Why Do Gay People Love Pop Music?

By Gustavo Forcada

Pop music has always been about more than a catchy tune—it is and always has been a space for rebellion, self-expression, and identity formation, particularly for LGBTQ+ people. From the euphoric anthems of Charli XCX to trailblazing performances by David Bowie or Bronski Beat, queer voices have shaped pop music’s most defining moments. We discussed this legacy with the revered musicologist and author Darryl W. Bullock in what tragically became his final interview before his untimely passing in December last year. We dedicate this article both to his memory and to his friends, family, and loved ones.

Darryl W. Bullock’s bibliography: a selection.

You might have been one of many who experienced a “Brat Summer” to the squelchy beats of Charli XCX this year. Or, you might recall, a decade ago, belting along to Perfume Genius’s anthemic “Queen”, which transformed homophobic insults into an overflowing of self-esteem. You might even remember the nostalgia of the 1990s, when Madonna released her groovy homage to New York ballroom culture with “Vogue”. In this, you are certainly not alone. It’s a shared love affair, a captivating sonic romance that has connected queer folk and pop music since the early 20th century. This is one of the most intimate, most hypnotic love stories of our time, the ecstatic thrill of a hook-up combined with the devotional commitment of a marriage.

Musicologist Darryl W. Bullock is one of the most respected authors that has studied this alliance, full of both silences and dazzling effervescence. His many works to have covered the topic include David Bowie Made me Gay: 100 Years of LGBT Music 2017); The Velvet Mafia: The Gay Men Who Ran The Swinging Sixties (2021;) and Queer Blues (2023), one of The Guardian’s Five Best Music Books of 2023. In each, Darryl displays the overwhelming breadth of his vision. 

Darryl’s way of understanding music goes beyond the intrinsic value of records and songs to take on a emancipating and unorthodox dimension: ‘music liberates and empowers, and once people discovered a way to capture music onto a wax cylinder or a shellac disc then everyone, no matter where they lived or what little access they had to the outside would, was offered a tantalising glimpse of freedom. Suddenly, LGBTQ+ musicians could reach into the homes of everyone coming to terms with their own sexuality. If you were sitting on your own in your room, scared and confused, hearing a voice on a record telling you that you were not alone was like having a comforting hug from a friend. And those voices that came crackling through the horn, out of the speaker or over the radio would influence every generation of LGBTQ+ musicians that followed. Those people saved lives, and those voices continue to inspire and offer salvation.’

The influence of sexual dissidence on pop music was always clear to the English writer and publisher: ‘I genuinely believe that there would be no pop music as we know it today without LGBTQ+ people.’ But in all his works, the “Bard of the Bent” (as the musician Andy Partridge once called him) also sought to defend the legacy and audacity of a series of musicians and singers who have also been catalysts in various musical genres: hip hop, rock, jazz, and so on, figures who have been forgotten and who deserve much greater recognition. ‘We should celebrate some of the less well-known names as well as the major stars,’ he says, ‘people like Cris Willamson, whose album The Changer and the Changed sold in the hundreds of thousands but who is little known outside of the women’s music field. She, along with the other lesbian, bi and queer women who spearheaded the women’s music movement, helped establish an independent distribution and touring network and created platforms for queer women musicians to reach their audience when they were locked out of the mainstream music industry simply because they were women who didn’t conform.’

But it is not only in the post-Stonewall wave of liberation that we should look for the glow of queer creativity. In the early years ‘between the two World Wars, there were plenty of queer musicians, singers and composers who have almost been forgotten today but who at the time were major stars. We recognise Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey as the pioneers they were, but others from the same time, including Porter Grainger, Frankie “Half Pint” Jaxon, and Lucille Bogan should be better known and venerated.’

At the beginning of the 20th century, the blues was nourished by the social and cultural modernity of the Harlem Renaissance and cabaret, by the broadmindedness of the Weimar Republic. However, then came very dark times: ‘certainly the period before the mid-1930s – was awash with wonderful LGBTQ+ performers, but it is difficult to document their lives as so little information has been left behind. Generally speaking, if they didn’t record, did not make the press or did not perform on a regular basis and have a decent following then they are all but lost forever. The war, the rise of fascism, the burning of books, libraries and archives in Germany, and then things like the Hays code, McCarthyism and the Communist and Lavender Scares of 1950s America lead to the destruction of so much valuable, irreplaceable information.’

But just a decade later, in 1960s England, a group of gays from the deepest gears of the music industry —songwriter Lionel Bart, Beatles manager Brian Epstein, Bee Gees and Cream manager Robert Stigwood, record producer Joe Meek —knitted and wove a network of mutual support that breathed new air into music. It was a kind of “Homintern” (to put it like Gregory Woods, the British poet and professor) that demonstrates once again how queerness is nourished by mutual support. ‘Yes, support that never ended; it carried on and extended over the water and into the United States, where the music industry of the 1970s was dominated by LGBTQ+ people, people like Seymour Stein and David Geffen, although none of them were out at the time or would come out for many years. It’s less possible today because it’s not as necessary. People are less afraid to be honest and open about their sexuality, and they have learned, thanks to those pioneers of the 60s and 70s, that being LGBTQ+ does not have to mean the end of your career.’

In the 1970s and 1980s, two events changed the way sexual dissidence was perceived: David Bowie’s legendary Top of the Pops performance and the exponential visibility of an ‘out of the closet’ group such as Bronski Beat. ‘Yes, Bowie changed the world; pure and simple. That one performance opened up a world of possibility to a whole new generation of LGBTQ+ people, including many who would grow to be major stars in the 1980s. Because we only had three television channels in Britain at that time, the show got huge viewing figures, and almost every LGBTQ+ British artist of the 80s and 90s you can think of was watching: Boy George, Erasure’s Andy Bell, Holly Johnson and Paul Rutherford of Frankie Goes to Hollywood and many more. Bowie gave a generation the power to be who they wanted to be, to be different, to be themselves. 

Bronski Beat were the first group to consist of entirely out-gay men to have a hit single, and to perform (more than a decade later) on the same show that Bowie had caused such a splash on. They were angry, political, and uncompromising. And again they opened up a world of possibilities to a new generation. Bowie sang of other worlds, other possibilities, whereas Jimmy Somerville of Bronski Beat sang about the horrors of gay life in Britain at that time, and the video for “Smalltown Boy”, their first hit, brought home just how hard life could be for young queer people in Thatcher’s Britain.’

A song and a video that take on a new dimension now, in the midst of the enormous neoliberal and negationist upheaval we are experiencing, of Donald Trump’s second inauguration, in which he erased the existence of trans and other queer people. ‘Roughly every 30 years or so we go through a period when the right-wing beats us down, and that is almost always at a time of fiscal hardship, war or political unrest. But every time we come back bigger and stronger, having learned something else about what we as a community have to do to remain visible and powerful. These are dark and troubling times for the trans community, but we will get through them and the LGBTQ+ community will survive and flourish.’

Reclaiming and delving into the legacy of queer musicians who have been systematically kept out of the media spotlight not only demonstrates the great contribution of our community to popular culture, but also exemplifies with exhaustive precision the network of mutual support and care that queer people have historically unwound: ‘there are plenty of artists unknown to mainstream audiences who have still to be brought back to prominence and given the credit they deserve, especially from non-English speaking countries. I’m thinking here of the queer artists of pre-war Germany, who spoke out against oppression and poked fun at Hitler and answered for this with their lives. But luckily some writers and scholars have dedicated their own lives to searching out these artists and reevaluating their lives and importance. There is still so much for us to discover – and to celebrate!’ 

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Author

  • Gustavo Forcada

    Gustavo Forcada is a GAY45 contributing writer. He is also the editor-in-chief of the Spanish-language LGBTQ+ literature magazine "Un Cuarto Oscuro". Specialising in queer art and gay books, he regularly publishes interviews with photographers in the queer fine art photography magazine "BOYS! BOYS! BOYS!".

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