When I look back upon my life, it's always with a sense of shame.”
Pet Shop Boys - It's a Sin
By now you’ve probably binged all of the new Russell T Davies drama ‘It's A Sin’ and whilst feeling entertained, elated, devastated and possibly angry you have also been treated to an array of marvellous pop music from that era.
Though many regards the 70’s as the emergence of queer pop and the 80’s as the decade that politicised it there’s much more to the story which can have no exact birthdate but why not start with a look back a hundred years. The previous 20’s, the 1920’s.
It's obviously impossible to pinpoint any starting point but as with so many things it probably started in Black history.
In the smoky blues nightclubs of Harlem in New York City came singers like Gertude ‘Ma’ Rainey, Gladys Bentley or Bessie Smith coyly singing songs that if not directly referencing lesbianism, they certainly implied their preferences, titillating and courting danger at the same time.
These blues artists and the Berlin cabaret scene (amongst others) carried the LGBT voice through the 30’s and 40’s but it's in the next decade that things would start getting a little wilder.
No doubt about it, Little Richard, one of the architects of Rock n Roll itself, was a technicolour whirlwind of queer energy. Allegedly the original lyrics to his super hit ‘Tutti Fruitti’ had more to do with anal sex than girls named Daisy. Outrageous at the time (and frankly still now) Little Richard had a history of dragging up and cruising for men even before he burst onto the music scene, THEN he became even camper! Huge influence on artists that would come after his music still feels exciting and raw sixty years later.
The 60’s would have a fair amount of clear LGBT musicians, Lou Reed from The Velvet Underground, Janis Joplin, Laura Nyro and Dave Davies of The Kinks are just a mere handful of the singers that were queer. More and more artists were emerging into the light, armed with songs that reflected their preferences but it was the 1970’s that a real revolution would take place.
It was almost a crime to not be flamboyant in the 70’s, Disco blew down the doors on gay music and it came spilling out into the charts. Acts like the Village People, Donna Summer, the Bee Gees and the unforgettable Sylvester took the sounds of the gay clubs into the mainstream. Disco was a heady mix of gay, black and sexually liberated sounds which kick-started the beginning of what we see as club culture today. A place that levelled the playing field in terms of class, sexuality, race, intelligence, looks, it just didn’t matter everyone was welcome on the dancefloor equally
Of course, we can’t continue without lauding one of the most important artists of all time. Weird, bisexual and brilliant, David Bowie could be THE queer artist of that decade is if it weren’t for the fact that his reach stretches out way beyond the 70’s and will probably keep going outward into the skies forever. He also was part of the Glam scene which liberated your ordinary blokes in the street and had him grabbing make-up and platform shoes to bop along to T-Rex, The Sweet, Iggy Pop, New York Dolls, Wizard, Sparks and another unstoppable legend - Elton John.
As the end of that decade loomed pop took a more angular new wave approach in the form of bands like Buzzcocks, Blondie, Adam Ant and more all willing to flirt with sexuality and blur the lines of gender but those lines were about to be obliterated much to the chagrin of millions of Top of the Pops watching dads everywhere.
The 1980’s arrived wringing its hands and looking for people to upset. The bold glam look gave way to a slicker but still femanine silhouette for pop stars. Gary Numan, The Human League, Visage amongst others led the way, with their clinical stripped back sounds and the liberal appliance of makeup. It was a cold, more cerebral take on pop, infused with a very modern, possibly futuristic outlook, it was the antithesis of the ebullient disco years yet it was very much inspired by those colourful days but soon the two genres would collide and bring us a golden period of chart music.
All of the previous decades seemed ripe for the plunder in the 80’s, the first few years of chart music were not just the domain of the synth band, rockabilly, ska, new wave, punk stragglers and disco all stood side by side in the rundown on a Thursday night on Top of the Pops making for eclectic shows and now was the time of the giants.
It's weird to imagine just how shook the country was at the arrival of Boy George and Culture Club. ‘Do You Want To Hurt Me’ a reggae-infused ballad of heartache went right to number one, Boy George had a great voice there’s no denying it but it was the outrage that stands out at the time, he wasn’t wearing any more makeup than his hero Bowie did in the 70’s and his dress sense wasn’t that outlandish for a pop star but his unashamed queer attitude enraged people who had always seen gays are limp wristed victims and not hugely successful icons.
Other acts like Duran Duran, Spandau Ballet, The Police, Tears for Fears and the suchlike all flew the flag for big bold, but blokey, pop but our fellow queers were the ones innovating and shaking it up.
Frankie Goes To Hollywood told us to ‘Relax’, Queen wanted to break free in drag and Bowie was pondering ‘Fashion’, but in Scotland, there was a proudly gay man and we wanted to shine a light on what it really felt like to be queer.
Jimmy Somerville was a petite man with a high voice but he had fire in his belly. ‘Smalltown Boy’ a story of being gay and persecuted was a massive electro hit and a song that has grown in stature every year since its release in 1984, touching the lives of many a closeted person, it was the very definition of out and proud and led the way for others to be brave and outspoken.
Bronski Beat would continue to release songs of queerness and then after leaving the band Jimmy formed The Communards to even bigger success reaching number one with their unforgettable cover of ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’.
However, success didn’t derail the core LGBT issues at the heart of the writing and songs like ‘There’s More To Love Than Boy Meet Girl’ the shattering ‘For A Friend’ highlighted the thought and feelings of the gay masses.
Another insanely huge act in the 80’s, Pet Shop Boys were a band that had an intellectual approach to pop music but never at the expense of their glossy synth pop. Not initially out, the Boys still showed their queer roots in songs like ‘Rent’ and their collaboration with 60’s icon Dusty Springfield, they deftly avoided talking about their sexuality in interviews and eventually came out officially in the nineties but, everyone knew.
It was such a rich period for pop music that the music is still heard everywhere today and the shine has never faded, the sheer rush of energy and boldness of the acts has made for durability, unfortunately, that golden period started to fade as the 90’s came along and the sense of wonder was replaced, as it always is in pop, with the new, and the new was more cynical and marketed to within an inch of its life.
Even though it was easier to be out, there was a preference for gay artists to have a much more heteronormative lifestyle, to be ‘cute’ acceptable, non outspoken homosexuals. People like Stephen Gatley from Boyzone and Markus Feehily from Westlife played down their queerness as not to damage the record sales. It was like re-entering the closet in a way, all the great work done in the previous decade seemed to just pave the way for a cosy, watered down, hetro-acceptable interpretation of gay life. It's hard to remember anything outrageous or eye-openingly homo in 90’s pop, sure the old guard were still making big hits but artists for better or worse watered their gayness down.
Nowadays being queer is much more acceptable, half of us are married, everyone watches RuPaul’s Drag Race and the biggest TV hit of 2021 is a gay drama about AIDS in the eighties but it is sad to think that there may never be a period of pop music so rich and ebulient come around again, but you never can tell, with people able to make music on a computer in the bedroom you never know we could be dancing again to the next Wham! Or Erasure, or ABC or S-Express or Mel and Kim or Kim Wilde or Dead or Alive or...well you get the point.