declared his bisexuality; he would come out as gay only in 1988, starting the Elton John AIDS Foundation in the early 1990s. Among the numerous nonhetero contemporaries of Springfield and John were rock legends Freddie Mercury, front man of the group Queen; Pete Townshend, lead guitarist and main songwriter for the Who; and Dave Davies, lead guitarist of the Kinks. In effect, all these musicians provided vital sites for contesting and celebrating gender difference—that is, before the arrival of AIDS. AIDS and the 1980s For many, AIDS set the clock back. Artists now struggled for AIDS awareness, battling against prejudice. Among those who bravely became associated with HIV/AIDS patients and their causes was Madonna Louise Ciccone, an activist for AIDS victims, who experienced the loss of close friends to the disease. Her video for “Like a Prayer” (1989) would become an ode to religious freedom, the atrocities of AIDS, and equal rights, while her album Erotica (1992), with tracks such as “Deeper and Deeper,” confronted taboos of sexual desire and homosexuality. Madonna's solidarity with the LGBTQ community has gone down in history. As one of the most significant queer icons in pop, she had as her mission to denounce homophobia, racism, and misogyny, supporting marginalized cultures, such as blacks, transgendered persons, Hispanics, Muslims, the Roma people, and lesbians. Her work would emancipate gender by foregrounding queerness and the LGBTQ community in the majority of her songs. Erotica, simultaneously released with her controversial book Sex, became a milestone in pop from the 1990s onward, empowering a new generation of female artists, such as Beyoncé, Christina Aguilera, Pink, Britney Spears, Nicki Minaj, Lady Gaga, and Janet Jackson. Like her contemporary Prince, Madonna developed Bowie's strategies of gender play, taking them to new heights. Prince, who died in 2016, will be remembered as a pansexual effete male artist who always wore makeup, high heels, and unisex clothing. In the song “Controversy” (1981), from early in his career, he asked, “Am I black or white? Am I straight or gay?” In contrast to Bowie and Madonna, Prince was African American, with a quite different set of challenges. Rejecting clichés of the macho black male performer, he liberated the stricture of masculinity. Parody became his main tool. Significantly, women were more part of his world than men, in the recording studio, on stage, and in his private life. Mirroring his own fluid identity, his musical style was crossover; he constantly readjusted to new technologies, trends, and production techniques. Instating his original, androgynous identity in the 1970s, he staked out the territory for dissident masculinity among future generations of pop artists. While Prince was arguably one of the queerest males in popular music, there were other overtly nonheteronormative celebrities and bands, predominantly based in the United Kingdom: Boy George from Culture Club, Bronski Beat, Eurythmics, Soft Cell, the Pet Shop Boys, Wham!, Erasure, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Morrissey of the Smiths, and others. A spate of straight artists also raised the bar for queer visibility; among these were Billy Bragg, Michael Jackson, Dolly Parton, Diana Ross, and Barbra Streisand. All these artists had a strong LGBTQ following and expressed their solidarity with marginalized groups throughout their careers. MTV, with its launch in 1981, showcased popular culture and its subjectivities by playing music videos twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It also seized the opportunity to respond to the AIDS epidemic in 1985 with a provocative campaign that targeted teenagers and safe sex. Various organizations sprang up, dedicated to the fight against AIDS in pop music. The Red Hot Organization, for instance, was established in 1990 in response to the hardships encountered by New York artists. Featuring celebrities such as Annie Lennox, David Byrne, Tom Waits, U2, Deborah Harry, Iggy Pop, and k.d. lang, the album Red Hot + Blue was released in 1990, selling over 1 million copies. Significantly, this became the template for many other releases by Red Hot, such as Red Hot + Dance, No Alternative, Red Hot + Country, Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool, Red Hot + Bothered, and Red Hot + Rio 2. The impact of Red Hot and its numerous album releases was to raise donations and create awareness of HIV and AIDS on a global scale. In Latin America, the bisexual singer Cazuza (Agenor de Miranda Araújo Neto) in 1989 became the first national figure in Brazil to come out as HIV positive, and he played a crucial role in raising awareness about the transmission and effects of AIDS. After his death a year later, his mother founded the nongovernmental organization Viva Cazuza, which still directs royalties to HIV-positive children and adolescents. Media and Gendered Identity  George Michael of Wham! in 1985. Although closeted at the time of his greatest fame in the 1980s, pop star George Michael publicly came out on national television in 1998, creating a media stir. © MICHAEL PUTLAND/GETTY IMAGES As one of the most mediated forms of entertainment, popular music puts identities continuously on display (Hawkins 2016, 2017). In 1998 George Michael, who originally rose to fame in the duo Wham!, created a media stir when he came out. Caught by an undercover Los Angeles police officer (who allegedly tried to solicit him) at Will Rogers Memorial Park in Beverly Hills, he turned this incident to his advantage by putting his hands up and confessing on national television. Directly following this incident, his song and video “Outside” was released. It became a potent retort to the hypocrisy around gay bashing and prejudice. Satirizing the Los Angeles police force and California law, the video graphically captured the struggles of LGBTQ people. At the climactic point depicting Michael dancing with his Village People look-alike troupe, the men's lavatory magically transforms into a disco floor. Michael's arrangement of “Outside” is hi-NRG (pronounced “high energy”) disco, a response in itself to the resistance movement of LGBTQ communities that accelerated in the 1970s. The politics of outing himself to disco demonstrated how this style continued to survive and subvert conventions some twenty years after the infamous “disco demolition night” on 12 July 1979, at Comiskey Park in Chicago. At the height of this event, between two games of a scheduled baseball doubleheader, a huge crate of disco records was spectacularly exploded, at which point thousands of White Sox fans charged onto the field. In quite a different way, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, four years Michael's junior, turned to a subgenre of alternative rock, grunge, also known as the Seattle sound. Cobain's own complex identity spurred him on in negotiating and resisting norms. Uneasy with his own straightness, he would claim that he always felt gay in spirit. A self-proclaimed feminist and anti-racist, he committed himself to the cause of LGBTQ rights. By the time of his death in 1994 at age twenty-seven, Cobain had reconfigured white US rock music as a queer genre (Hawkins 2016). Often appearing in dresses on stage, he would disturb the divide between male bonding and homosexuality by lovingly kissing Nirvana's bass guitarist, Krist Novoselic. In addition, a long-standing feud between Cobain and Guns N’ Roses was rooted in Cobain's deep disdain for the homophobic and misogynistic attitude of that group's lead singer, Axl Rose. As political activist, Cobain with Nirvana issued a statement in 1992 against the proposed (and ultimately defeated) Oregon Ballot Measure 9, which would have removed the LGBTQ community's antidiscrimination protection. Eschewing Norms in Songs Inherent in the majority of popular songs are narratives of love. Songs are invitations for listeners to think about their identities and eschew conventions and norms. Consider the liberation and hope for millions in tracks such as Gloria Gaynor's “I Will Survive,” Diana Ross's “I'm Coming Out,” Cher's “Believe,” “Smalltown Boy” by Bronski Beat, “I Want to Break Free” by Queen, “Go West” by the Pet Shop Boys, “Y.M.C.A” by the Village People, Culture Club's “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me,” Lady Gaga's “Born This Way,” Frankie Goes to Hollywood's “Relax,” “Battle Cry” by Angel Haze, “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” by Sylvester, and Logic's “1-800-273-8255.” Powerful sentiments are communicated by these songs' memorable musical riffs, hooks, and production. Importantly, it is the voice that becomes the signifier of sexual identity. A fitting example is R.E.M. front man Michael Stipe, who incorporated into his albums subject matter that is oriented toward political activism and tolerance of gender fluidity. His voice, which defined R.E.M.'s sound, has always worked in tandem with the band's fashionable image and “new” masculinity. It was with the release of the album Monster in 1994 that “a new openness about sexuality in Stipe's interviews” was detectable (Maus 2006, 205). That R.E.M. muddied its style by revising rock, infusing it with other styles, such as disco, contributed to the band's appeal, especially for fans considering alternative forms of identity. Musical performances harness expectations of identity—usually, the straighter the genre, the less likely to disturb norms (Whiteley and Rycenga 2006; Hawkins 2017). This is borne out of the strong reactions to the metal icon Rob Halford of Judas Priest after he discussed his homosexuality in an interview with the Advocate in 1998. Heavy metal, known for its embodiment of conservative social norms, has fewer gay icons and audiences than many other genres. Hence, it would take sixteen years before two high-profile metal artists followed Halford in coming out, as Cynic members Paul Masvidal and Sean Reinert did in 2014. Also, Kristian Eivind Espedal, better known as Gaahl and the front man of the Norwegian black metal band Gorgoroth, came out as gay in 2008, and front woman Otep Shamaya of the nu metal band Otep, revealed to the media in 2005 she was lesbian. Creative Impulses Lady Gaga Performing in 2017. Following the launch of her career in 2008, Lady Gaga became a major queer icon, celebrating difference and displacing gender norms. © KEVIN MAZURJGETTY IMAGES While gender experimentation is fodder to media hype, it is often the result of a creative urge to try new things. The New York band Scissor Sisters, formed in 2001, combined glam rock, disco, pop rock, and electroclash in its debut album Scissor Sisters (2004), an arrival point in popular music history. The group's original musical signature was built on the legacy of Madonna, Elton John, George Michael, the Pet Shop Boys, Freddie Mercury, and Kylie Minogue, as it challenged heterosexual hegemony via its “genderqueer” strategy (Leibetseder 2012). Together with colead singer Ana Matronic, Jake Shears would emphasize a gay sensibility in Scissor Sisters' songs, videos, and live onstage antics, earning a reputation for being shocking, subversive, and delightfully outrageous. While Scissor Sisters was increasing in popularity, Lady Gaga's career was launched. Her breakthrough came with her debut studio album, The Fame (2008), and its reissue, The Fame Monster (2009), which fused glam rock, disco, goth, and synthpop. Lady Gaga, a YouTube phenomenon in her own right, quickly established herself as a major queer icon, celebrating difference and displacing gender norms. Through drag, she demonstrated that variations in femininity could widen the space for women and minority groups to empower themselves. As part of the post-Madonna generation, Lady Gaga extended the politics of representation into spaces that were shaped by new forms of technological production and social media. Toying with gender norms, she disturbed stereotypes through strategies such as “bio queening” (Halberstam 2012; Iddon and Marshall 2014; Hawkins 2016). Inextricably linked to feminism and notions of otherness, bio queening involves artists who are biologically female performing in an exaggerated manner and appropriating male drag queens. A rapper of Afro–Puerto Rican descent, Destiny Nicole Frasqueri, known as Princess Nokia, grew up within the queer community of New York City. Identifying as bisexual, Princess Nokia rose to fame through her performances in the gay community. In 2017, she made headlines by slapping a white male in the audience at one of her shows for mouthing sexist and racist comments. Like many artists of her generation, Nokia released her material on YouTube. Her second track, “Bitch I'm Posh,” went viral on SoundCloud, paving the way for her debut album, 1992 Deluxe, released in September 2017. Another female artist known for queening is Nicki Minaj, often acclaimed as the “black Lady Gaga.” Minaj would emerge as one of the most famous female rappers of all time during the first decade of the twenty-first century. Taking hip-hop and rap in new directions, Minaj became a beacon for minority groups, with a large gay following. Addressing the problem of suicide among gay teenagers, she has been a fierce spokeswoman for equality and antidiscrimination. Notwithstanding her own alleged bisexuality, Minaj has steered away from stereotypes by exaggerating her construction of femininity. In the video of her hit “Anaconda” (2014), she slams racism, misogyny, and structures of patriarchy in a highly aestheticized pornosphere. Drake, who is a featured guest on the track, also appears in a scene in the video. In the climactic moment, Minaj uses a lap-dance sequence to disempower the male. Following in the steps of Queen Latifah, Salt-N-Pepa, and Missy Elliott, Minaj situates the black female body in a context that refutes traditional classifications. Trans Artists Transgender pop artists have always been part of the music industry. In the 1950s, the actress and nightclub singer Christine Jorgensen became the first white trans woman to draw media attention. Historically, trans men have been less represented than their female counterparts, notable exceptions being Billy Tipton, Mina Caputo, and Beth Elliott. It is important to point out that agender artists, such as Angel Haze, choose the pronoun “they” to refute conforming to structures of genderqueer classifications (Leibetseder 2017). Other notable transgender artists include the black Colombian trans woman Janer, La Gata, Jessica Xavier, Joe Stevens, Alexandros N. Constansis, Lucas Silveira, and Dana International. Without exception, transgender artists in popular music focus not only on aspects of gender redefinition, sexuality, and the complexity of intersectionality but also on the political issues that necessitate recognition and survival. Into the Future In the early years of the second decade of the twenty-first century, a new stream of LGBTQ hip-hop artists emerged. Frank Ocean released his album Channel Orange (2012), about his desire and love for a man. Turning to social media to access their fan bases, a new generation of African American musicians, influenced by queer ball culture and drag, would identify with the label queer hop (as opposed to homo pop). Azealia Banks, Zebra Katz, Le1f, Mykki Blanco, and Angel Haze queered hip- hop at the same time certain white artists gained visibility. Additionally, the country artist Steve Grand ached for his lover in the song and video “All-American Boy” and the pop artist Troye Sivan narrated the struggles of same-sex relationships in a trilogy of music videos, while the indierock singer-songwriter John Grant lamented being HIV positive on the track “Ernest Borgnine” (2013). Kissing, holding hands, having sex, and facing suicide are powerful narratives integrated into these heartbreaking tales of queer relationships. Will Young, Miley Cyrus, Sam Smith, Olly Alexander, Beth Ditto, Alex Newell, Lowell, t.A.T.u., and Mary Lambert have also pushed LGBTQ rights to the forefront of public awareness in their acts. At the close of the second decade of the twenty-first century, a significant shift occurred as many straight men and women shared the voices of LGBTQ artists. In particular, transgender people became more conspicuous, with artists such as Anohni speaking out on issues that deal with being a trans woman. Her trans voice became a powerful mediator of sexual fluidity, representative of a gradually shifting public perception of what gender is. Similarly, trans artists Angel Haze, Mykki Blanco, Ezra Furman, Shea Diamond, Mina Caputo, Black Cracker, Cash Askew, Laura Jane Grace, Laith Ashley, Shawnee, Ryan Cassata, KC Ortiz, and Lucas Silveira gained visibility in mainstream pop. The tremendous effort that goes into shaping identities in popular music involves stories of survival through happenings that map out performers in extraordinary ways. Sexual freedom, in all its diversity, requires dissolving queerphobia/homophobia by getting fans to rethink sexual orientation and the possibilities for articulating their own gender in any number of contexts. SEE ALSO Afropop Music; Eurovision Song Contest; Harlem Renaissance; The Lesbian Music Movement; Thai K-Pop BIBLIOGRAPHY Auslander, Philip. Performing Glam Rock: Gender and Theatricality in Popular Music. University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor, 2006. Halberstam, J. Jack. Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal. Beacon Press Boston, 2012.  Hawkins, Stan. Queerness in Pop: Aesthetics, Gender Norms, and Temporality. Routledge New York, 2016. Hawkins, Stan, ed. The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Music and Gender. Routledge Abingdon UK, 2017. Iddon, Martin; Melanie L. Marshall, eds. Lady Gaga and Popular Music: Performing Gender, Fashion, and Culture. Routledge New York, 2014. Leibetseder, Doris. Queer Tracks: Subversive Strategies in Rock and Pop Music. Ashgate Farnham UK, 2012. Leibetseder, Doris. “Express Yourself! Gender Euphoria and Intersections.” In The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Music and Gender, edited by Hawkins, Stan , 300-312. Routledge Abingdon UK, 2017. Maus, Fred. “Intimacy and Distance: On Stipe's Queerness.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 18, no. 2 (2006): 191-214. Taylor, Jodie. Playing It Queer: Popular Music, Identity, and Queer World-Making. Peter Lang Bern Switzerland, 2012. Whiteley, Sheila; Jennifer Rycenga, eds. Queering the Popular Pitch. Routledge New York, 2006. Citation Information: Hawkins, Stan. 2019. “Popular Music and Queer Identities.” In Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) History, edited by Howard Chiang, 1st ed. 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