What Little Mix’s “Secret Love Song Pt. 2” Meant to Queer Fans in 2017
feature image photo by Dave J Hogan / Contributor via Getty Images
We keep behind closed doors
Every time I see you, I die a little more
Stolen moments that we steal as the curtain falls
It’ll never be enough
These are the opening lyrics to Little Mix’s “Secret Love Song, Pt. 2,” off their third studio album Get Weird. The first time I heard the song, something struck me. It’s a love song sung by a female group that’s devoid of pronouns. I don’t think I had ever heard such a thing before.
Huh, I remember thinking to myself. Did they know they were making a song that sounds like it’s about two women?
I started listening to Little Mix back in 2017. The little girl I babysat for was obsessed with one of their songs, and I ended up downloading their whole catalog. It’s a reductive take, but for those who have never heard of them, they’re kind of like a female One Direction, formed on the show The X Factor from four individual singers who auditioned separately. Unlike 1D, Little Mix won their season and went on to have a lot of success in the UK. They never reached the same level of success here in the States, which I think is absurd. The women of Little Mix are incredibly talented, especially compared to most girl groups at the time. But I digress.
Get Weird was released in 2015, and there weren’t many mainstream queer female contemporary pop stars like there are today. Even though “Secret Love Song Pt. 2” isn’t explicitly queer, if you were trying to find something, you could very easily see yourself in the song. For people keeping their queerness quiet for whatever reason, this song was a refuge, and a safe space.
I don’t wanna live love this way
I don’t wanna hide us away
I wonder if it ever will change
I’m living for that day, someday
When I found the album, I was beginning to abstractly explore my sexuality for the first time since I was a teenager. I was still playing things close to the chest; I wasn’t even out to my family yet. I’m a person who very deeply relates to song lyrics, and I connected to this song quickly. It gave me an outlet for the feelings I was having in a format that made sense to me. As someone who loves mainstream pop and was still in the process of fully embracing her queerness, I didn’t know I needed to hear a girl sing a typical pop ballad about another girl until I heard this song. Hayley Kiyoko did release “Girls Like Girls” that same year, but she was still an indie artist; you couldn’t turn on Top 40 radio and hear Fletcher or girl in red. If you weren’t actively looking for sapphic songs, you wouldn’t be able to find them. I was still privately figuring things out; I didn’t have queer friends who I could ask for music recommendations.
As far as I know, none of the members of Little Mix identify as queer themselves, but they are very strong and outspoken allies, thanks in part to the response to “Secret Love Song.” Jade Thirlwall especially has done a lot of work with LGBTQ+ charities and organizations over the years. After watching multiple videos of the group performing the song live over the years, I noticed Jade is the one who introduces the song, always giving a shout out to the LGBTQ+ community for their constant love and support, especially of this song in particular, over the years.
“Thank you for teaching us that allyship is so much more than this song,” she said before singing the song at their final live performance.
It would have been really easy for the ladies of Little Mix to simply distance themselves from the queer themes fans were taking from the song. We’ve seen this a million times: a straight artist going out of their way to say their song wasn’t intended to be perceived as queer or straight-up denouncing the queer themes fans may pick up in their music. But the girls did the opposite; they wholeheartedly embraced what fans were picking up on and were proud to give them a song they could relate to.
“We’ve had loads of people saying it’s helped them almost to come out, say that they’re gay and that is an incredible thing,” Leigh-Anne Pinnock told CapitalFM in 2016.
There are two versions of the song: “Secret Love Song” is actually a duet between Little Mix and Jason Derulo. But even though we’re hearing them sing together, there are still no pronouns in the song. We’re just meant to assume the song is hetero because there are male and female singers singing together. Ahead of the music video’s filming, the casting breakdown made the rounds. According to the casting notice, queer couples were supposed to be included, as well as an interracial couple. Unfortunately, when the video finally premiered, there were no couples in it at all; it only featured the group singing together and Derulo singing by himself in a separate location. No explanation was given by the label, and for a while, it was only available to watch in the UK. Fans were understandably upset, and a rumor began circulating that Derulo and his team were homophobic, one quickly squashed by the singer.
Even if the video didn’t give fans what they were hoping for, there’s always the song itself. As I watched a video of that final performance, the camera pans throughout the crowd and fans (mostly women) are shown wiping their eyes as they sing along. It’s hard to know how many of those women are queer, but I see myself in a lot of their reactions.
It’s been years since the first time I heard “Secret Love Song Pt. 2”, but every time I listen to it, I’m still amazed at what Little Mix was able to pull off. A record label actually allowed them to put a song on their album that could have started a lot of speculation about their sexualities. If the song was released now, the group would probably be unfairly accused of queerbaiting, which sucks, because it’s clear that wasn’t the intention at all.
Even though it was never a radio single, they gave their queer female fans a song to see themselves in, one they could belt at the top of their lungs whenever they wanted. It provided a safe space for them to express their desires at a time when a lot of mainstream music didn’t do so.
Sleater-Kinney Is Back With an Album About Moving Through Grief
Much has been written about the circumstances surrounding the production and recording of Sleater-Kinney’s new album, Little Rope. Both Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein had already finished sketching out the album and were beginning the new recordings when the news of Brownstein’s mother’s and stepfather’s tragic deaths came to them via a phone call from the U.S. Embassy in Italy to Tucker after they were initially unable to reach Brownstein directly. Despite being “dragged into a hellscape of grief,” Brownstein and Tucker threw themselves into the production of the album with Brownstein, especially, turning to her guitar work on the new songs as a kind of “praying” through the emotions that had overtaken her. The result is not exactly what you’d expect given the amount of sadness and pain Brownstein and Tucker had to contend with as they finished the record. Grief surrounds Little Rope like a specter, but the requisite despair that comes along with it is nowhere to be found.
Although Sleater-Kinney’s sound has never been strictly punk, their earlier albums were more directly imbued with the styles and attitudes of the growing riot grrrl movement of the Pacific Northwest. As they grew and priorities shifted, their sound became more distinct, often incorporating elements of post punk, new wave, and classic rock. They’ve never been afraid to confront the most vulnerable aspects of their lives on their records, with songs like those on their 1997 release Dig Me Out chronicling the end of Tucker and Brownstein’s romantic relationship. But they’ve also never shied away from the national and global politics that have come to define various eras of their lives as much of the work on their 2002 release One Beat proves. Little Rope is their fourth release since the end of their 10-year hiatus in 2015 and their second since long-time drummer Janet Weiss parted ways with the band, but it is easily their strongest and most consistent record since the hiatus-breaking No Cities to Love. Similar to that album, Little Rope provides an accessible, evocative balance of the personal and political and employs a variety of styles and influences that diverge dramatically from song to song and create such a level and coherent assemblage of their capabilities as individuals and as a duo.
Little Rope is no doubt grounded in Tucker’s now legendary vibrato and in the dueling yet synergetic guitar compositions she and Brownstein share. The album’s opener, “Hell,” takes on the reality of living in a world where violence has become our most common way of relating to one another. It begins slowly with the vocals taking the lead, “Hell is desperation / And a young man with a gun,” and then explodes into the chorus, “You ask / ‘Why?’ like there’s no tomorrow.” Tucker’s voice takes the song into the stratosphere forcing us to face what she’s singing about in the same way she and Brownstein have.
“Six Mistakes,” one of my favorite tracks on the album, takes some of the doom from the chorus of “Hell” and brings in more distortion and fuzz to create a booming rock song and the image of person trying to decipher their role in an unreciprocated relationship, “Who do you love for? / Who do you want to see? / I’m hanging on but I can’t feel your love for me.” Above the prodding drums and pleading guitar melodies of “Hunt You Down,” another favorite, Tucker’s quaking vibrato turns into a whine, “I’ve been down so long / I pay rent to the floor,” before Brownstein joins her to blast into the prodigious exclamation of the chorus, “The thing you fear the most will / Hunt you down.” Together, they take what feels like a commonly accepted idea and turn it into an incantation that begs us to remember all of the truth encapsulated within it despite its prevalence.
The punchy drums and playful guitar melodies of “Don’t Feel Right” might fool some into thinking it’s less vulnerable than some of the other tracks on the album, but the lyrics — “Don’t hang around / I’m a real letdown” — tell another story. They highlight the difficulties of navigating the realities of a life “warped from grief.” Similarly, the light pop-rock sensibilities and the exaggerated syllable pronunciations of “Needlessly Wild” serve as a shield for some of the album’s most candid lyrics, “I’m uselessly sullen / I pushed up my bedtime / I’ll set with the sun.” “Dress Yourself” — an arresting meditation on the way depression often incapacitates us and holds us hostage — takes these ideas even further. Sometimes, it’s hard for the speaker in these songs to even be around themself. All three tracks play kind of tongue-in-cheek about how it feels to have to grapple with sadness on a daily basis but also prove that even that impossible task can be overcome.
“Say It Like You Mean It” has the potential to be Sleater-Kinney’s most mainstream song, but the desire so clearly present in Tucker’s singing and the easy groove of the composition give way to lyrics that are much more prescient and poignant than most pop hits. “Say it like you mean it / I need to hear it before you go” feels like a continuation of the iconic chorus of 1997’s “One More Hour” where Tucker wails, “If you could talk, what would you say?” but with a demand instead of a question this time. Whoever they’re talking to this time around — and the lyrics of “Say It Like You Mean It” point to a number of possibilities — they have no patience or capacity to wait for a response. The album’s defiant single, “Untidy Creature,” bursts open with tremendous guitar riff and the crashing symbols of the drum kit to give us a emancipatory narrative of breaking free from the confines built around us by our society at large: “Looking at me like a problem to solve / Like an untidy creature that you can’t push around / You built a cage but your measurement’s wrong / ‘Cause I’ll find a way and I’ll pick your lock.”
It’s a powerful closer to an album dealing with the materiality of not just grieving but also of existing in a world that makes us take on grief as a daily practice whether it’s “personal” or not. At the midpoint of the album, “Small Finds,” one of the tracks most reminiscent of Sleater-Kinney’s earlier work, bounces open with a combination of their signature punk compositional style and their newer experimentations with other genres. On the bridge, the guitars and drums go downbeat, and Tucker groans, “Little wins pull me in / Little wins fill me up / I vibe on the small finds, babe / They tell me I’m good enough.” It’s the perfect vehicle to remind us of what they’re doing with this album. To be alive, to be human in the world we’ve created, means we’re going to keep experiencing the devastation of loss. We can choose to get lost in it, let the grief swallow us whole and lament in the supposed inevitability of that, or we can look around for a little rope and let it carry us forward. Just as Sleater-Kinney has with this album, we can make the choice to hang on.
George Michael’s “Freedom ’90” Showed Me Hot Models — And My Queerness
It’s an afternoon in 1996, and there’s nothing on TV. And when there’s nothing on, my default is always channel 19. I scoot a little closer to our small living room set and I put on VH1…
As a kid, I loved VH1, because it gave me ample opportunity to watch “old” music videos; ones that were made before I could appreciate them. Between shows like Pop-Up Video and various video blocks, I was flush in music videos from the 80’s and early 90’s.
My absolute favorite music video was George Michael’s “Freedom ‘90”. Why? Because of the supermodels, of course.
When George Michael released his album Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 decided he wasn’t doing music videos or any sort of press or appearances. Even when his record label convinced him to do a video for “Freedom ‘90” (the song is just called “Freedom” on the album, but the ‘90 was added so people didn’t confuse it with Wham’s 80’s hit “Freedom”), he refused to star in it. Instead, he decided he wanted Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Cindy Crawford, and Tatjana Patitz after seeing their famous British Vogue cover shot by Peter Lindbergh. They would lip synch the song, and Michael never had to have his face on camera.
Since I saw the video for the first time five or six years after it came out, I already knew who the women were, with the exception of Patitz. I had seen them in commercials or the glossy pages of my mom’s magazines. But in this video, there was something different about them — they felt real, effortlessly cool, and impossibly sexy. They were established in their careers, but not yet in their prime, and you can still see that youthful exuberance in them. They were having fun doing something they would have never anticipated having the opportunity to do: take center stage and be the stars of a music video. Before “Freedom ‘90”, models in music videos were accessories for sexual fantasy. Think Christie Brinkley in Billy Joel’s video for “Uptown Girl” or Tawny Kitaen in Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again”. Not these five — they were front and center in every frame. It was years before I remembered there were also men in the video because of how much the supermodels captivated my attention.
They were everything to me, but only in this isolated space. I would sit in front of my TV and will the video to appear so I could watch these cool, beautiful women for a whopping seven minutes. It was my prepubescent version of seven minutes in heaven.
There are dozens of images from the video that have permanently cemented themselves in my mind. Linda Evangelista’s ice blonde short crop and oversized black turtleneck stirred butterflies in my stomach, especially when she pulled her head inside of the sweater. I remember silently praying that this viewing would be the time the camera panned slightly lower and to reveal her black bra, but it never was. Her easy, albeit slightly devilish smile while she lip syncs wound me up, and now the whole look makes me understand why every photographer wanted to work with her.
Naomi Campbell’s 1960s updo and makeup reminded me of the I Dream of Jeannie reruns I used to watch on Nick-At-Nite. The first time we see her in the video, she’s in a bra top and mini skirt with moto boots, dancing around to the song presumably pumping through her headphones while she tries not to get entangled in the cord. Her second outfit’s top was completely sheer, and again, I’d pray each time that something would change and her arms would drop. (In the 2017 4k remaster of the video, you can see a bit of nip, and if nine-year-old me knew that, she would pass out.)
Christy Turlington’s first shots in the video are some of the most iconic. She’s walking through the hall of this dilapidated building wrapped in nothing but a white linen sheet that is expertly draped around her. Her bare back and shoulders are simultaneously flooded with light and shrouded with shadow. The way the light bursts against her face enhances her absolutely stunning cheekbones as she sings the verse. By the bridge, she is crawling across that same floor like a panther, but this time, a warm light alternates between her glowing eyes and pouty lips.
And lastly, we have Cindy, who looks utterly wrecked in the bathtub. Steam is the name of the game, and her makeup looks like it’s going to slide off her face. (It never does.) She writhes around, and you realize there is no water in the tub, even though it still looks slick and gauzy thanks to the sheer white curtains. Her hands slide up and down her slick torso. She doesn’t look wet — she looks like she’s been in the sauna. She is filmed in a way that feels intimate, because the camera is straight on while she has her head resting against the rim of the tub. It would be voyeuristic if you could see anything through the steam.
I never wanted to be one of the supermodels, I wanted to be close to them; to sit on the floor and drink in their beauty, inches away from the real thing. I wanted Linda to smile at me like she does in the video, and to dance with Naomi with the same abandon. To sit at the edge of Cindy’s bathtub, and feel the softness of Christy’s sheet. These weren’t feelings I could articulate in elementary school, but I knew how they sat in my body. How my belly would tingle with each lip synched line.
There’s something to be said about the element of surprise when you’re a little girl who doesn’t yet know how to put those feelings into words. I never grew less giddy at seeing the video, probably because it was always a surprise. I couldn’t anticipate when I’d see it, but I knew that those feelings would come, that warmth deep within my core that would make me sit closer to the TV, to secretly wish for a camera angle that didn’t exist.
Just because George Michael doesn’t appear in the video for “Freedom ‘90” that doesn’t mean he’s not there. It’s known for being the video that helped Michael blow up his previously held public image. I mean that quite literally. In the video, we see three iconic images from Michael’s Faith era: his leather jacket, the jukebox, and his guitar. One-by-one, each item is ceremoniously destroyed over the course of the song. The jacket is slowly engulfed in flames, while both the jukebox and guitar quite literally explode as Michael belts the song’s chorus. The destruction of those items effectively freed Michael from who he didn’t want to be.
“By the end of the Faith tour I was so miserable because I absolutely knew that I was gay… I didn’t suddenly want to come out. I wanted to do it with some kind of dignity. So I thought ‘okay, you have to start deconstructing this whole image,’” Michael said in a 2004 interview for British magazine Attitude.
When I was deep in my consumption of the “Freedom ‘90” music video, Michael had not yet been outed. That happened in 1998. I remember it because for me, it felt like a confirmation of something I had long suspected. The video for Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” is another favorite of mine, and something about George in that video screams gay. His Faith persona was a good cover-up, but I knew a lot of gay men as a child; a beard wasn’t enough to fool me.
The year George Michael was outed is the same year I put words to why his supermodel stand-ins caused a flutter in my stomach: I was attracted to girls. I forced myself to name the reason I wanted the cameras to slip down and show me more skin and maybe a hint of areola, and it was because those things made me feel warm inside.
Even now, almost 33 years after the video premiered, if I watch it, I am taken right back to those prepubescent rumblings of desire. Linda’s smile, Cindy’s wet, tousled hair, Naomi’s cat eye, Christy’s pout. But now if I ever want those seven minutes in heaven, I can simply go to YouTube and watch it as many times as I need.
Reneé Rapp and Megan Thee Stallion’s “Not My Fault” Is Giving Gay Regina George
I hadn’t considered how gay the iconic Mean Girls line “it’s not my fault you’re like in love with me” was until it rolled off of Reneé Rapp’s lips.
To be fair, the deciding factor maaaaaaybe wasn’t just the voice over in the opening seconds into her newest single with Megan thee Stallion — “Not My Fault” of the upcoming Mean Girls Musical soundtrack — though it certainly didn’t hurt!
Instead, it maybe came from the matching “it’s not my fault you’re like in love with me” captions that both Meg and Reneé left on their Instagrams this week to hype the song’s highly anticipated release. But still, points were made!!
The newly revamped Mean Girls hits theaters on January 12th, just a little shy of the 20 year anniversary of the original. It’s based on the original film’s Broadway musical adaptation. All of which is to say, there simply could not be a better Regina George than Reneé Rapp.
Besides being recorded by two hot bisexual stars, “Not My Fault” also has some winks for what’s apparently a long-standing theory — though unbeknownst to me before this week — which is that Regina George is a lesbian??
In the second verse Rapp hits us with:
“Get her number, get her name
Get a good thing while you can
Kiss a blonde (Kiss a blonde), kiss a friend (Okay)
Can a gay girl get an, “Amen?”
Amen. For her part, Meg follows up with “I been told y’all, I’m the black Regina George.”
Rapp (who, by the way, also played the best villain to ever stomp through hallways in pink during the show’s Broadway run) amped up this queer reading Regina last week when she captioned her Instagram with a real direct “regina george was a lesbian”… so yeah, not a lot of room for misinterpretation there!
Now, do I think Reneé Rapp was just making a little tee-hee gay joke with her fans? Yes, yes I do. But it also means that the queer actor playing Regina understands her to be gay, and I can’t wait to see how that interpretation ultimately plays into her performance.
According to a deep dive by Diva Magazine, it appears the “Regina George is a lesbian” train first took off in 2021, by @lizzie.mchigher on TikTok, who in particular has a lot of very interesting things to say about Regina’s relationship with Mean Girl’s noted lesbian outcast Janis Ian and Regina’s own internalized homophobia. Later, in 2022, a fan held up a sign that said “Regina Is a Lesbian” during one of Reneé Rapp’s concerts and she responded, “She is! It’s so true, and I heard that from God. He told me.”
@lizzie.mchigher
It’s still a few weeks before the new Mean Girls release, where we can see Regina’s positively affirmed lesbian era for ourselves. Until then, here’s “Not My Fault.” When we started the pink revolution for Barbie over the summer, I didn’t realize that deep into winter we’d still be here. But fuck it! Pink forever.
Let it catch on like Fetch never could.
10 of the Best Queer Albums of 2023
Even though I know I don’t really have to anymore, I still listen to most new music the old fashioned way: by listening to the album from beginning to end.
When I was a young adult buying CDs, that’s what I would always do. Over and over again, I’d listen from start to finish, memorizing where my favorite tracks were so that I could eventually skip to them in the future. Years of consuming music this way taught me to see albums as complete works that required my careful attention and loving interest. I know with streaming culture and the way our consumption of art is fractured because of social media, many people don’t really think about songs and singles as being a small piece of a larger project, but I try not to lose sight of that. I see and understand that musicians are trying to tell stories in their own ways, too, and I want to make sure I get the complete picture before I decide which parts of the story are the ones that will stay on repeat for a long, long time.
This year in music was kind of a strange one. It’s difficult to pin down a specific theme or set of themes that were common in the new releases. Among all the many queer musicians who released new work this year, the focus ranged from hooking up to celebrating being alive to mental health issues to falling in love to grief about a personal experience or grief about the terrible things we’re experiencing and witnessing together in broader society. And I have to say, I kind of like that about the music I got to listen to for the first time this year. We’re navigating one tragedy after another — the genocide in Palestine, the ongoing attacks on queer and trans people in the U.S., the shifting economy, the worsening climate crisis, and this doesn’t even fully cover it — and we still have to wake up every morning and do our lives, whatever that means for each of us. Most days, for me, that feels impossible to do, which is where art comes in to remind me that despite what the people oppressing and destroying us might want us to believe, there is still beauty all around us.
When I originally started working on this, I had a list of 28 new albums (and some EPs) by queer and trans musicians who I felt deserved to be on here. And it reminded me how lucky I am to be alive in a time when so much work by queer and trans people is not only out there for us to find but it’s also entirely accessible through every electronic device we own. I keep thinking about this wild abundance of art from people who have such little time to think about making art and who have to put a lot on the line to do this work in the first place. I’m not sure we’re deserving of what they’ve given, but I’m grateful we get to receive it.
As you go through the list, you might notice there are some high profile releases missing from the list. It’s not that I didn’t like those albums or that I didn’t think they showed a high level of talent and artistry. It’s just that, like I said, there was so much out there this year, and I thought there was more to celebrate.
Here are 10 of the best queer albums of 2023.
Amaarae – Fountain Baby
Flanked by an orchestra of strings, an extensive horn section, West African and steel pan drums, and playful Afropop and Alté beats, Amaarae’s glittering, opulent voice unravels and exposes the darker sides of celebrity, of fame and power, of being young, sexy, and adventurous. Her debut album, The Angel You Don’t Know, blast Amaarae onto the scene as one to watch, and this follow up, Fountain Baby, proves she’s here to stay for as long as she wants it.
Fountain Baby is especially interesting because it feels split in two. Amaarae doesn’t lead us directly into the darkness. Instead, she first shows us the lighter, sensual side of having money to burn, parties to go to, and women to hook up with. Tracks like the funk carioca tinged “Angels in Tibet” celebrate the excitement of moving through a night out with nothing but a desire to fuck on her mind, while more experimental pop tracks like “Co-Star” (the album’s single) and “Princess Going Digital” have some fun poking at both Amaarae’s astrological dating history and her unwillingness to settle down.
The album takes a turn at “Reckless & Sweet,” a slower track exploring her relationship with someone who’s just with her because of her money — “It’s cause my money’s just too long / The thought of me spendin’ gives you goosebumps” — and keeps peeling off the layers of the harder parts of being young, rich, and sexually daring from there. Tracks like the uptempo “Sociopathic Dance Queen” and the almost oddly sensuous “Sex, Violence, Suicide” bring us into some of the more ill-fated sexual and romantic experiences she’s had. By the last track, “Come Home to God,” it’s obvious Amaarae has no illusions about herself and her own intentions, and her bright, crystalline voice shines through even the more difficult parts of her story to remind us she’s got a handle on it all: “When I’m in that pussy, I’m above the law / If I had the world, I still would end it all.”
Indigo De Souza – All of This Will End
All of This Will End was my introduction to Indigo De Souza this year, which is interesting considering it feels like her first two albums provide the necessary build up to what she’s exploring on this new one. But even with that, All of This Will End feels like the standout among them and definitely one of the best albums I listened to this year. Where her previous two albums were a little quieter, a little less confident, and just hinting at her preoccupation with the finality of death, All of This Will End explores her obsession with mortality more openly and features some of the biggest tracks, arrangements-wise, that she’s recorded to date. It’s the most sincere she’s ever been about her emotions.
The album blasts open with a short, dreamy synthpop track, “Time Back,” that gives voice to some of De Souza’s anger about a past relationship. It serves as an interesting precursor to “Smog,” a full-on dance track that celebrates De Souza’s contentment with solitude and loneliness: “I come alive in the nighttime when everybody else is done / I come alive, it’s the right time to really start having fun.” Other tracks like “You Can Be Mean” and “Always” explore different, more difficult aspects of being alive. On “You Can Be Mean,” De Souza takes aim at someone who hurt her by reminding them that they’re not quite as “good” as they likely think they are. “Always” is an blistering, angry track about her relationship to her often absent father that fills up the space of the song with raucous electric guitars and De Souza’s screaming.
On the title track, “All of This Will End,” De Souza breaks through some of the anger of the previous tracks to almost exuberant resignation: “Sometimes it’s not enough / Who gives a fuck? / All of this will end / Don’t forget / All of this will end.” Although the album is full of sincerity and earnest confessions, she’s at the height of her honesty and openness on “Wasting Your Time,” a sludgy guitar and drum heavy track about self-doubt, and the final track “Younger and Dumber,” a quiet ballad about growing up and getting hurt by someone she trusted. On the latter, she sings: “Sometimes I just don’t want to be alone / And it’s not cause I’m lonely / It’s just cause I get so tired of filling / The space all around me.” By the final chords of the album, you can see how De Souza has finally stepped comfortably into the person she was meant to be.
Kara Jackson – Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love?
Kara Jackson’s work is hard to describe without making someone listen to it immediately. Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? is an album entirely compromised of songs about love, but not a single one of the tracks is a love song or even comes close to being one. There’s no begging for a past lover to come back or eulogizing the loss of a romantic relationship that she didn’t expect to end. Rather, Jackson explores how loving, whether it’s romantic love or platonic love, is a never ending series of losses no matter what choices we make or don’t make.
Before you even get to her stories, you’ll notice how arresting and singular Jackson’s voice is on every single track. Her deep falsetto feels cutting and otherworldly over minimalistic guitar melodies, muted horns, delicate pianos, and floating choral arrangements that make it into a few tracks. On the album’s single, “no fun/party,” Jackson’s voice lilts over simple guitar chords to lament how difficult it is to feel fully held in love: “I wanna be as dangerous as a dancing dragon / Or a steam engine, a loaded gun / Be loved for my hazard and a will to destruct.” Tracks like “dickhead blues” and “free” drive home this idea of loving as always having to give something up. The arrangements on these two tracks are similarly stripped down, but feature more than just guitar in places where the drama of the songs begins to heat up for a moment before she brings us back down to tell us about what she’s learned in this process of loving and having to give that love up.
The title song “why does the earth give us people to love?”, the most powerful track on the record, has an arrangement that soars above the others with guitar, synthesizers, reverb on the vocals, and a choral backing in some parts of the track. It tells the story of the loss of a close friend of Jackson’s who passed away, and drives home the theme of the whole album: “Why does the Earth give us people to love? / Then take them away out of reach?”. For Jackson, vulnerability isn’t an option, but just her primary mode of being, and she explores what it means to be vulnerable and open in a moment where the world seems so hellbent on making us suffer. Her music is a way of navigating the grief that comes along with the cycle of loving and losing and provides pathways for listeners to navigate their own, as well.
ANOHNI and the Johnsons – My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross
ANOHNI has been a constant in my life since the release of her sophomore album, I Am a Bird Now, and I can’t help but get excited when I hear she’s working on something new. My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross is her first album with the Johnsons in 13 years and over five years in the making since the release of her solo EP, Paradise, in 2017. A tribute to the Black American soul music that inspired the singing and songwriting of some of her favorite artists as a young person, My Back… is an exploration of not only that very genre but also the power in ANOHNI’s voice and the difficulty of being alive in an impending climate nightmare.
Unlike some of ANOHNI’s previous recordings, the tracks on My Back… feel stripped to the basics that make soul records so appealing: rhythm guitar, six-piece drums, light synths, electric bass, and some gentle horns every now and then. The subtler composition really leaves so much room for ANOHNI’s voice to bend the composition to her will and fill all of the spaces left by the more subdued instrumentals. It’s an incredible feat of songwriting that transcends the genre but still feels so rooted to it and grounded to the Earth, which feels especially appropriate considering the majority of the songs sets her sights on our relationship to it.
Tracks like “It Must Change,” “Go Ahead,” and “It’s My Fault” directly address the worsening climate crisis in different ways. “It Must Change” opens the album and reminds us all of what’s at stake if we don’t take action while also mourning how much we haven’t. “Go Ahead” takes the ruling class and the power structures that get in the way of making the world a better place to task by daring them to keep doing what they’re doing. And “It’s My Fault” examines ANOHNI’s (and our) relationship to capitalism and how we get trapped in individualizing our complicity in climate destruction without taking those in power to task for theirs.
The standout track on the album for me is “Scapegoat,” a track that starts as a soft, simple composition that builds and builds until the final minute of the song where the beauty of the composition contrasts the lyrics entirely. On it, ANOHNI directly addresses the transphobia of our time by taking the perspective of our oppressors to essentially highlight the horror of their actions. The last two tracks on the album, “Why Am I Alive Now?” and “You Be Free” work together to clarify the connections between the artistry and activism of the past and what ANOHNI’s is trying to do on this album: there is so much to mourn and fight against, and there is so much we can still do to save each other, too.
Jamila Woods – Water Made Us
I love Jamila Woods. I really do. I’ve been hanging onto her work ever since the release of her debut, Heavn, in 2016. I’ve traveled to see her perform live and then, eventually, had the privilege of seeing her where I live. There is something truly special about the way she approaches the art of songwriting and composition, and, man, that voice. That voice. It’s so particular, so incredibly different from so much of what we hear all the time. You can feel the love she has for not only the work she’s doing but also those of us who consume it and revel in it. And the album she dropped this year, Water Made Us, takes all those strengths and puts them to investigate love through music in a way we’re not really used to: love not at the beginning or the end but all throughout the entirety of loving someone and being loved back by them, love as a journey of discovery for ourselves and for others, love as a process of surrender and release and back again.
The album’s single, “Tiny Garden,” is a smooth little uptempo track examining the slow evolution and growth of a relationship between Woods and someone else that isn’t exactly a “tiny garden” but still she vows to “feed it, every day.” “Practice” and “Boomerang” are upbeat, almost dance-y tracks that work in contrast with one another. On the former, she’s discussing a loving relationship that wasn’t meant to last forever. On the latter, she sings about a rapturous relationship that makes her a little nervous but that she’s determined to make last longer: “You lead the way, I’ll follow you here / And I won’t run, no, I won’t run.” Other tracks like “Send A Dove” and “Thermostat” are both melodic R&B tunes that explore the ups and downs of long term relationships, their twists and their turns, and the ways we must communicate openly and compromise in ways we don’t always expect to make them work.
Each track is a new opportunity for Woods to illustrate a vision of love — or the expectation of it or the aftermath of it or the experience of being in it — that leads her on a path to learning more about herself. Repeatedly, she reminds us that even if love doesn’t last forever, the lessons, the laughter, the little moments we shared in those relationships will stay with us, help us continue to move through all of the experiences we have after, and they just might teach us how to love ourselves more completely and more compassionately also.
Miki Ratsula – i’ll be fine if i want to
Miki Ratsula has been such an interesting musician to watch over the last couple of years. For a while, it seemed as if they were more well known for their social media presence than for the music they make, and even with the release of this new album, it seems like they’re still a little under the radar in the indie music world. I was familiar with their work before i’ll be fine if i want to, so I had an idea of what to expect with this album, but I finished it so thoroughly impressed and I’ve been coming back to it over and over again the last couple of months.
In a moment when so many people seem to be under the impression that “queer and trans people have never had it better than right now,” Ratsula’s album delves deep into the interpersonal realities of what it’s like to be queer and nonbinary in a world that is simultaneously giving us new ways to survive while also finding new ways to make our survival more difficult. The majority of the tracks on the album are lo-fi, guitar-driven compositions that occasionally feature modest electronic beats, which helps give it a bedroom recording feel despite its studio polish. These particular compositional intricacies and lyrical intimacies show incredible growth for Ratsula as an artist and producer.
On the album’s single, “blue balloons (featuring Semler),” Ratsula sings about getting misgendered by a friend at their birthday party. It takes its chorus from lesbian icon Lesley Gore’s most famous song, “It’s My Party,” and turns the song into a quiet anthem about trans resilience. Ratsula might be hurt but they worked hard to be where they are, so they’re not going down like that. “if i blame myself” is a surprisingly upbeat track that reveals the the struggle of freeing themself from an abusive relationship but ultimately refusing to let the person hurting them walk away believing Ratsula is the one to condemn: “Like everybody else who gave you what you wanted / Yeah, you’d love it / If I blamed myself.” Beyond the tracks that directly tackle some of the friction Ratsula has encountered in their romantic relationships, they also explore their relationship with their family on tracks like “jealous of my brother,” a track that begins as a confessional about Ratsula’s feelings of envy towards their cis brother and ends as a letter of gratitude to him, and “what would the neighbors think?,” a powerful testimony of what it’s like to deal with loved ones who don’t understand you.
The album ends with “unconditional,” a beautiful rumination on the freedom of being loved wholly by another person and reminder of the possibilities that come with that kind of love. Although Ratsula probes the emotional complexities of being openly queer and trans throughout the entirety of the album, it also serves as a testament to the power of that openness and being who they are in spite of what’s against them.
Kelela – Raven
It really feels as if people forgot this album came out this year, but it is truly one of the most introspective and most impeccably produced albums of the year by a long shot. In a moment when the history of Black electronic music has been dissected and, to a certain extent, exploited by other artists, it’s almost unbelievable to me that Raven hasn’t gotten more hype and more attention. But perhaps that’s due to the subject matter — there is an unapologetic focus on queerness and Black womanhood and the intersections of those realities that fills every compositional and lyrical inch of Raven. It’s not necessarily a celebration but a forced witnessing of what it’s like to inhabit a personhood that so many other people are determined to destroy. It’s a dance album at the end of the world made by someone who has a more intimate understanding of the importance of both pleasure and pain in the apocalypse than many of the rest of us do.
With the aid of a stunning roster of other producers including Kaytranada, Junglepussy, and Bambii, among others, Kelela pulls from all over the electronic music gradient — Chicago house, dancehall, U.S. and UK garage, drum’n’bass, b’more, 90s techno — to create a litany of seductive, almost euphoric tracks that will make you feel like you’re moving in slow motion, at least for a little while. “Divorce” and the title track, “Raven,” point most directly to the steady introspection and self-reflection that helps guide the whole album, with the latter subverting the metaphor of the raven to signal Kelela’s reincarnation throughout the course of the over five years she worked on this album. On tracks like “Contact,” “On the Run,” and “Sorbet,” Kelela addresses sexuality and the sensuous rush of new and all-encompassing lust over blissed out jungle, dancehall, and trancelike beats.
Standout track, “Holier,” is a lulling, slow-burner that places Kelela’s sweeping vocals at the forefront of the track to exclaim in a gentle rhythm: “Don’t wanna cover the scar / So I go where they hold me down / And I go where they hold me down / And you’re not gonna take my crown.” By the end of the album, it’s obvious that forced witnessing isn’t for nothing: Kelela understands the potential of communal revolution through shared experience and the worlds she builds on this album keep pointing toward those possibilities.
Romy – Mid Air
This debut from the xx’s Romy Madley Croft is just one electronic gay banger after another. And that isn’t hyperbole. While it is definitely missing some of the more intimate earnestness and pensiveness we’re used to seeing in Romy’s songwriting with the xx, Mid Air is a joyous homage to the dance-pop and electronic music that was such a mainstay on the queer dancefloors of the 1990s and early 2000s. Romy’s ability to both build on the allure of those kinds of beats and productions while also transcending them to create something that is reflective of the way music has moved forward since is part of what is so attractive and wonderful about this album as a whole. 2023 feels like it has been one long reconsideration of the power of dance and electronic music in our culture, and I think the work Romy did in the production of this album deserves to be part of that conversation. On top of that, this album is a celebration of queer euphoria, of unrestrained sexuality, of rapturous encounters, and falling for friends.
Although the atmosphere of the album as a whole is engrossing from start to finish, Romy’s work on Mid Air is at its best on the tracks that combine that tribute to the flashy Euro-dance tracks of the past with this reverence of queer love and sensuality. “Loveher,” “Weightless,” “Strong,” and “Twice” serve as some of the best examples of this on the album. Their rhythms and glossy synth-driven production recall the dance-pop era but add modern twists to make them feel entirely new. Romy’s feelings for whoever is on the receiving end of their affection is put on full display with a sentimental fervor that would convince some of the most dispassionate people of the beauty of falling fast and hard for another person.
The album ends with, “She’s On My Mind,” a track about what feels like one of the most common experiences among queer people in the world — realizing you like a friend as more than just a friend. Along with some extremely nostalgic drops in the techno instrumentation of the track, Romy’s lyrics here also feature some impactful, lovesick surprises: “She’s on my mind but I wish she was under me / And there’s a space in between us, I don’t know how to reach.” The song keeps the tension building to the end where it takes a turn I don’t want to spoil. But it’s an appropriate ending to an album that allows the idiosyncrasies of queer love and queer joy to permeate every corner of every track. In a time when it seems so difficult to just live, Mid Air is a gorgeous reminder of the moments that give meaning to being alive.
Yves Tumor – Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds)
In the past, Yves Tumor’s work never really hit for me in the way that the music I return to time and time again does. It’s not that I didn’t get it or didn’t like it — I actually did enjoy the experimentation and artistry quite a bit and have always thought they were talented — but it just didn’t hit, and I can’t fully explain why. When the first track on their new album was coming to an end, I could already feel that shifting inside of me. Praise a Lord… doesn’t just feel like their best work to date, it also feels like an artist finding their footing and realizing the greatness inside of them and how much more they can truly achieve. It’s an ambitious album with sleek, high quality production and lots of interesting musical nods and cues to other acts Tumor seems to be inspired by or has deep admiration for.
For most of the tracks on the album, the compositions are heavy and dark, filled with rich, muddy electric guitars, booming drums and bass, reverberating vocals, and lush synthesizers that help create an atmosphere that feels completely outside of our own. On top of it, Tumor grapples with some of the issues for the artists in our culture — how to navigate a world where you’re constantly being watched, how to balance the personal and private in your work, and what your responsibility is to the people who consume the work in an ever-fracturing pop cultural landscape. Like that fractured landscape, Tumor creates a variety of vivid textural experiences through the tracks on this album, making it feel like a collage of their musical interests that helps them reorient our understandings of desire, race, gender, and sexuality through their focus on the smaller, more confidential parts of our relationships with others. Praise a Lord… is an appreciation of life, all the good and bad that comes with it.
The best tracks on the album — “Parody,” “Echolalia,” and “Purified By the Fire” — survey this landscape the best and help provide clarity on Tumor’s perceptions of themself, the way people expect them to move through the world, and the way they actually do. When the conclusion of the album comes through the track “Ebony Eye” — an almost hymnlike incantation that feels more like a prayer than an art rock single — you can see all of Tumor’s visions, hopes, and beliefs coalesce into an imagining of a future that’s ours for the taking.
Julie Byrne – The Greater Wings
I’ve seen Julie Byrne described as a “well-kept secret,” and that feels entirely fitting for me as her music was all new to me this year. Before The Greater Wings was released earlier this year, I got into her through one of the singles off her 2016 album, Not Even Happiness. After spending time getting to know her music and getting to hear The Greater Wings, there’s no doubt in my mind this is some of her most vital and beautiful work yet. Born through heartbreaking circumstances — Byrne unexpectedly lost her longtime collaborator and close friend Eric Littmann in 2021 as this album was being produced — the album is a phenomenal meditation on the materiality of loss, grief, and catharsis. The fact of the album’s creation makes for an interesting take on the finality of the death of a loved one. Bryne doesn’t revel in the somber and melancholic aspects of grief here and, instead, she pushes forward to present a renewed sense of appreciation and admiration of the power and pleasure of loving and being loved (in every way).
Like much of her previous work, the tracks on The Greater Wings are quiet but magnetic in their delivery. Utilizing mostly finger-picked guitar melodies, strings and harps, and hushed synths, Byrne’s compositions are subtle conspirators to the testimony in her voice and in her lyrics. On tracks like “The Greater Wings,” “Portrait Of A Clear Day,” “Lightning Comes Up From the Ground,” and “Summer Glass,” Byrne eulogizes her friend by focusing on the things that make the love of friendship so profound and wonderful in the first place. She sings on “Summer Glass,” for example: “Desire, laughter, blur, ache, abandon / Are we gonna bring this to fruition? / The tattoo you gave me, lying in bed / Watched the light turning gold / Our limbs are sick, winter shadow / You are the family that I chose.” Some tracks, like “Moonless,” seem to be speaking to some specific memories or moments Byrne shared with her friend even though the track was written before his death like many of the others. It makes it seem as if Byrne was already intent on writing an album of songs about the holiness of human connection, and the gravity of her loss helped her produce tracks that accomplish this while also inviting us to join her in exaltation.
I read that the last track on the album, “Death Is The Diamond,” is the only one Byrne wrote after Littmann’s death, and it is an incredibly heart wrenching offering to both the memory of her friend and her belief in our capacity to move through mourning with grace and eyes looking forward instead of back. She sings, “I guess it’s a story much greater than our own / Alive, moving through dusk / Alive, if only once.” Even through one of the greatest losses of her life, Byrne shows that it’s possible to stay grounded in the knowledge that, as she says in the beginning of the album, she’s “not here for nothing.”
Fletcher’s Drops New Song “Eras of Us” and Yes It’s About Her Ex-Girlfriend Shannon
Who Is Fletcher’s New Song “Eras of Us” About?
Lesbian pop musician and noted L Word: Generation Q guest star Fletcher released a new song today called “Eras of Us,” which she’s been teasing for a few weeks with posts on social media featuring snippets of lyrics, allusions to “thinking about exes.”
Fans were speculating that the song was about her ex-girlfriend, noted lesbian YouTuber Shannon Beveridge, who was previously the subject of “Becky’s So Hot,” a song about how Fletcher thought Shannon’s new girlfriend, Becky, was really hot. (Shannon and Becky recently broke up.)
Fletcher nearly immediately confirmed this interpretation, as well as its inspiration — her and Shannon being a the same Taylor Swift Eras tour concert, where they famously hugged — explaining in a livestream:
“I went to the Taylor Swift eras tour… and I ran into somebody from my past who was a great love of mine and knowing that we were at the same concert, scream-singing these lyrics and these songs to an artist that has like narrated so many of my romances an dbreakups and my loves, was such a wild feeling. I just got hit, like a wave, with the eras our relationship. I think it was like a really beautiful honoring of it and a processing of it.”
Here’s Fletcher’s new video for “Eras of Us”:
The music video features Fletcher wearing a fur coat, walking around a dark city where there are no signs of human life. It’s a great song! The fans love it! It’s already stuck in my head!
What are the Lyrics to “Eras of Us”?
The lyrics of “Eras of Us” begin with How are you doin? Where have you been? I’ve been practicing this moment for like twenty-something years in my head. As per Genius, his is likely a reference to the song “20-Something” on Fletcher’s “Girl of My Dreams” Album, because Fletcher is 29 so it cannot really be a reference to her literally thinking about this for twenty years.
Later in the song, Fletcher sings “sometimes I re-run those sixteen seasons for the rush,” which (also according to Genius) is a reference to the four (??) years she and Shannon were together, because there are four seasons in a year, and four times four equals sixteen. That’s math!!!!! The chorus is very catchy:
These are the eras of us, a story of love
Stealin’ the air right from my lungs
Girl of my dreams, forever we’re young
Remember it just the way it was, the eras of us
She sings about being in New York City where the subject of the song was in L.A., noting that she would “fly across the country just to kiss you and be back in a day.” Fletcher grew up in New Jersey and attended NYU in New York City. There’s also a verse like this:
We crashed just as quick as we burned, now someone new get a turn, I don’t know you and it hurts (Mm-hmm)
I told every one of my friends, you won’t get a lyric again, but God damn, here I fuckin’ am
As discussed, this is not the first lyric Fletcher has devoted to Shannon. There’s “Becky’s So Hot,” of course, but Fletcher’s Album “The S(ex) Tapes” was about her breakup with Shannon, who shot and directed all the music videos for that EP.
Shannon Expresses Concern Fletcher Will Write Songs About Her Forever
Fletcher, like Taylor Swift whose concert inspired her to write this song, sure is writing a lot of songs about Shannon. I guess this is equal rights!
Before the release of “Eras of Us,” Shannon, apparently already anticipating what was to come based on numerous social media clues Fletcher has been dropping recently, used the age progression filter on Tiktok to make a video that 1) suggests that she is capable of aging and 2) acknowledges that Fletcher was definitely writing a song about her.
24 of the Best Songs by Queer Artists in 2023
Needless to say, it’s been an exceedingly difficult year. With immeasurable attacks on LGBTQ+ health, safety, education, and civil liberties across the globe, it feels like a miracle that anyone could find the space and time to make art. And yet, thankfully, so many queer and trans artists did just that. In times like these, I’m reminded of the famous Toni Morrison quote, which she originally wrote in 2004 following the re-election of George Bush, but I feel is just as relevant now: “This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear.” At a time when rights for marginalized people have never been more perilous, consuming art made by queer and trans people feels particularly necessary and sacred. Here, in no particular order, we have gathered the best songs by queer artists released in 2023.
“Float” by Janelle Monae
Janelle Monae’s latest album, Age of Pleasure, is her most confident and carefree collection yet — and that’s saying something for an artist whose music has constantly championed body positivity, self actualization, and queer love. On “Float”, the artist celebrates growing into a new version of herself that soars above past hurt and negativity. The swelling brass and danceable percussion under Monae’s triumphant lyrics add to the track’s euphoric energy.
“On My Mama” by Victoria Monet
In 2023 R&B songstress Victoria Monet followed up her beloved and critically acclaimed 2020 album Jaguar with its phenomenal sequel, Jaguar II. Though each song on the new record is stellar, lead single “On My Mama” stands out for its sultry instrumentals and effortlessly catchy beat. In her trademark mix of vocals and rap, Monet reminds listeners how hot and untouchable she is.
“Happy Ending” by Kelela
In perhaps the biggest win for the queer community in 2023, Kelela made her long awaited return with her latest album, Raven. The collection delivers all the intimate electronic R&B listeners had been craving while ramping up the tempo of many of her songs, delivering several effortlessly danceable bangers. On this track, the artist dares to dream that her wishy-washy lover will stick around long enough to see their happy ending.
“no fun / party” by Kara Jackson
In April, Chicago folk singer Kara Jackson dropped her astounding debut record, which was perhaps one of the most unique albums released this year. Jackson’s combination of intimate, acoustic guitar and wholly original songwriting were a perfect vehicle to explore themes of grief, love, and being a young person in a dying world. On no fun / party, the artist perfectly encapsulates the dissonance of being young: Though being in your twenties is supposed to be a time of fun and discovery, the realities of figuring out one’s career and relationships rarely feel like a party.
“Tiny Garden” by Jamila Woods
Jamila Woods’ first two records were outward looking: HEAVN was a love letter to her Chicago community, and LEGACY!LEGACY! stood as a thank you to the Black radical artists and thinkers who came before her. On her latest record, Water Made Us, the artist takes an inward look, writing songs about her mental health and past relationships. On “Tiny Garden”, Woods beautifully and poetically characterizes the slow, painful, and incredibly fulfilling process of growth by comparing it to a garden: “it’s not gonna be a big production, but I feed it every day.”
“Carpenter” by Vagabon
Vagabon’s music is chameleonic: though the artist started out in indie rock, her sophomore album showcased her pop repertoire, while her most recent album, Sorry I Haven’t Called, leans more into R&B and electronic sounds. Standout track “Carpenter” is an effervescent, upbeat track. Over rhythmic percussion and euphoric brass sounds, the artist opines about the process of gearing herself up for the life and relationship she wants: “I wasn’t ready for what you were saying,” she recalls, “but I’m more ready now.”
“Prescription” by Remi Wolf
Remi Wolf is perhaps best known for her sexy, upbeat, and larger than life R&B and alternative rock songs, as best showcased on her 2021 debut album, Juno. On her latest track, “Prescription,” the artist slows down, leaning into a more mellow and psychedelic groove. Over swelling piano and triumphant brass, Wolf uses her trademark harmonies to wax poetic about a love so healing it feels like “my own prescription.”
“Damn Gloves” by Serpentwithfeet
Serpentwithfeet’s latest single, “Damn Gloves”, feels like a complete 180 from the artist’s earliest earliest tracks, which leaned into an ethereal, otherworldly aesthetic. In contrast, “Damn Gloves” relies on quick electronic beats and staccato lyrics which emphasize the rough and fast-paced dance floor hook up the artist describes. The song is an exciting addition to the artist’s repertoire, and proof he can navigate not only R&B, but also rap and electronic sounds with ease.
“Ecolachia” by Yves Tumor
On “Ecolachia”, Yves Tumor returns with another effortlessly sexy rock anthem, this time with a bit of a cheeky twist. The song plays on the idea of “ecolachia,” itself, or the “meaningless repetition of words spoken by another person.” True to form, the song has few lyrics aside from many “ahs,” and the words Tumor does say — “you look so good,” “you look so magical,” — tend to repeat themself. But the repetition proves effective: the listener walks away knowing exactly how the artist feels.
“What It Is (Block Boy)” by Doechii
Doechii is no stranger to creating an effortlessly catchy pop-rap anthem, and this year she blessed us once more with “What It Is (Block Boy)”. The infectiously danceable trap behind Doechi’s lyrics bring life to the song’s message, and the accompanying music video showcase the artist’s incredible dance chops.
“Dibujos de mi Alma” by Y La Bamba
Lovely and ethereal as ever, the Mexican alternative folk band Y La Bamba returned this year with their seventh studio album, Lucha. On “Dibujos de mi Alma”, the vocalist reminisces about her past love over a stunning combination of playful brass, rhythmic percussion, and synthy guitar.
“Will Anybody Ever Love Me?” by Sufjan Stevens
This fall, Sufjan Stevens came out as queer with the release of his latest album, Javelin, which he dedicated to his partner who had passed away earlier this year. The record is devastating and gorgeous in equal measure, and on the standout track “Will Anybody Ever Love Me?”, the artist delicately pontificates on the elusiveness of healthy love over wistful, folksy strings.
“Gimme A Chance” by Dreamer Isioma
R&B musician Dreamer Isioma’s latest album, Princess Forever, showed immense artistic growth for the artist, who used their latest record to experiment with a number of new genres and sounds. On standout track “Gimme A Chance”, Dreamer masterfully blends elements of disco, Afrobeats, and pop to create a song that feels groovy, optimistic, and sexy all at once.
“alone” by WILLOW
WILLOW is a pro at keeping listeners on their toes: With her past few records, the artist has shifted from acoustic pop to dream pop to alternative rock. On “alone”, WILLOW’s sound changes once more, moving away from the harder rock of her previous record into something softer and more mellow. Through lackadaisical acoustics and her trademark stellar harmonies, WILLOW makes being alone sound like the most peaceful thing in the world.
“Figure 8” by Paramore (Re: Bartees Strange)
Paramore’s latest album, Re: This Is Why, had a feature on every song; other queer artists featured include Remi Wolf and Julien Baker. “Figure 8”, featuring the wonderful Bartees Strange, is dark and mystical — electric guitar, harsh percussion, and ominous piano give the song a tough, rock and roll edge. Just as the listener has settled into the moody vibe Strange has created, he switches up, riffing melodically over a stripped down guitar: The song is a testament to his immense creative range.
“Famous Last Words” by Ethel Cain
Ethel Cain first released “Famous Last Words” on her Soundcloud alongside a note that read “can’t stop thinking about bones and all, this one’s for lee and maren.” She is referring to the 2022 horror film Bones And All, which follows two young cannibals on a roadtrip across the country. Over stripped down guitar, Cain sings of a love so visceral it feels like it’s eating her alive: “Eat of me baby skin to the bone, body on body until I’m all gone, but I’m with you inside.” Only Ethel Cain could make something as grotesque as cannibalism sound so lovely.
“thicc” by Shygirl
Nobody knows how to deliver a sexy dance anthem quite like Shygirl, as the artist proves yet again with her latest electronic pop track, thicc. Like most of Shygirl’s repertoire, the song is sensual and danceable in equal measure. It is also the first new music the artist has dropped since her 2022 debut album Nymph, and listeners can only hope the track is a hint at a larger project to come in the new year.
“sulky baby” by Yuele
Yuele dropped their stellar third album, softscars, this year. Though several tracks on the record are excellent, “sulky baby” stands out for how it effortlessly blends genres and moods: The combination of electronic and acoustic sounds behind the artist’s soft vocals somehow leave the listener feeling nostalgic and amped up all at once.
“Needs” by Tinashe
Tinashe continued her prolific music career this year with the release of her sixth studio album, BB/Angel. Standout track “Needs” coalesces elements of soft rap and an old school R&B groove, a new and effortlessly smooth addition to the artist’s ever-expanding repertoire.
“The King” by Anjimile
Anjimile’s sophomore album, The King, is aptly named; several of the tracks feel positively regal. The title song opens with mellifluous harmonies with an almost ancient feeling, but as the song progresses Anjimile moves the listener from a soothing opening to something more worrisome: Quicker paced vocals and sharp, metallic piano signal trouble is underway. “The King” masterfully showcases not only Anjimile’s creative talent, but his storytelling capabilities.
“Under The Sun” by SPELLLING
SPELLLING & The Mystery School, released earlier this year, contains re-recorded versions of several of the Oakland-based experimental pop artist’s biggest hits. On “Under The Sun”, the artist made several key changes from the original track: where the 2019 version had a strictly electronic, spooky feel, the instrumentation of the re-release utilizes piano and strings to create a theatric, disco-adjacent vibe. The track feels at once retro and intergalactic.
“What Should I Do?” by Kevin Abstract
Kevin Abstract’s heavily-acoustic fourth album, Blanket, showcases a new side for the artist. On “What Should I Do?” the artist smartly combines hearty strings with slightly autotuned vocals to give the song a surprisingly earnest feel.
“You Can Be Mean” by Indigo de Souza
Indigo de Souza is beloved by fans for many reasons, but perhaps the biggest is her brutally honest and always relatable song writing. On “You Can Be Mean”, off her latest album All Of This Will End, the artist provides a juicily angsty bop that tries to provide empathy to a toxic ex. “I’d like to think you got a good heart and your dad was just an asshole growing up,” she muses over electric guitar and crashing percussion, “but I don’t see you trying that hard to be better than he is.”
“For Granted” by Yaeji
“For Granted”, the electronic pop track off Yaeji’s latest album, With A Hammer, is both effortlessly danceable and brilliantly written. Though the song starts off slow, the beat picks up speed and the vocals become higher with each verse: a manifestation of the artist’s panic that she’s taking her relationship for granted. As the track closes out, Yaeji sings a mantra to herself and her listeners: “let it flow and I’ll be, let it flow and I’ll see.”
A Holiday Gift Guide For Your Favorite Gaylor
In 2018, my life was forever changed when I was introduced to the idea that my beloved Taylor Swift was secretly queer. I spent that night going down the rabbit hole (iykyk) and learning everything I could on Gaylor theory. From that night on, I was a full-fledged Gaylor, but usually in secret. Eventually, I found out that several of my friends were also Gaylors. We spent a lot of the early days of the pandemic doing Gaylor Zooms where we’d share our favorite theories and interpretations. We still have a Gaylor group chat.
Since the release of folklore, more people have jumped on the Gaylor train. People have certainly become more vocal about their beliefs — whether or not that’s a good thing is debatable. But the influx in Gaylors means that there is more themed merch out there for us to hide in plain sight, like Karlie Kloss at the Eras Tour. Whether you’re a general Gaylor, a Swiftgron shipper (hello my people) or a Kaylor, there’s something for you here.
Gaylor’s Version T-Shirt ($25)
I love this clever play on the re-recordings. You can get it in two different shirt styles and a bevy of colors and sizes.
I Want Her Midnights Embroidered Sweatshirt – Navy ($52)
One of the best lyrics changes in Gaylor lore. The shirt does come in other colors, but given the subject matter, navy just feels right.
Gaylor Badge – Taylor Swift – Black Background Sticker ($3+)
Stick this sticker anywhere and let people know you’re a scholar.
Groovy Gaylor Skinny Tumbler ($35)
I absolutely love the design of this artwork, and the fact that it’s Taylor and Fletcher? Obsessed.
Lavender Haze (Lover Lyric) T-Shirt – Berry ($34)
This linework art and the simplistic style of the lyric just scream sapphic.
Tay and Karlie Magnet ($8)
This is for the Kaylors out there. The art does come in things other than a magnet, but something about this image screams refrigerator, maybe with some sapphic refrigerator poetry to boot.
Vigilante Shit (Dressing for Revenge) Flowy Racerback Tank ($38)
This image has been burned into my eyelids since the first time I saw an Eras Tour photo.
Gaylor Fan Club Mug ($20)
Perfect for sipping your piping hot tea while scrolling the latest Gaylor theories on social media.
Taylor Swift “Gaylor” Friendship Bracelet Sweatshirt ($25+)
As someone who made a Gaylor friendship bracelet, I love this sweatshirt.
From a gay perspective Sticker ($3+)
Don’t we all listen to Taylor Swift from a gay perspective? This makes me miss having an iPod for some reason.
Blank Space Shirt ($40+)
“Blank Space” lyrics or a description of wlw relationships? Your choice.
Swiftie Pride Camping Mug ($22)
I’m actually a “sleepy eyed gay,” but that’s not the lyric, so.
1989 T-shirt ($40+)
Are we out of the woods yet? This subtle shirt begs the question.
Gaylor Shirt, Friend of Dorothea, Is She? ($35)
I absolutely love a queer history recall, and the combination here is a masterpiece.
So Scarlet It Was Maroon Lyric Art Sticker ($3+)
This sticker is an artful representation of one of my top 10 Gaylor songs.
Swiftgron Wonderland Classic T-Shirt ($24)
This image is iconic for us Swiftgron shippers, and I love the way they incorporated the lyrics to a song that is absolutely about Dianna Agron and not Harry Styles.
Bisexual Wig (You Need To Calm Down) Tough iPhone Case ($30)
If you want to be subtle and loud at the same time, this is the phone case for you. You can get one for any iPhone from an 11 to a 14.
Lavender Haze Sticker ($3+)
Again, love a sapphic history recall combined with a Tay Tay lyric.
Dancing With Our Hands Tied Crewneck Sweatshirt ($38+)
Nine years ago, Taylor and Karlie attended a 1975 concert. The rest is history.
Betty Taylor Swift Book Print – Digital Download ($5)
Taylor Swift has inspired many sapphic stories, and I love the idea of the lyrics as a chapter for a book.
Soul Train Awards Reject the Cis-Tem, Rename Gendered Award for Janelle Monáe
Feature image of Janelle Monáe accepting the Spirit of Soul award at the 2023 Soul Train Awards by Paras Griffin/Getty Images for BET.
On Sunday night at the 36th annual Soul Train Awards, Janelle Monáe received the night’s highest honor — the Spirit of Soul Award. Previously called the Lady of Soul Award (past awardees include Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, Alicia Keys, Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, Jasmine Sullivan, and Beyoncé to name a few), the award is one of the most illustrious that an R&B singer can win in their career. It’s a crowning jewel. As reported by Them.us, BET announced earlier this month that they were changing the award’s title in Janelle Monáe’s honor. Monáe was given the award by their protégés, the rap duo Flyanna Boss.
During their acceptance speech, Monáe spoke to the significance of the occasion. “There’s nothing like being recognized by your own family,” Monáe said on Sunday. “I’m so honored to have something like this for us that continues to evolve and showcase so many different forms of what soul can be.” This is especially true coming from to come from Soul Train — a media brand with over 50 years of close association with excellence in Black music.
The Spirit of Soul award is often thought of in Black communities as akin to a lifetime achievement, and as such Monáe reflected on their body of work thus far: “I wanted to shine a light on our community through my storytelling, through the art that I make through music, movies, fashion; bringing it back around to us, to our Blackness, to our beauty,” they said. “And I cannot help but think about the spirit of so many who’ve had to whisper to me, ‘thank you,’ in my ear because they did not feel seen. They did not feel safe. And they felt unheard for far too long. I’m thankful to be able to show up for you.”
Who’s cutting onions!! You simply cannot tell me that you aren’t tearing up right now!? Like??
In a pitch perfect wrap up (I’d expect nothing else from my ArchAndroid), Monáe invoked their own mentor, Prince, saying: “I’m thankful for the spirit of so many who have come before me. The spirit of Prince, whose spirit taught me ‘I’m not a woman. I’m not a man. I am something that you’ll never understand.’”
Janelle Monáe also opened the Soul Train Awards with a medley from their latest album The Age of Pleasure, already a queer classic and up for this year’s Album of the Year at the Grammys. The combination of “Float” and “Champagne Shit” will feel familiar to anyone who saw Janelle Monáe on tour this year, as the same two songs opened her tour. Notably, Monáe changed the closing lyrics of “Float,” which are designed as a toast, from cheering to “the fucked up shit we can’t erase” (as in, taking in all our mistakes as well as our beauty) to “to the people they can’t erase,” a nod to the night’s historic proceedings. Janelle smiled and raised their glass to the audience the audience, “they cannot erase us!”
As is often the way with Janelle Monáe performing, sapphics fall in their wake — the joy of watching Keke Palmer in the last minute of here simply is the best. (Watching Keke Palmer have joy right now is the best, no matter what.)
The Soul Train Awards’ decision to rename the Lady of Soul award to better reflect Janelle Monáe as a nonbinary artist comes at a time when many other award shows are grappling with how to adjust, make room, or otherwise embrace gender neutral categories in their ceremonies. In 2010, the Grammys moved towards gender neutral language, however many other major award shows — including the Emmys, Oscars, and Tonys — still do not. In fact, earlier this year, nonbinary star of the Broadway show & Juliet Justin David Sullivan pulled out of Tonys consideration due to the show’s gendered acting categories. When the Tonys aired in June, both the lead and supporting gendered acting awards for musicals, in categories intended to honor male-identified actors, went to two Black nonbinary actors: J. Harrison-Ghee for Some Like It Hot, and Glee alum Alex Newell for Shucked. The Soul Train Awards, a majority Black award show and annual Black community event, is in so many ways paving the way here. And I couldn’t be more proud of that fact.
And this is not completely related to the more serious matters at hand of Janelle Monáe quite literally changing the cis-tem at the Soul Train Awards, hosted by traditionally conservative Black media company BET.
However!
Just in case you missed it!! Janelle Monáe also went viral last week after they won a top-off with Usher in Vegas right before Thanksgiving. I personally watched this video carousel an umpteen number of times that I could no longer count and I’ve blushed and squirmed at each and every one of them?
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cz-AAbAJn3K/?img_index=2
All I’m saying is, big week for Janelle Monáe.
Grammy Nominations 2024: Janelle Monáe, Boygenius, and Victoria Monét Are Queering Awards Season
2024 Grammy Nominations: Photos by Chelsea Guglielmino/WireImage, Christopher Polk/Penske Media, Kaitlyn Morris, via Getty Images
The 2024 Grammy nominations were announced this morning at 8am PST and let me tell you they are GAY GAY GAY.
I’m sure a lot of us have a complicated relationship with the Grammys. I mean, every award show shouldn’t be taken too seriously, since they’re more about politics than talent. But the Grammys have felt especially frustrating over the years for reasons ranging from their continued support of abusive men to their inexplicable refusal to give Beyoncé Album of the Year to, you know, their overall historic mistreatment of women, queer people, and people of color.
Nevertheless, award shows do represent a skewed snapshot of mainstream culture, and the performances sure can be fun. So I can’t help but be a little excited that the 2024 Grammy nominations include so many of our queer favorites!
Let’s break these nominations down.
First, the big category: Album of the Year. Not one, but two, of my most listened to albums are included this year: boygenius’ The Record and Janelle Monáe’s The Age of Pleasure. I made two Pride playlists in June — one for partying and one for sad feelings — and I’m thrilled that the tentpoles of both are now award nominated. The Record had a grand total of seven (7!) nominations while The Age of Pleasure was oddly only nominated in one other category (Best Progressive R&B album). Miley Cyrus is also nominated for Album of the Year for Endless Summer Vacation, one of six nominations she received this year.
Bisexual icon and Kehlani’s ex Victoria Monét secured seven (7!) nominations of her own including Best New Artist and Record of the Year. She’s joined in the Best New Artist category by fellow bisexual Ice Spice, who has four nominations including two for her contribution to the Barbie soundtrack.
I’d be remiss not to mention that SZA also shows up nine (9!) times in the 2024 Grammy Nominations. I will respect her vagueness about her sexuality, but anyone who is as close as she is to Kehlani (see above) is at least going to get a mention.
Something fun about the Grammys is there are 91 categories, so I’m sure there are even more queers nominated who aren’t on our radar. Classical music gays, help me out, who are the queers in your world? (Other than Lydia Tár.)
But for now I’ll end this quick queer roundup of the 2024 Grammy Nominations by saying it’s always inspiring to me when queer artists manage to achieve mainstream recognition without compromising themselves. All of these artists are not just making great music as openly queer people but their open queerness is REALLY open and REALLY queer. The music itself is really queer too.
Queer sexuality is integral to Janelle Monáe and Victoria Monét’s work, and even boygenius, whose songs are more about gay feelings than gay sex, are always making out with each other on-stage! To be this gay and still get Grammy nominations is a sign of the undeniable greatness of these artists. Even if one of the straight nominees ends up winning Album of the Year, this recognition is still worth celebrating. And, hey, to misquote another straight Grammy winner: Well, nevermind. We are hot and we have the music.
Whether you’re making out with your friends and feeling cool about it or making out with your friends in your age of pleasure, this award season is looking to be better — and gayer — than most.
The 2024 Grammy Nominations can be seen in full here.
E.R. Fightmaster on Loving Femmes, James Bond, and Their New EP “Violence”
E.R. Fightmaster feature photo by Chelsea Guglielmino via Getty Images
E.R. Fightmaster is 31 years old, 6’1, has a 10-foot wingspan, and is ready for Violence.
When I used to talk about E.R. Fightmaster, I hardly ever used their name. Instead I’d refer to them as The First Nonbinary Actor to be on Grey’s Anatomy, or as their Instagram handle Genderless_Gap_Ad, or as the witch who played opposite Phoebe Bridgers in Lucy Dacus’ highly anticipated “Night Shift” music video. In a pinch, I could pull out a close up of their left hand and be met with a breathy “Oh, them! Yes, I know them,” and only get a little bit jealous.
After years of admiration, gender envy, and a few am I masc for masc after all? crises, I finally got a chance to chat with the writer-musician-actor-model-comedian-producer about their newly released EP Violence. I was nervous to enter the Zoom call but immediately felt at ease when they smiled at me between dimples and told me that we have some internet friends in common because of the big queer comedy world. They reminded me that I was talking to someone who came up in the comedy space, just like me, and I later learned that it was their experience on stage as a comic that gave them their confidence today. It gave me hope.
We discussed what their transness means to them, their dreams for Violence, and being our own heroes. Now, when I talk about them, I will refer to them as Fightmaster: a name that packs a punch as big as its owner.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Motti: I’m very excited about Violence. I love it a lot. When I first put it on I was transported back to my early queerness: when I first came out in grad school and I got my first girlfriend and was introduced to actually good music. The very first line of the first song reminded me of Alt-J, Rainbow Kitten Surprise, Dire Straits vibes.
Fightmaster: (gasps) That’s so funny. I was definitely listening to some Alt-J and Rainbow Kitten while I was writing this album, so that’s an honor.
Motti: I listened to it with my girlfriend, which might have been a mistake on my end.
Fightmaster: (laughing) I told somebody else that was asking who the music was for, “it’s for transmascs to listen to with their femme girlfriends.” That’s who it’s targeted to.
Motti: In “Cowboy Tumbleweed,” when you say, “I got something I think you need,” what did you mean by this?
Fightmaster: “I got something I think you need.” The person I was starting to see at that time was surrounded by a lot of negative energy and so even though I was writing this song in a state of depression, I could tell that when we were together, I was still providing her with a fun, joyful time. I think it’s because that’s how she made me feel, and so we were able to simultaneously dig each other out of these energy holes. That’s what I meant by “something I think you need.”
Motti: That’s a lot less horny than I thought it might be.
Fightmaster: What did you think it was? I have to know.
Motti: I thought maybe the lure and lust of androgyny and especially when it comes to sexual relationships. You hit the nail on the head. I do have a femme girlfriend who was previously with men so of course I know–
Fightmaster: That’s what the fun is! I think of masculinity as a positive thing. Inside of American culturalism we’ve turned masculinity into domination and control and treating others with as much derogatory energy as we can. But, for me, masculinity is the playful part, it’s the swagger. So when I talk about being fun, I was kind of talking about bringing what you’re talking about — that fun, masculine energy — to a place without a lot of the psychological heaviness and toxicity that I think she was used to.
Motti: Yeah, I’m just a little guy.
Fightmaster: I’m just a little guy! I say that all the time.
Motti: If you were to pick one song off of Violence to have featured in a queer movie, what song would it be and in what movie?
Fightmaster: I want to see “Violence” or “Bad Man” in a queer-lead James Bond. That’s what I really want. “Violence” specifically is such a soundtrack piece to me. It really has a nice length to it and a beautiful build. It’s just kind of a hot energy. “Bad Man” is so trans and so queer that I would feel happy to hear it anywhere, as something that was giving energy to a queer story. That’s so cool.
Motti: I really think you should be the next James Bond. You should do it.
Fightmaster: (gasps) I’m honored that you said that because that’s my big dream. I would really love to do that role. If I’m really honest, that’s the only reason I ever stay in shape is because someday, they might call.
Motti: And then you would get to do your own Adele “Skyfall.”
Fightmaster: Biiiiitch. That’s what I want. We’re getting somewhere.
Motti: Which song off of Violence should I not let my femme girlfriend listen to? Let’s say it together on three.
Both: One.
Two.
Three.
“HOT SHAME.”
Fightmaster: Yep. Yeah. You know that’s a song that when I perform it live– you know I pride the album on having as many double entendres as it possibly could just because I’m so fucking horny but also, I want it to have that tricky listenability. And the chorus of “Hot Shame” is the most filthy part of the album. I smile when I sing it.
Motti: My girlfriend’s favorite is “Wild One.”
Fightmaster: Oh that’s fucking rad! I love hearing that because that was the only one that wasn’t released as a single or as a feature track and so it warms my heart a little bit when that one gets the attention I think it’s due.
Motti: Correct me if I’m wrong, but you did everything but play the drums for this EP?
Fightmaster: Mhmm.
Motti: Is that because you knew you’d be too powerful?
Fightmaster: (laughs) You know, with this album I did something that I needed to see very badly. I did not grow up seeing women or queer people being the front men of music spaces, and when they were, they were singers. All of the people I saw, you know, shredding or playing the bass or playing the drums or whatever they were all the same looking white guy and so it does subconsciously just make you feel like that’s not a possibility. Your brain isn’t wired for that. And so I’ve spent years now, truly decades, getting to the place where I can play everything on the album, and I knew that I wanted to do that so that young me could have had me. I want young me to have me, that’s what it is.
I have to give credit to co-producer Riley Geare. He is one of those guys that can play absolutely everything and I think because he’s got that great big dick confidence, he really encouraged me also, to play everything that I could, and that freed me up to let him hop on things that he heard. So we were really in a collaborative, safe environment. I wasn’t surrounded by any men that were telling me, “Have a real bassist do it.” It was a good, queer experience.
Motti: I’m so glad you had that experience.
Fightmaster: Thank you. I’m learning the drums.
Motti: (hangs their head in defeat)
Fightmaster: I’m learning them because I know when the front woman of Haim hops on the drums, I have a spiritual experience and I’m ready to provide my audience with that same feeling.
Motti: So you would say that you’re pretty thirst motivated?
Fightmaster: Bitch, so thirst motivated. I’m trying to give a horny, thirsty experience. I also think that we, as transmasc people, grew up in a culture where we were seeing men get the praise from women that we wanted. I’m trying to kind of recreate that world, like rewire my own brain where I don’t have to be this guy from some fucking Abercrombie & Fitch ad. I’m actually becoming a better version of the guy that I saw, just to be honest.
Motti: And you are and say that.
Fightmaster: And you are. And you are and say that.
Motti: (blushes and laughs) So being transmasc, I’m sure that you’ve dealt with this because you’re wickedly talented but you’re also devilishly handsome. Do you feel the negativity of the sexualization of transmascs or are you kind of like, bring it on?
Fightmaster: Bring it on! I love women! I love femmes. I love little girly boys, I love all the feminine energy I can get, and I think that women throwing thirst a transmacs way means that there are less women throwing thirst to cis men, and as much as they think we have an agenda, our agenda is actually so much more sinister than they realize.
Motti: Have you ever seen that movie with Ryan Gosling and Steve Carrell… he’s teaching this guy how to dress cool, act cool, talk to girls, get laid. Would you ever, you know, consider giving that service to young transmascs folks?
Fightmaster: (laughing cynically) I think the thing that’s hot about transmasc people is there’s no encouragement to be transmasc. In order to have our identity, we have to be as in touch with our real selves as possible. To the outside world that comes off as you know, a hyper confidence or a thirsty swagger, but that’s because people who don’t care what other people think, and people that had to overcome violence to be who they are, those people are fucking hot. They don’t need it, they’re absolutely hot the way they are. I’ll just give them some music to fuck to.
Motti: And thank you for that.
Bella Ramsey recently was quoted saying that their nonbinary-ness is one of the least interesting things about them–
Fightmaster: I disagree. I literally think it’s the most interesting thing about a lot of people. I think that the way that we politicize things, and we talk about identity politics, that can be boring. But when you’re talking about people that are choosing their own humanity over gender rules so thickly engraved in our skin that they might as well be tattoos… I actually think that’s the most interesting thing about a lot of us. Because it’s about a mindset and that mindset is fascinating and it bleeds into everything that we do.
Motti: I agree. I respect their perspective of course–
Fightmaster: Absolutely.
Motti: They have their lived experience but I really appreciate that alternative way to look at it because sometimes I think as transmasc people and trans people in general, you’re kind of saying, “Am I talking about this too much?”
Fightmaster: But they want you to feel that way! What I actually think is that transness is euphoria and that’s why we talk so much about trans dysphoria because actually, to be trans is a euphoric state of being. You have to understand how much more important your relationship with self is than an entire society that’s trying to separate you from that self. I think when I’m around people and I make them very comfortable, they start to feel a transness in themselves and that’s because I’m celebrating all the aspects of their identity instead of coming to them to fulfill a role.
Motti: Mhmm.
Fightmaster: And so then they experience comfort and euphoria, and they attach that feeling to me, but I’m not the comfort in euphoria, it’s the transness that we should all be working towards. I don’t know your name before you tell me, so why would I know your pronoun before you told me? It’s actually a hyperfixation with genitals and they are projecting when they call us the perverts. To have to know what someone’s genitals look like so that you may treat them with respect or disrespect, that’s perverted.
Motti: I also wanted to give you the floor if there’s anything you want to say about Violence, not the practice of, but the EP. Unless you want to speak on violence.
Fightmaster: I think that queer people have been indoctrinated with the belief that violence is inherently bad and I think that is a tool to make us bystanders to our own experience of domination. I encourage all queer people to rethink what violence means to them. Does that mean nobody fucks with my friends, nobody fucks with my partners, nobody fucks with my community? ‘Cause that’s what it means to me. It does not mean that I go out in the world trying to dominate others, but it does mean that if anyone tries to dominate the people I love, I’m gonna give them a ride of a lifetime. So that’s violence and that also feels hot.
Motti: And that is hot. It’s received hot. Is that a position you’ve always had since you were young or was it after expressing yourself the way that you currently are with gender expression?
Fightmaster: I don’t know what came first, the chicken or the egg. I grew up with the name Fightmaster and so that is quite a given identity immediately. But my dad is also the best guy on the planet, and was such a firm believer that no one fucks with women and children and no one fucks with his friends. He was the least dominating person I’ve ever met, but I knew he could be violent, and that to me, was the ultimate form of masculinity. I always felt safe around him, but I never felt a weird insecurity where he needed to dominate the men around him. In fact, he was like the funny charmer, and so, I think that I did have a really good role model in that way for seeing what it meant to be masculine and violent without being toxic and abusive.
Motti: That’s brilliant. I feel similarly about like my big Italian dad with a heart of gold. It’s almost the beauty of knowing that they have it, but are choosing to reserve it for when it’s needed.
Fightmaster: Yes! I joke about men but I have a lot of men in my life that I care about. All of the men in my life are big dick sweeties that are working on themselves, and the way they attract women, and the way they are able to surround themselves with queer friendships is because they are practicing a form of masculinity that’s not insecure. I think that is so sexy to people because masculinity plus insecurity is what we’re talking about when we’re talking about that toxicity. But masculinity plus joy, masculinity plus calm, masculinity plus acceptance and community, that’s a really beautiful version of our gender.
Violence is now streaming everywhere. If you’ve somehow made it this long without doing so, you can thirst follow E.R. Fightmaster on Instagram, TikTok, and X.
Britney Spears Music Videos, Ranked By Homoeroticism
If you’re anything like me, you purchased The Woman In Me the moment it was released, read the entire thing in one day, and then spent a lot of time thinking about your life and Britney Spears’ life and all the ways her life has been a part of your life and how long it took for her to finally be free (wild that I wrote this piece about Britney Spears’ conservatorship in 2011!) and that glorious moment at the MTV VMAs when Britney kissed Madonna and basically all the glorious moments of her career and how you hung her photo over your desk in college which you realize in retrospect was very gay. And then you wanted to get all of your friends together and tackle an important topic relevant to our community: the relative homoeroticism of Britney Spears’ music videos.
So, please join me, Editor-in-Chief Carmen, Managing Editor Kayla, A+ Director Nico and For Them Social Media / Comms Lead Motti as we dig into the relative homoeroticism of the Britney Spears Music Video cannon. (thank you to the onyx zone for its thorough collection of music video screenshots!)
Britney Spears Music Videos, Ranked By Homoeroticism
18. Overprotected (2002)
Riese: honestly this video could not possibly be saying less about anything
Motti: okay im sorry to say i have never heard this song in my life
Carmen: (i’m glad someone said it)
17. I’m a Slave 4 U (2001)
Nico: Not very homoerotic to me, but WHAT is that lace harness situation she’s wearing?
Riese: i think i prefer the britney s pierce music video version sorry
Kayla: I did also rewrite the words to this song for a 9th grade biology project about the different parts of the cell, called I’m A Cell 4 U
Riese: k a y l a
Nico: It’s telling me so much about you that this was your go-to.
Motti: she looks like Troye Sivan’s drag persona here
16. Lucky (2000)
Riese: i hope this is on the “seven husbands of evelyn hugo” soundtrack
Nico: crying silently in bed while your doppelgänger / past / current self sings to you is homoerotic
Carmen: A fun fact about “Lucky” is that the first dyke I ever knew who was roughly my age, as opposed to some far away adult (she was senior my freshman year of high school) used to sing this song to her girlfriend in the parking lot outside of theatre rehearsals. And then we would day dream together about running away to Chicago to be “artists” even though she was three years older than me and I was decidedly not her girlfriend? And also still in the closet? And also didn’t even know I was in the closet, because I thought I was straight?
And friends, that is gay.
Nico: I would sing this to Mya my dog sometimes :sob: “She’s so lucky, she’s a star!”
15. Stronger (2000)
Riese: everyone did the least for this
Carmen: I simply must rank this higher than I should because it’s every drag queen starter pack
Motti: woman + wet = gay
Carmen: hmmmhmm. yes. true.
perhaps even, the most true.
14. Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman (2002)
Riese: singing in nature is sort of gay and the passageways between two of the canyons begs a comparison to genitalia
Motti: “not a girl, not yet a woman” = me as fuck
okay so maybe not very homoerotic but what’s gayer than a ripped woman on top of a mountain
more points for being an AFAB nonbinary anthem
13. My Prerogative (2004)
Nico: There’s just something gay about crashing a car into a pool at a pool party. It feels like something Shane or Alice or Jenny would do on The L Word. AND THEN, what was that look Britney shares with that woman leaning in a door frame?
Riese: does sort of feel like a victorias secret angels ad but sped up
12. Womanizer (2008)
Riese: bisexual bob
Nico: Britney’s various characters in this feel like a bisexual girl gang has assembled to take care of the one friend in a toxic relationship with a cishet dude. Not so much homo-eroticism as it is homo-friendship.
Motti: the opening scene gives me flashbacks to Lucy Liu in Charlie’s Angels barracuda scene
11. Oops, I Did it Again (2000)
Nico: there is something so, core-ly, intrinsically gay about singing to a guy friend who thinks you have feelings for him that you in fact, do not have those kinds of feelings for him
Kayla: every time this song comes up, I’m legally obligated to share that for a fourth grade science project I rewrote the words to this song to be about the different types of rocks and performed it for my whole class
Nico: AAAAAAHHHHHH
Riese: KAYLA
Kayla: I had a habit of rewriting Britney songs but this was my finest work
10. Circus (2008)
Nico: Giving us a lot of femme top energy here.
Riese: menswear and a whip, dom vibes
Motti: there was more homoeroticism in Hugh Jackman’s scenes in the Greatest Showman but I’ll give this a 6
9. Baby One More Time (1998)
Riese: the schoolgirl scenes are as heteroerotic as they come, but the basketball scenes are gay
Nico: I want those shoes.
Kayla: Can’t explain it but I do think my bottom origin story starts here
Nico: wow i really do want to know more tho
Carmen: Some of y’all weren’t at the start of your Catholic school experience when this video first dropped, and it shows.
For bonus points, imagine tween Carmen jumping and down on her bed in her cotton candy pink bedroom, all hopped up on hormones and no where yet to put them.
Kayla: Okay points have been made
Motti: as someone who went to catholic school, they all would have gotten written up. wish there were more scenes with teacher-in-a-blazer
8. Work Bitch (2013)
Nico: The combo of dreaming of labor and the anti-body positivity here is not giving me homoeroticism, it’s giving me the cringiest cishet vibes. Sorry byeee.
Riese: but she’s whipping another girl ! in the desert!
she did say she did say this song was written “in respect to the gays,” but i think that she definitely meant gay men here
Nico: she sure did
okay yeah and then this also happens:
Nico: i’ll give it queer with a lower-case “q”
Motti: it was the leashes for me
7. Toxic (2004)
Riese: the leather catsuit with the red hair is giving pansexual, all the men in this video are props
Nico: this video was not created for the heterosexual male gaze that’s for sure
Kayla: The men legit look like AI
Carmen: When she wipes her lips while wearing a diamond encrusted body suit. WHEN SHE WIPES HER LIPS.
Motti: timestamp 1:48
6. Hold it Against Me (2011)
Riese: this is mostly homoerotic for men because all the men in this video are her gay best friends
but also there is a britney vs britney-esque person fight club which is incredibly homoerotic in a different (lesbian) way
Nico: Britney being homoerotic with herself again! I think seeing Bottoms has made that scene even more homoerotic for me.
also you’re right that these are all her gay friends
if there wasn’t music, the set would just sound like a flurry of grindr pings
Kayla: I’ve always been into erotic doppelganger vibes and now I’m wondering if Britney videos are the root of this
Nico: There are SO MANY where she is just very into herself, Kayla.
I am similarly wondering if this is a root.
Motti: obsessed with the blue-man-group-ness of this one
Kayla: I’ve always said the blue man group is homoerotic
Nico: Always?
Motti: for my 15th birthday i took friends into the city to see BMG…
5. Til the World Ends (2011)
Nico: Every single backup dancer in this reads as queer with their haircuts and their post-apocalyptic costumes. Mad Max aesthetics are hyper homo-erotic. Britney sensuously dancing and writhing with all of these queers in this cyberpunk dystopia is…extremely homoerotic of her.
Riese: yes literally was about to say the same, “britney spears is the only straight person in this video”
underground queer dance party
Nico: There are poppers at this party. There are dental dams at this party. There are pamphlets on abortion rights at this party. There are glory holes at this party. Yes.
4. Gimme More (2007)
Riese: pole dancing with other dancers
Nico: the way she plays both herself as a patron of the club…and a dancer at the club? britney is very often being homo-erotic with herself but you know what it’s allowed. be free.
Carmen: There’s no way you get past the “It’s Britney.. bitch” needle drop and don’t rank it at least a 9 out of 10, on principle.
3. If U Seek Amy (2009)
Nico: Did Britney just pick up a pair of panties like she was trying to track down their owner? Homoerotic AF. This entire song is just her singing about how multiple genders want to fuck her and more than implying that Britney is into that in a group sex kind of way, including when it comes to a circle of what are apparently queerleaders gyrating around and onto her?
Riese: ALL OF THE GIRLS AND ALL OF THE BOYS ARE BEGGING TO F U C K ME
Nico: See and that’s a nice way to feel.
Good for her.
Carmen: I just went back and re-ranked every other video based on this scale. This is the standard bearer.
Motti: shouldn’t have watched during work hours
2. Me Against the Music (2003)
Riese: menswear
yearning through a wall
admittedly the glee version is playing a role in my perspective on this film
Nico: yes to menswear
and a leather/pleather tie??
also Madonna being present
Riese: mommi stuff going on here
Nico: in a white suit. with a cane. she’s ridiculously mommi in this
lol
Riese: LOL
Nico: This video has been declared Official Mommi Media
what is this bed frame situation
that took it to a 10
when you put Britney in proximity to a bisexual woman she does match that energy
Kayla: two words: pleather fedora
Motti: i echo Riese’s mommi comment
this is the kind of hair whipping that her conservators were profiting off of. she was right to gatekeep it in vegas residency
Riese: the “gatekeeping her hair” story is one of many underrated bombshells revealed in this year’s most beloved memoir “the woman in me” by britney spears
1. Slumber Party (2016)
Riese: britney spears and tinashe have lesbian sex in this video basically
Kayla: Yes that is lesbian sex
Nico: I always do that shoe toss thing during lesbian sex.
Did she just lick from a plate while on all fours while wearing a spiked dog collar?
Motti: oh..my god.
also lmao the shoe toss “lets get rid of these heels girl and put you in some birkenstocks”
Victoria Monét Spent the Weekend Singing a Love Letter About Strap-Ons, How Bout You?
It’s rare that I come busting into office on a Monday morning to ask if there’s room on our schedule to write a standalone pots about (checks notes) a single solitary TikTok video. But on Friday night a friend sent me Victoria Monét’s homemade promo for her verse on Summer Walker’s “Girls Need Love (Girl’s Mix).” I got as far as Victoria swinging an extension chord between her legs like it’s a strap while crooning “Pussy is power, come get you a charge” before I knew I was about to make an exception:
@victoriamonet 😍🤪🤎 GIRLS NEED LOVE remix featuring me out now everywhere @Summer Walker i love youuu!!!🤌🏾🥹🤎 #GirlsNeedLove #Girlsmix #SummerWalker #VictoriaMonet #newmusic
♬ Girls Need Love (Girls Mix) – Summer Walker & Victoria Monét
I know that I keep writing about Victoria Monét lately — when she confirmed that 2020’s sensationally hot “Touch Me” was about her ex Kehlani, the sexy androgynous tomboy vibes of her “On My Mama” music video, and that her latest album release Jaguar II is at the forefront of fighting for queer R&B’s life. But listennnnnn, no one is writing about queer sex like Victoria Monét and I don’t know what else it’s going to take to convince you, but hopefully “Imma need more than a handshake, baby go and get that strap” is a start.
Summer Walker was already onto a good thing with “Girls Need Love” — a tribute to the fact that girls, and more specifically Black girls, never get to be gleefully and flagrantly horny on the track. But the original included a Drake feature, so updating the “Girls Need Love (Girls Remix)” with features from Victoria Monét, Tyla, and Tink is such a glow up. Each artist gets their own version of the song as a part of EP released on Friday. That Victoria Monét, who’s bisexual, used her version of the track to pay homage to the playfulness and intimacy of Black queer sex should not be a surprise, but it is oh so welcome.
Did I get to the part where she sings, “Look me in the eyes, so you can see how I react” — oh I didn’t? I rewound that part of the TikTok fifty-eleven times because… [the call drops]
Have a Heartbreak Halloween With Nonbinary Artist Black Polish’s New Song “Graves”
‘Tis the season for ghosts and goblins, witches and vampires, new relationships… and hauntings from an ex. Nothing says Halloween gay like feeling angsty in a graveyard and in their new music video Black Polish makes the queer community proud.
With references ranging from Mitski to Paramore to Fleetwood Mac, Black Polish has an alt rock sound that will have you screaming all your gay feelings.
This video has everything you could want from October: dripping blood, dragging dead bodies, peak mummy fashion, and even a black and red striped shirt I’m choosing to take as a nod to A Nightmare On Elm Street. Black Polish understands there’s a fine line between horror and the horror of heartbreak.
There have been more Halloween-appropriate songs in recent years — largely thanks to the gays — but personally I won’t be satisfied until there’s as much music for Gay Christmas as there is for straight Christmas.
“Graves” is so catchy and I relish the opportunity to have “But I’m pulling teeth/To pick your brain/And when you bleed/soak up the pain” stuck in my head when I’m in between horror movie viewing. The age of slowing down upbeat songs to make them creepy on-screen is over — this one is ready to go.
(And, hey, if you like your sad queer autumn with fewer graveyards, you can always check out their other song “Sad Lesbians.”)
Black Polish’s debut album Forest (Monsters Live In Trees) comes out this January and I’ll leave you with their own thoughts on the album (and, I’m assuming, failed queer love):
Forest is not a place, it’s a state of mind. A state of mind where I am constantly looping back with no knowledge of escape. One thing about the woods is if you don’t remember how you got in, the chances of getting out are slim.
I Saw MUNA and boygenius and All I Got Was a Surge of Queer Joy
feature image photo by Taylor Hill / Contributor via Getty Images
I have been in therapy for the past six years and been out as gay for almost 12. In a recent conversation with my therapist, who in a dramatic turn of events is named Destiny, I admitted something I hadn’t realized: Maybe the reason I struggle so much with dating is because I am in some ways still ashamed of my lesbianism. I grew up Catholic, in the Missouri suburbs. My family was never anti-gay, but they weren’t the biggest fans of my coming out either. I came into my adolescence in the early 2010s, when shows like Glee were changing the conversation about gay representation, and while that made me luckier than queer folk who’d come before me, there was still a lack in my personal repertoire for lesbian/sapphic understanding. Being a lesbian in a patriarchal society is a special kind of loneliness. In a culture that focuses so much of its attention on appeasing and elevating heterosexuality and maleness, centering lesbianism is a careful, difficult choice. And don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t change this aspect of me for the world. I think my queerness has opened me to the most beautiful world of people and opportunities. But that doesn’t mean being a lesbian cannot be extremely isolating, as evidenced by an entire canon of lesbian TikToks lamenting the same fate.
I think this is why, sitting in Madison Square Garden on October 2, I found myself overwhelmed unexpectedly. Fondly nicknamed “MUNAgenius,” the October 2 boygenius concert at Madison Square Garden featured MUNA as the opener. Two bands made up almost entirely of queer women/non-men opening and headlining one of, if not the, most iconic concert venue. When my friend Emma Claire told me she had a spare ticket and that all I had to pay for was my flight to NYC, how could I refuse?
My first foray into the MLCU (Musical Lesbian Cinematic Universe) was discovering Julien Baker in 2016, a year after the release of her debut album Sprained Ankle. Shared with me by my college friend Alice, I was smitten at once with the raw courage of Baker’s lyricism. Even now, I struggle to highlight one verse from one song, as the entire album shaped a part of my heart that even today I cannot verbally define. I got to see Baker for a show in St. Louis in December 2017, where I was a part of the calmest mosh pit I’ve ever been in. A big concert teenager, this was the first show I’d been to where the crowd’s hushed tone was not boredom but reverence. I felt lifted from my body and vulnerable in a way I had not quite felt in a public space like this before. Baker dug a nail into my hand, and it has not released itself since.
So of course, like any good lesbian, I followed her into her new band boygenius when they released their EP in 2018, and from that discovered Lucy Dacus and Phoebe Bridgers. MUNA came later for me. I knew a couple songs, but it wasn’t until the rocket-launch success of “Silk Chiffon” that I finally took the time to listen to the rest of their discography. Very quickly I fell in deep, deep infatuation.
Bands like boygenius and MUNA feel like a recent necessary phenomenon. Of course queer bands have existed for a long time; but the sheer scale of these two bands’ successes are astronomically unexpected. When I first heard they were doing a show together at MSG, I was shocked. My first response was to question their ability to fill such an expansive venue. Of course every queer person I know listens to these bands, and with both MUNA and Bridgers’ stunts as openers for the Eras Tour, it’s not that surprising for their names to become household. But still, I was skeptical.
But then, I went to the show. And as someone with a flair for the dramatic, I know how this will sound, but the truth is I finally understood that sacred feeling one can get in a religious service. MSG seats approximately 19,500 — that means 19,500 (because the show was sold out) people descended upon MSG for two queer/sapphic bands to sing songs about loving and being loved by women, about existing as queer in a society that would otherwise stamp it out. While I’m sure not everyone at the venue was queer or a woman, many and even most of the people I saw were young queer women, nonbinary people, and/or trans folks, masculine and feminine alike. Some wore merch, others wore emphatic costumes resplendent in fastidious colors and glittery ambiance. A few dressed in costumes that recalled particular lyrics: One teenager dressed as an angel with a furry halo and white nightgown, referencing “Not Strong Enough’s” “always an angel, never a god.” Another pair wore matching leather jackets with an economy of patches and the last names of the members on their backs, replicating boygenius’ jackets from a previous tour. Similar to the thematic energy of concerts like Harry Styles and Taylor Swift, the crowd at MUNAgenius were clearly fans who were making this concert an event.
In an interview with Harry Levin for the Grammys, Dacus says that she believes “queerness and joy are inextricable themes.” She goes on: “Why be queer if you aren’t trying your very best to access more joy in your life or more authenticity?” This is exactly how it felt to be there at MSG that night. Before boygenius had even come on, MUNA’s set sent me into a revelatory orbit of self: Hearing a crowd of that insurmountable size gleefully screaming along to the unambiguous lesbian anthem of “Silk Chiffon,” or “I Know A Place,” the entirety of which is about the journey to queer self-love through community…there’s nothing like that experience. “I Know A Place,” with lyrics like: “You think being yourself / means being unworthy, / and it’s hard to love / with a heart that’s hurting, / but if you want to go out dancing, / I know a place we can go.” Hearing an entire stadium dancing hard and singing along was a moment comparable only to me squeezed in a small now-shuttered venue in St. Louis to hear Hayley Kiyoko’s “Girls Like Girls” — except times a billion (I’m bad at math).
And of course the energy continued with boygenius, whose songs of queer friendship that do not shy from the ugliness of self-loathing, of lineage, of mistakes and stumblings, but above all, what it means to love and be loved by other queer folk, whether that be romantic or platonic. I knew I liked boygenius but somehow was shocked by how I knew all the words to every last song, even the ones I barely listened
to.
Dacus at one point quipped between songs that the sheer enormity of their audience didn’t make any sense. But after being there, it made all the sense in the world. Queer people of all kinds need each other. We crave understanding, and we crave community. The gross torrent of rainbow capitalism is not that recognition, and many queer folks my age have outgrown believing otherwise. We crave the authenticity of queer folk who love their queerness but are still unafraid to experience it in all its colors: grief, possession, anger, loss. boygenius allows us these feelings. And they, alongside MUNA, allow for the most important of all, which is that objective exhilaration of queer joy. Not just in queer joy as seen on rainbow parade floats or in Wells Fargo commercials, but the kind that leave you and your friends to scream into the seeming abyss together, to “sleep in cars and kill the bourgeoisie,” to encounter one another in each life and agree to continue into the next with every drop of sweat and blood in your body, because what else is there besides each other?
Closing out the night with “Salt in the Wound” from their first EP, boygenius ran like schoolchildren around the stage, shirts off and planting fat kisses on one another, while MUNA was similarly joyous and boisterous on the B-stage. The last lyric of this song is “They say the hearts and minds are on your side. / They say the finish line is in your sights. / What they don’t say is what’s on the other side. / They say the hearts and minds are on your side.”
Of course the perverted lesbian in me was cheering at the end for topless Dacus and Bridgers, but the truer lesbian in me was cheering for all that had brought me to this moment: the queer loves (romantic and platonic) that have sustained me throughout my life, that have kept me alive in a world that wants me dead, that have given me reasons to write poems and smell flowers and take walks to buy vegan muffins from the bakery by my apartment. boygenius and MUNA alike remind me, remind us, that we do not have to suffer, and that even in our suffering, we are not alone. That the love queer folks can have for another is the most beautiful love one can achieve, and it is so powerful, it can fill a stadium like Madison Square Garden, the walls echoing with lyrics like “True Blue’s” “And it feels good to be known so well. / I can’t hide from you like I hide from myself. / I remember who I am when I’m with you.” I hope everyone thinks of someone when they hear this song. And I hope this song reminds them that someone thinks of them too.
On *NSYNC and Being a Lesbian Who Loves Boy Bands
feature image photo by John Shearer / Contributor via Getty Images
The year 1998 was a big one for me: My world had been rocked ever since I saw Angelina Jolie’s boobs in the movie Gia on HBO. It was also the same year I fell in love with *NSYNC. In my mind, there was never a conflict between those two things. I could want Angelina to kiss me like she kissed Elizabeth Mitchell, and I could also want Justin Timberlake to kiss me like that, too. But as a 12-year-old girl, I didn’t have the language to share those latent bisexual feelings with anyone else. How could I explain to someone that when I went to see Armageddon twice in the movie theater, I was interested in Liv Tyler just as much as I was interested in Ben Affleck? I couldn’t, so I decided to keep the parts of me I couldn’t explain to myself until I could explain.
Liking girls was a thing I couldn’t figure out in relation to liking boys. It was always a feeling that simmered below the surface, and only I could access it. When you’re very vocally boy crazy, how do you add in there that there are some very specific girls who make you crazy too, even if you don’t have the words for it yet? You have to remember, it was the late 90s, and bisexual wasn’t a word that got used often in my world. It would be years before there were queer female characters on TV shows for kids or teens, and I didn’t really watch a lot of TV back then anyway. I was all about music. Musicians like Hayley Kiyoko and Fletcher were still learning how to tie their shoes — female singers who sang the kind of pop music I loved were definitely not queer.
Being super vocal about things I love is a huge part of my personality, so of course when I was a teen, all I talked about was boy bands. It was the thing I cared most about. Algebra has yet to serve me, but you never know when you’re going to have to explain that the letters of *NSYNC are actually the last letters of each of their first names and that the original fifth member of the group was named Jason. My love for *NSYNC became a core part of my identity. I say they’re baked into my DNA, and I’m really not kidding. Without them I would have never met some of my dearest friends, started my interest in pop culture criticism, or found my love of writing.
When I was in high school, I discovered fanfiction, and it became yet another obsession. It started with *NSYNC, even though I did occasionally read fics where the boy bands cross pollinated. Fanfiction was actually one of the ways that I could explore my bisexuality. I didn’t write sapphic stories, but I enjoyed reading them when I could find them. I remember reading them late at night when I was sure my parents were asleep, the same way I had watched Gia on HBO multiple times. I would never print it out and read it the way I had stacks and stacks of *NSYNC fanfic (both het fic and slash) printed out to read whenever I wanted. Despite the volume of fics I had, I kept them largely hidden. Even though I hid them (even the het fic), it felt easier to explain to my mom why I was reading stories where the members of *NSYNC were gay than why I was reading stories about Christina and Britney getting it on at a slumber party if she ever found them. Because then I would have to admit to her that I was attracted to girls, and I didn’t know how to have that conversation, or if it would go over well.
I never used my love of boy bands to cover my attraction to girls. Mainly because I didn’t have to; people in my life did it for me. When all you do is talk about Justin Timberlake, people just assume you idolized Christina Aguilera and not that you wanted her to kiss you. It was easy to keep my bisexuality tucked into my back pocket back then because it was still so abstract to me. I had never met a girl in real life that I wanted to kiss or date, so why did I need to tell anyone?
I did consciously hide behind boy bands to explain why I rarely had crushes on real life boys. I had a few crushes in middle and high school, but those boys felt abstract, even when I saw them in the hallway every day. Sure, I liked seeing them, and they were nice, but I also wonder how much of that was me liking the idea of a boy but not really liking them romantically. Most of my friends in high school had boyfriends, so even though I didn’t see myself as less than because I didn’t have one, I wanted one so that I felt included in their world. As much as I attributed my lack of a boyfriend to being awkward around boys, I also knew how to pursue someone I was attracted to. I spent the entire summer of 2003 hooking up with a girl, and even though she initially suggested the idea of hooking up, it took me no time to run with it.
When I told my friends that I had spent the summer hooking up with a girl, it was not well received. I don’t know if it was because they could not reconcile the version of me who spent all of her time writing Justin Timberlake fan fiction with the version of me that was hiding behind cars kissing a girl, or because of their own internalized biphobia. Either way, it sent me running back into the closet.
During my “aggressively heterosexual” phase of life (aka my twenties), I buried my fangirl tendencies because I thought guys would find it weird. This proved true with my boyfriend. He couldn’t seem to accept my love for JT, nor did he appreciate the way I swooned over him. When *NSYNC reunited at the 2013 VMAs, he was ambivalent about my excitement, and didn’t support me the way I hoped he would have. He knew I loved them as a teenager, but he didn’t seem to ever want to understand why they meant so much to me. He also knew I identified as bi, but he was really only ever interested in it if it could have served him in some way.
It’s no surprise that my coming into my queerness coincided with my becoming reacquainted with my fangirl side. Those two things are intrinsically tied deep in my mind. But unlike when I was 12, I leaned way more into the whole liking girls thing than I had before. Now that I was choosing to live out loud as a queer woman, I couldn’t shut up about it. One of my friends from middle school remarked that my whole identity was being queer and astrology and iykyk.
My reaction to this year’s *NSYNC reunion is no surprise to anyone who knows me really well. I have been waiting for this day since 2002, and there was no way that I was going to shut up about it. While most of my fangirling has been happening irl (sorry to my amazing partner who has to hear most of it!), I have also been posting about it incessantly on social media. It’s really good that social media didn’t exist back in the day; I would have probably gotten in a million discourse arguments about boy bands.
But in my posting haze, I started to think about something that never occurred to me before. So many of the people I interact with regularly on social media have little to no idea about how much of an *NSYNC fan I am. How could they; the band has been broken up for 21 years!
For the last five years, I have been very loud about being queer on social media. It’s basically the totality of my online life. I have gained a lot of followers because of it and created a bit of a community in my way. And since my brand became being queer, would people be turned off by my sudden simping for the boy band that made me? Is it weird if I post memes about eating pussy in my Instagram stories and then follow it up with a picture of Justin Timberlake and the drooling emoji? In my mind, I’ve never had to reconcile those two parts of myself, but when so many people see me one way, how do I make it clear that those parts are two halves of a whole?
As I posted story after story — a clip from *NSYNC’s episode of “Hot Ones”, a reel of them acting out the dialogue from Friends as a teaser for their single from Trolls, still photos from the VMAs — I began to wonder if my fangirling was changing anyone’s opinion of me and the way I represented myself and my queerness on social media.
It’s taken me a long time to get comfortable with who I am — language, and the discourse around who can use certain self-identifying words have led me to really grapple with who I am and how I see myself. Bisexual isn’t a word I use to describe myself because it’s not a word that fits me anymore. But if I say I’m a lesbian* (*except my love for Justin Timberlake), are people who are lesbians without the asterisk going to tell me I’m not who I know I am? Some people may say it’s internalized biphobia back to rear its ugly head, and I don’t know if that’s true. I am not afraid of being bi; it simply doesn’t feel like that’s who I am anymore. Unlike in my teens and twenties, I don’t want to have sex with Justin Timberlake. I’d kiss him to fulfill the desires of 12-year-old Sa’iyda, but then I’d be like, “this has been a blast, do you want to go get cheese fries?”
Also, it may sound ridiculous, but I wonder how to tie my queer self together with my *NSYNC loving self from a branding standpoint. One of my writing dreams is to write a nonfiction book about the 90s boy band craze, more specifically about *NSYNC because they’re my favorites. But since so much of my writing is about being queer, will it get in the way of one of my ultimate career ambitions? Do my queer readers and followers want to read my analysis of the greatest boy band of all time? (PS: if you do, you can here.)
If you had to make me into a pie chart, being queer and loving *NSYNC are basically the same size. They’ve both informed so much of who I am that even if I sat down and tried to undo the knots of each part, there would still be a ball of string holding them together. Even if I’m freaking out about it, maybe it’s okay and I’m freaking out for no reason. My very online brain tells me I have to be stressed about how my fellow queers perceive me or else I will fall victim to discourse. If liking Justin Timberlake didn’t change the way I felt about girls when I was 17, does it really matter now that I’m 37?
I don’t think I have an answer for that, so I guess I’m just going to stream “Better Place” for the millionth time and chill out.
Two Queer Women Discuss Their Free-Ass Time At Janelle Monáe’s Age of Pleasure Tour
Feature image of Janelle Monáe performing at their Age of Pleasure tour by Kyle Gustafson / For The Washington Post via Getty Images
Five years ago, Janelle Monáe released Dirty Computer and came out to the world as a free-ass motherfucker. They had long used the sci-fi concept album and an android alter ego to express themself. Now that expression was made even more explicitly queer.
How does an artist this singular and talented follow up their coming out album? For Monáe, it meant declaring the arrival of The Age of Pleasure. If Dirty Computer placed their sexuality in their favorite genre, The Age of Pleasure dropped any pretense. No more androids. Just Monáe and their sexuality on full display.
Editor-in-chief Carmen and I were both lucky enough to see Monáe live during their Age of Pleasure Tour. We decided it was necessary to debrief about our fun, free, and… erotic experiences at our shows!
Drew: Okay should we start by talking about the first times we saw Janelle Monáe live. Because I know we both have stories.
Carmen: I’ve seen Janelle live only one other time — and it was at the beginning of their career. In 2009, I saw them open for Erykah Badu at this outdoor concert on Governor’s Island in NYC. Which is wild to look back on! Because in 2009, obviously I was there for Erykah, I had never even heard of Janelle Monáe.
Drew: That was going to be my question! Did they already have their unique magic?
Janelle Monáe performing Age of Pleasure in Minneapolis, September 2023 (Photo by Carmen)
Carmen: Yeah, they absolutely did. What I will never forget is — you know, especially back then but even now, Janelle is this ball of energy. So they probably did a handful of songs, running all over the stage, with that afrofuturist pop beat that’s their trademark, but then… abruptly, they stopped.
They stopped center stage, just standing tall with a microphone, and sang Nat King Cole’s “Smile.” You know the one, “Smile though your heart is aching/ Smile even though it’s breaking/ When there are clouds in the sky, you’ll get by…”
Drew: !!
Carmen: It felt like time stood still. To this day, I don’t think I’ve seen anything else quite like it.
Drew: Wow that is so special.
Carmen: Definitely quite an introduction, that’s for sure!
Drew: I also first saw them on an NYC island before knowing who they were! My first girlfriend was really crafty when it came to doing things for free around the city and she always volunteered at Governor’s Ball. We’d broken up by then, but I still decided to go because I was trying to prove that we could be friends and that I didn’t have feelings about our breakup. Also, I wanted to see Vampire Weekend and Sleigh Bells — just a little window into my music taste at the time.
As a volunteer I spent two thirds of the time assigned to different areas picking up trash in exchange for one third of the time getting to be wherever I wanted. This was 2014, but as you can guess from my music taste I didn’t know who Janelle was, so thank God I was assigned to pick up trash in their area during their performance!
I remember being totally overwhelmed. Just like WHO IS THIS?? They’re still not famous enough as far as I’m concerned — but in 2014 that was even more true. They performed during the day and I think pretty early in the day. But they had the energy of a headliner. After that I was a fan forever.
Carmen: First of all, this is an extremely gay story. But also! 2014… that would’ve been the Electric Lady album! That was my baby gay album!
Drew: Yes!! That’s such a good baby gay album.
Carmen: The amount of times that I listened to “Q.U.E.E.N.” while dancing barefoot in my kitchen, it is unrivaled.
Drew: Dirty Computer came out about a year after me, so that played a huge part in my baby gay years.
Carmen: Ooooooh Dirty Computer is such a good baby gay soundtrack! You didn’t even have to do the thing I did, where you follow the analogies of androids named Mary. By then Janelle was singing about fucking girls straight out.
Well not “straight” out. Sorry, I couldn’t leave the pun.
Drew: Hahaha right! I went to the “emotion picture” release party — I wasn’t fancy I just happened to RSVP from their Twitter right away because I was very online — and it felt like a coming out for them. They were so nervous and I remember feeling really comforted by and emotional about that. I was like oh if Janelle Monáe is nervous to fully own their queerness, it’s okay that the past year has been so hard for me.
But then the movie started and Janelle was dancing with Lupita Nyong’o in the aisles and it was so fun and special.
Carmen: The way you slid in this Janelle/Lupita gossip.
Iconic.
Moving on.
Drew: The secret to overcoming anxiety about coming out I think is grinding on Lupita Nyong’o maybe.
Oh sorry okay moving on.
I did then see them perform properly during the Dirty Computer tour. I don’t go to that many concerts but I’ve seen them now three times. Four if you count that video premiere.
Carmen: That’s phenomenal. The only person I’ve seen four times is Beyoncé. Three as a solo artist and once when Destiny’s Child was the opening act for TLC in the year 2000.
Drew: Omg your opening act skills are unparalleled !!
Carmen: I wanted to make a joke about having my finger on the pulse of the culture, but it’s truly just luck. But thank you.
Drew: Luck? Or fate!
Carmen: Gay fate for sure!
So! We both went to the Age of Pleasure Tour this month, which is technically the real reason we are gathered here today. Did you have any expectations going in?
Drew: I knew it was going to be a great performance because, as we’ve established, they’re such a uniquely great performer. But I think I was excited to see how different they felt on stage after some years of really owning their sexuality and gender. And, of course, this album so explicitly owns those things.
Janelle has always been such a talent and also so good at like the production of image and live performance. It’s fun that all those skills are going to this celebration of pleasure. I love trash, but overt sexuality doesn’t always have to equal trashy! Sometimes it’s high art!
Carmen: I think for me, that was one of the clearest takeaways. They are such a master of their craft. I went with two people who have really studied music, for quite literally decades. It was great to enter into that space with them because we were each bringing in our own expectations or levels of expertise. And they were both blown away by Janelle’s pure vocal quality. We were all taken aback by their showmanship.
I think it also shows, when you are more comfortable with yourself, when you are able to own all of who you are, it touches everything else in your life, right?
Drew: Yes!!
Carmen: It makes everything else better, because you are whole. Janelle has always been great on stage, clearly we both can speak to that, but this Janelle? It hits different. And I also think that’s because, even as fans, we got to walk so much of that journey with them. Like we can see and feel the sweetness of these wins along with them.
Because I sure was reading queerness into “Q.U.E.E.N.” and now I get to sing “Lipstick Lover” at the top of my lungs.
Janelle Monáe performing Age of Pleasure in Minneapolis, September 2023 (Photo by Carmen)
Drew: Even when they performed a handful of older songs like “Yoga” and “Tightrope” they just felt different to me.
I still listen to their older albums and love them, but it is really exciting to watch the evolution! And experience how that evolution makes the older stuff even better — in performance and just with a new context.
Carmen: Yessssssss! “Yoga” completely goes hard in a new, more intimate way now. And… I hadn’t thought about this before, but the feeling of ownership in “Tightrope”? Sheesh.
Also, of course, because they’re performing “Tightrope” in a tux. And yes, it’s a throwback to their black-and-white uniform era for sure, but I couldn’t help but also think of it as a wink to bygone queer performers and drag kings who often performed in tuxes. (Yes I just finished Malinda Lo’s Last Night at the Telegraph Club, can you tell?)
Drew: It’s so funny to me that people read the tux has being conservative when it was obviously queerness.
Carmen: That was a whole discourse this summer, especially in certain Black spaces! With straight people who were like “Janelle is showing skin all over the place now, what happened to when they were clothed and respecting their body” — and I was like “oh buddy, did you miss what they were trying to say with those suits? There, there now. It’s ok. It wasn’t for you.”
Drew: And their evolution takes the subtext of the suits and the android persona and confirms it as text. Their queerness now is undeniable which also makes the queerness of the rest of their career undeniable, too.
Carmen: Hahaaa I was going to say, “But damn it feels good to revisit those suits now, in the open and on our own terms” — but yes, let’s take it to an academic level!
Drew: Hahaha. Open and on our own terms is the beauty of textual queerness!
Carmen: Yes!! And I think especially too, as a Black queer performer, there is so much policing done around our sexuality and our bodies, not just who we sleep with but also how we conduct ourselves in public, and in so many ways, for so many years, Janelle has been undoing that.
And of course, bodies being policed is also so true of trans communities, and to see Janelle keep pushing through all of the bullshit and channeling it back into their art, back into what they bring to the stage and leave there for us. It’s wild. I feel so lucky to be in the room for it.
Drew: Me too. There’s something so uniquely queer about looking around at the pretty rough time we’re living in right now and going, oh of course the answer is to declare this the age of pleasure.
And that felt reflected on stage! The show felt looser? Like the performance was still tight but I really felt the fun everyone was having on stage.
And it was… erotic.
Carmen: Yeah, no, it was sexy as hell.
Drew: I know they have good taste based on, um, rumored relationships. But wow did they pick talented and very hot dancers!
Carmen: Hahahahaaa. I think my expectations going in were for it to be, I keep trying to find a more professional way to say “horny” and I’m coming up short!
Drew: I think they’d be okay with you saying horny !!!
Carmen: I recently watched their “Janelle Monáe Reads Thirsty Tweets” video for Buzzfeed, where they chided fans for not being dirty enough. So yeah, I think they’re ok with horny!
Drew: Omg I’m going to watch this immediately after we’re done talking.
Carmen: It’s so good and my favorite part is the person who shares their alien fantasies and Janelle doesn’t miss a beat.
Drew: Did you go to the concert with people ready to embrace the horny?
Carmen: It’s so funny, because when I was prepping for the concert I was talking to my cousin (who is also gay), and immediately their question was if I was trying to get some. And while I’m never… not paying attention to that, this trip was much more of a friendship reunion. My best friend got the tickets on presale, without even telling me! And basically texted me like: “So… get a plane ticket to Minneapolis.”
Drew: Okay but being horny — even separately, platonically — with friends is also very fun!!
Janelle Monáe performing Age of Pleasure in Minneapolis, September 2023 (Photo by Carmen)
Carmen: Extremely fun! And, through a series of unexpected events we ended up in VIP seats. Which was great for a few reasons, one of which was that the venue in Minneapolis was standing only, so VIP balcony seats were the only seats available (not a win for accessibility, just saying!). Ironically, I ended up dancing the entire set anyway, so I never really “sat” in the seat that I paid for.
I sweated clear through my layers, I ended the night in a bra and jeans.
Drew: JANELLE WOULD BE PROUD
As you said in your fashion advice column — bra and jeans feels like a very correct outfit for this show.
Carmen: Least amount of clothes possible is definitely the outfit of choice. A fun little challenge for the fall!
Drew: I definitely had my nipples showing and I was in Toronto, where it’s already fully fall. But it was worth being a little cold on the walk over to free the nipples at the show.
Carmen: Free the nipples is such a small thing, but it’s become a rallying cry for this tour and I think we’re all finding a lot of freedom in it? Like I feel like everyone I know has this excited hush tone going into the concert of like, “ok but can I really do this? Are we doing this? Are we being this free?” And yes babe, we are.
Drew: It makes it feel more like a queer dance party (where my nipples are often free) than a concert (where they tend to be covered).
Carmen: Yes! That is such a distinction.
Drew: Also Janelle Monáe’s boobs make me proud to have boobs.
Carmen: I don’t know if they did this at your concert, but at mine they opened with “Float” and because the venue served alcohol, they did the toast at the end of the song live with the audience. I was so caught up in the moment, I forgot to record it. But I feel like that set the tone right at the top. To have thousands of people at once toast to the “fucked up shit we can’t erase!”
Drew: Yes!! Sexual freedom can also just be about freedom in general, at least for one night, in a special space.
Carmen: And that’s what Janelle has been able to create, to sit right at that intersection and hold room for the rest of us. It’s… unreal. Except of course, it is very very real.
Also, Janelle Monáe’s boobs make me proud to like looking at people’s boobs.
Drew: Okay yeah, that too.
Carmen: One of the best parts of my concert was towards the end. Janelle said that they wouldn’t be flashing their boobs because we were in Minneapolis (which was the home of one of their mentors, Prince) — and Prince, who spend the last decades of his life as a Jehovah’s Witness, would not approve.
But then they winked and said, “but I haven’t seen any boobs yet! Is no one going to show me some?” And I swear it felt like the entire two rows at the front of the stage lifted up their shirts at once.
Drew: Late in life Prince may have not approve, but I’m glad they got the audience to give a little something for early career Prince! (And for themself lol)
Carmen: A win for everyone!!! (Rest in Peace, late in life Prince)
Chappell Roan’s Debut Album Is the Anthem for Us Midwestern Queers
Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess is the album all small town queers moving to a big city in their twenties for messy, juicy self-discovery need.
Ever since hearing Chappell Roan’s breakout hit “California” in 2020, I have been anxiously awaiting the fruits of her Los Angeles misadventures. Her debut album is an 80s-Madonna-inspired angsty glitter party that is unapologetically bratty in all its glorious bisexual chaos. Think of a more emotional Kim Petras with “Don’t be a drag, just be a queen” energy. It’s fun, it’s horny, it’s campy, it’s everything you needed as an early twenties queer.
Every single song on this album makes me want to throw on a puffy prom dress and hysterically dance around, but a few of the tracks pack a silk-glove punch. “Red Wine Supervova” is one of her top streamed songs on Spotify, which is a personal win for the queers because it’s easily one of her gayest songs: “I like / what you like / long hair (no bra) / It’s my type / You just told me / want me to fuck you / Baby I will ’cause I really want to” and later, “I heard you like magic / I got a wand and a rabbit.” COME ON. Why has no one thought of that innuendo before? She’s a queer genius.
“After Midnight” is for those of us who grew up with parents who told us “nothing good happens after midnight.” She proclaims “everything good happens after midnight,” and I agree. “Casual” lands particularly well with the relationship girlies. Have you ever had a thing with someone who insisted on a no-strings situation but…you’ve met their parents and their friends and have clothes at their house? Yeah, me too.
I cannot rave more about “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl.” It’s easily her most campy and dancey track. The song begins with her talking to us like she’s spilling the tea (“they say you should never waste a Friday night on a first date”), and she quickly vocalizes about boys who aren’t worth her time. It feels very similar to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way,” which is a bold comparison, but I love Roan so much I’m willing to go there.
Immediately following this track is “HOT TO GO!” It’s horny cheerleading in a song. Videos of her performing it feature her making cheerleading arm gestures as she sings “H-O-T-T-O-G-O.” It’s the latest queerleader anthem. “My Kink is Karma” is a more mellow pop ballad for all of us who just want to see our ex struggle a little bit. We want to “use your distress as foreplay.”
The two standout tracks on this album were both singles that served as Roan’s breakout pop artist moments. “Naked in Manhattan” was her first explicitly queer single: “boys suck and girls I’ve never tried.” She proceeds to tell us about getting naked with a girl in Manhattan. They “both have a crush on Regina George.” She sings of star signs, lip gloss, hairclips, and even admits they’re “an inch away from more than just friends.” And the second standout track “Pink Pony Girl” epitomizes the themes and sounds of the entire album.
The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess is THE album for the small town queer who feels a sense of duty to her family back home but moves to a big city to dance with drag queens and makeout with girls anyway. Even though it’s fun and seemingly superfluous, it’s profound in that she remembers where she comes from, honors that, and also claims her space as a queer person who needs to go discover herself. The entire theme of this album comes back to this idea, which is made apparent even in the title. She gives all of us, and herself, permission to love where we came from, leave to find ourselves, miss our hometowns, and love our new messy lives. While most of these tracks are certainly jams you might hear at a queer dance party, it really hits home for us fly-over state queers. After laughing, shouting, dancing, and crying along with Roan, all I can say is: Thank you for giving us messy Midwestern bisexuals something so unequivocally relatable.
You can stream The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess now, wherever you get your music. Additionally, I would HIGHLY recommend seeing her on her Midwest Princess Tour. All her music was made for performance and audience engagement, so if you need a good time or a release, see when she’s coming to your city.
What Are We Wearing to the Janelle Monaé Concert, Bestie?
The idea for this Janelle Monáe Age of Pleasure tour style guide came from a selfish place, if I can be honest for a second. But baby, I’ve been stressssssssing over what I was going to wear! I made myself a promise this year to commit to doing things that make me happy in the vibe of this photo of Halle Berry drinking wine while outside on her patio while being butt booty ass naked.
The results thus far? Mixed. But I’m out here trying!! And while the fashion guidelines for Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour felt much more straight forward (silver and chrome obviously), if not also high stakes — dressing for Janelle Monáe has been a puzzle! Age of Pleasure has the aesthetics of summer heat and sweaty queer bodies losing themselves in everything that feels sexy and good, but their tour covers September and October! And “fall queer beach party” aesthetic is just so fucking hard!
But let’s turn my pain into a purpose. If you’ve also been wondering what to wear to Janelle Monáe’s Age of Pleasure tour, listen, I got you.
1. Parade Plunge Bralette (xs-3x, $14) // 2. Target Plunge Lace Bralette (xxl-3x, $18) // 3. Lane Bryant Summer Sheer High-Neck Balconette Bra (36B-38H, $35) // 4. Target Women’s High Apex Racerback Bralette (xs-3x, $15)
Ok so I have to say this, I saw Janelle earlier this week while I was in Minneapolis. And easily a bralette and 90s jeans was the most chosen outfit by all variety of queer humans in attendance, and I’m not just saying that because it was — ahem — also my outfit of choice, I promise.
The thing about the crop top/bralette situation is that, as you may know, Janelle Monáe has declared that the Age of Pleasure is also time to free the tiddies (their exact words were “Titties out for the next 15 years 😝”) and you’ll want easy access to your chest area if you wanna flash the concert. The less fabric to get you there, arguably the better.
I layered mine with a flannel, because I am a stereotype.
1. ASOS Nipple Covers (multiple skin tones available, $9) // 2. Neva Nude Liquid Hologram Cross Pasties ($10) // Diamante Detail Nipple Cover in Pink ($14) // Psychedelic Seashell Pasties ($12)
And speaking of free the tiddies! Have you considered… pasties?
1. Topman Oversized Grid Mesh T-Shirt in Black (xxs-xxl, $45) // 2. Wildfang Empower Mesh Boxy Top (xs-3x, $56) // 3. Target Mesh Cover Up Short Sleeve Crop Top (XS-3x, $18) // 4. Aerie Level Up Lace Layering T-Shirt (xxs-xxl, $28)
Mesh tops are hot, for the most part gender-neutral, and give the essence of summer, but pair one under a denim of leather jacket and you are giving instant fall vibes.
1. Grace Jones Sweatshirt on Etsy (s-2x, $40) // 2. Gap David Bowie Tee (xxs-xxl, $8) // 3. Target Whitney Houston Tee (xs-3x, $12) // 3. Prince Shirt (s-xxxl, $30)
Janelle Monáe is referential in all that they do, a true student of their craft, and while I think it can be a little too on the nose to wear an artist’s image to their own tour — this opens up a great opportunity to wear someone else in Monáe’s musical genealogy. Plus, when they sing “They say I look better than David Bowie in a MoonAge Dream”… you’ll have something to point at while you scream-sing along.
If you’re one of the lucky ones who will be spending this fall at Janelle Monáe’s Age of Pleasure tour, I hope you have the best time, dance your ass off, and flirt with someone cute who flirts back. Don’t forget to eat food if you’re gonna drink! Also, hydrate with water before and after the concert. Sorry to be your mom friend. I love you.
Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion Are Scissoring
By the time I woke up this morning my group chat was already ablaze. I think after 2020’s “WAP” everyone was on edge for “Bongos.” I mean, it would already be hard to outdo Cardi and Meg stroking and crawling on top of each other while wet from head to toe. But then “Bongos” had the bisexual rappers — did I mention that after two singles together and multiple years being two of the best rappers alive writing about pussy, Cardi has now taken to calling Meg her work wife? — interlocking legs and thighs, with Meg reverently caressing Cardi’s up and down, so now all bets are off.
A lot of “Bongos” hits the expected notes for anyone familiar with Cardi and Meg’s work — I don’t care what anyone says, it takes a lot of talent to write soliloquies like “Pussy get popped, piñata / Bitch, I look like money / You could print my face on a dollar.” And when asked by Cardi about her favorite song to have sex to, Meg responded “silence, because I need you to hear this booty clapping,” which in and of itself gives the song’s title a whole new meaning. But what I was most struck by comes in the last minute of the video (and yes, of course I’m talking about the scissoring).
It’s become a pretty common joke that all the popular rap girlies these days are some flavor of gay (Ice Spice, Rico Nasty, Yung Miami, Chika, the list goes on), but it often can feel like Black bisexual femme rappers who are either in long term relationships with men or write about enjoying the sex they have with men (or both) are constantly fighting off accusations that they aren’t actually bisexual at all. After their 2021 Grammys performance of “WAP” — which also involved Cardi and Meg mimicking scissoring during one point of their dance routine — Cardi B went as far as to publicly respond to a Rolling Stone article accusing her of queer baiting (note: this is an incorrect use of the term queer baiting, which was designed to address tropes in fiction writing, not actual bisexual or queer people) with “I’m married to a man, but I have express[ed] soo much about my bisexuality and my experiences wit girls.“ Despite having discussed her bisexual sexuality publicly for years, Megan Thee Stallion is frequently not mentioned on lists of queer or bisexual celebrities.
In fact, when Netflix released a two and half hour docuseries, Ladies First, looking at women’s contributions over the last 50 years of hip hop, during the section on queerness in the genre — Megan Thee Stallion was looped in with straight women rappers who “perform” queerness for straight audiences, and Cardi B wasn’t mentioned at all. And this is despite the fact that “WAP” was a shining piece at the center of the documentary’s discussion of (presumably straight) sexuality and the dynamics of women’s empowerment vs the male gaze. Even within their own community, Black women who love and contribute to hip hop, Cardi and Megan often find themselves in the throes of bi erasure — because they’re femme, because Black queerness is often presumed silent or unseen, because they’ve had longstanding relationships with men. But here, Cardi and Meg are sending a message. And that message was y’all keep erasing us if you want, but ✂️ ✂️ motherfuckers.
And maybe, just maybe, you’re thinking that I’m reading too much into a few dozen seconds of a dance move in a music video. But to that I’d say two things: First of all, unlike “WAP,” which had Cardi and Meg performing seductively and wet for an unseen audience behind the camera (which I’ll never read as a straight performance to begin with, but sure I’ll play along) — scissoring is a uniformly queer act. It is not designed for male approval, in fact it’s based in an ownership of sexuality and sexual pleasure that exists outside of cis straight men at all. Choosing to allude and mime that sex act in particular, by two bisexual rappers who are often left outside of queerness, that puts everyone else on notice.
Second, they filmed the entire music video at the same mansion where none other than Black bisexual legend Whitney Elizabeth Houston herself, in all her glory, filmed The Bodyguard. So. You know. Take from that what you will.
PS: They’re both wearing Bi Pride wigs in the cover art.
😜