LGBTQ music
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer 'music' is music that focuses on the experiences of gender and sexual minorities as a product of the broad gay liberation movement.
LGBTQ music spans the entire spectrum of popular music. Lyricism and song content typically express the frustration, anxiety, and hope associated with non-normative sexual and gender identities, offering marginalized groups a vital platform for expression. Recently, popular music has "provided an arena where marginalized voices can be heard and sexual identities shaped, challenged, and renegotiated". Mainstream music has begun to reflect acceptance of LGBTQ musicianship. Some queer icons are openly queer-identifying and have made impactful changes in the world for LGBTQ people. Others are straight allies that have expressed their support for the community.
LGBTQ music can also refer to music that does not necessarily engage with queer themes, or is created by queer composers/producers, but is enjoyed by members of the LGBTQ community regardless. Much of the music created by straight queer icons is enjoyed in LGBTQ spaces, with artists such as Judy Garland, Céline Dion, Janet Jackson, Donna Summer, Kylie Minogue, Madonna, or Cher, among others. Some performers, like Elton John and Lady Gaga, are prominent activists for the LGBTQ community, winning the GLAAD Vanguard Award in 2019, and publicly thanked the LGBTQ community for their development of the house music genre at the 2023 Grammy Awards.
History
German sexologists around the turn of the 20th century indirectly revealed that homosexuals were abundant in the music field and profession. The associated taboos regarding homosexuality and the large amount of homosexuals in music at this time led to the development of the idea of music being a method for expression, transcending ordinary life.Early Black queer artists included Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, who recorded overtly lesbian songs in the 1920s, as well as Little Richard in the late 1950s, with the hit song "Tutti Frutti" as a homosexual reference, but one that was covert enough to be plausibly denied.
Regarding classical music, American composer Leonard Bernstein had many homosexual relations, often with other musicians and composers, despite being in a heterosexual marriage. Many artists like Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins, Dimitri Mitropoulos were subject to hiding their sexual identities from the public. American pianist Liberace was famously closeted and vehemently denied allegations of homosexuality until his death in 1987, suing a Daily Mirror columnist for insinuating his sexuality. While the entertainment industry now more openly discusses the role of gender identity both in the press and within music compositions, there is still reticence for many in the business to advocate for LGBTQ acceptance.
Broadway and musical theater
Broadway and musical theater have been ways for groups of people to express themselves through music, dance, and drama. As Philip Brett and Elizabeth Wood state, "the musical theater has been a special place for gay identification and expression". Many queer people, but particularly gay men, are not only enjoyers of Broadway, but often have a hand in the production and creation of it. Notable gay men involved in the production of Broadway shows include Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart, Noël Coward, Marc Blitzstein, Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, and Stephen Sondheim, to name a few. Lesbians also have a hand in contributing to the production of Broadway and theater, like lesbian producer Cheryl Crawford. With this impact from homosexual producers, musical theater was rife with coded messages for homosexual artists early on, moving on to having openly gay themes with musicals such as Cabaret and A Chorus Line in the 1960s and 1970s. Musicals began to focus on the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1990s, most popularly with Falsettoland and RENT. Other musicals with openly trans characters were also popular, including The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Musicals focused on drag or drag queens are also popular still today, such as Kinky Boots.Timeline
Pre-1970s and 1970s
Beginning in Europe and making their way over to America, discothèques were dance clubs where prerecorded music, rather than live music, was the main focus. Originating from France and Germany during World War II, where young people met in basements to dance to American swing music, as the Nazis had banned jazz, bebop music, and jitterbug dancing, the concept and culture of disco made its way to the United States by the late 1960s and early 1970s. African Americans, gays, and Latinos who were longing for something other than the rock music met in these clubs, in cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Miami. In these clubs, "disco became the pulse of gay liberation on and off the dance floor in the post-Stonewall, pre-AIDS 1970s". In later years, the mass popularity and integration of this counter-culture into the mainstream culture reflected "yet another infusion of homosexual subculture into the cultural mainstream".The sexual revolution and associated revolutions of the 1960s started to bring counterculture to the mainstream attention, allowing for women, Black people, and LGBTQ minorities to be recognized and treated as human beings. In these revolutions, gender and sexuality became less rigid and more fluid, as evidenced in the performances of musicians like Freddie Mercury, David Bowie, Grace Jones, and Prince.
The disco, glam rock, and industrial music cultures offered a multitude of platforms for expression for gender and sexual non-conforming individuals throughout the 1970s. For the queer community, disco was a bridge between all people from all backgrounds through an expression of the body. Disco was not only musical, but cultural as well, and allowed people to form communities. "Disco Pluralism" partly led to the inclusion of different perspectives in the genre, thus creating a category of music representative of the intersectional identities of queer listeners; such as race or socioeconomic status.
Disco remained practically exclusive to underground clubs for a majority of the decade until, in 1977, the movie Saturday Night Fever propelled disco into the mainstream. After the movie's success, disco netted around 4–8 billion dollars and averaged from 20 to 40 percent of interactions on the billboard.
Though disco's foundation lies in inclusivity after the success of Saturday Night Fever its commercial success led to the genre shifting from predominantly black and queer people to white Americans securing a spot for them in the genre's sphere. The influx of upper-middle class white Americans finding success in disco led to several queer people showing animosity towards the genre, believing its capitalistic success tore disco away from what made it culturally revolutionary.
Disco still remained popular in the queer community even with increased criticism on how it derived its success. Authors like Richard Dyer of The Gay Left were able to publish literature in support of disco that the queer community could rally behind.
In scholarship about disco and related genres, most scholarship focuses on white, gay men who were involved in disco, sometimes briefly mentioning "Disco Divas", or the Black women who were involved disco music. Even though disco was instrumental in forming different ways of viewing marginalized identities, specifically femininity, Blackness, and homosexuality, most scholarship focuses on the least marginalized of these groups when conducting research.
Disco was not the only popular element of LGBTQ music in the 1970s; following Stonewall, there was an emergence of lesbian, feminist, and women-identified singer-songwriters. Events such as women-only music festivals and women-only coffeehouses promoted this music, and many of these spaces were feminist separatism or lesbian separatism spaces. Though not occurring in the 1970s, one of the most famous women's music festivals came into controversy in the 1990s, when trans woman Nancy Jean Burkholder was asked to leave the festival. The festival cited their "womyn-born womyn" policy regarding this decision, and was met with much controversy in the following years.
The glam rock scene included numerous bisexual musicians, including Queen's Freddie Mercury, Elton John, and David Bowie. Medium's Claudia Perry felt that "Glam rock was a queer paradise of sorts. Watching Mick Ronson and Bowie frolic onstage gave hope to every queer kid in the world. John's flamboyancy was also of great comfort. Marc Bolan of T. Rex is still the subject of speculation." Glam also rock helped to normalize androgynous fashion. Tim Bowers of The New York Times recalls that "glam's vocals had a fruity theatricality, supporting lyrics that presented as a boast: "Your mother can't tell if you're a boy or a girl." Glam was butch and femme at once: bisexuality in sound." Jobriath, rock's first openly gay star, was also part of the glam rock scene.
The Rocky Horror Show, a 1973 play that was later adapted into the film The Rocky Horror Picture Show, was a keystone of LGBTQ media in the 1970s and was soundtracked primarily by glam rock. The play was noted to help popularize the genre. A song from the show, "Sweet Transvestite", was noted as "the first big, glam rock aria of the musical" in the book Trans Representations in Contemporary, Popular Cinema. The same book mentions that glam rock "was a queering of the genre of rock music"
The musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch from 2001 also used glam rock to tell the story of a gender-affirming surgery gone awry.
1980s
The 1980s saw increased exposure to LGBTQ culture in bands, namely gender bending and cross-dressing, in the music industry with artists such as Culture Club, The B-52s, Soft Cell, Visage, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Pet Shop Boys, Dead or Alive, Erasure, and drag queen Divine.There was a large queer community that existed in electronic and dance music during the 80s. These genres of music were often played in underground queer clubs in many cities such as Los Angeles and New York and New Romantic subcultural movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s, which spawned the Blitz Kids in London.
Music videos began to allude to LGBTQ relationships, which included Bronski Beat's "Smalltown Boy", Elton John' "Elton's Song", Frankie Goes to Hollywood "Relax" and Madonna's "Vogue".
Gay icons during this decade included Cyndi Lauper, Grace Jones, Morrissey, George Michael, Loleatta Holloway, Douglas Pearce, Whitney Houston, Bob Mould, Melissa Etheridge and Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford.
Disco culture of the 70s and 80s is directly associated with queer musicians. Sexual and gender fluidity had become increasingly visible, leading to artists such as David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, and Prince to exist in unique ways that push the boundaries of gender and sexuality. Bowie's 1979 music video for "Boys Keep Swinging" offers an influential example of androgyny in music. In this video, Bowie wears traditionally masculine attire, depicting himself as exceptionally macho while portraying himself as expressionless. He continues a deadpan tone in the video by monotonously singing about advantages men experience derived from the patriarchy. The constant dull tone of the video creates a sense of irony, reinforced by the camera cutting to Bowie in drag which further confuses the viewer on Bowie's gender identity. At the end of the video on three occasions Bowie walks down a runway in drag, at the very end he wipes off bright red lipstick on his arm, representing his discomfort with female identity along with its male counterpart. The ambiguity and fluidity of these artists helped to create a safe space for queer people.
Also popular within the LGBTQ community was post-disco dance music such as Eurodisco, Italo disco, house music, Hi-NRG, and freestyle. During the 1980s, this music became more prevalent in the United States, and LGBTQ artists gained prominence. DJ Larry Levan started his DJ career at the gay disco Paradise Garage.
In Argentina, new wave band Virus, led by singer Federico Moura, made references to 1980s gay men culture, such as cruising for sex, male prostitution and underground parties; and Moura displayed a flamboyant, sexualized stage persona that caused a homophobic reaction by much of the Argentine rock culture at the time. In the decade the career of several non-heterosexual women also took off, including Marilina Ross, Sandra Mihanovich and Celeste Carballo. Ross wrote the lesbian anthem "Puerto Pollensa", which was popularized by Mihanovich in 1981–1982. In 1984, Mihanovich recorded a Spanish-language version of "I Am What I Am" titled "Soy lo que soy", which also became a popular gay anthem in Argentina. Mihanovich and Carballo later joined as a pop duo and released the album Somos mucho más que dos in 1988.