EP38: Queer Artists Who Shaped Pop Music

Can you imagine a world without the groundbreaking influence of queer artists like Freddie Mercury or Little Richard? This episode takes you on a colorful journey through the vibrant history of queer pop music, celebrating the unsung heroes and iconic legends who dared to express their true selves. From the birth of pop charts in 1952 to the emergence of teen culture, we spotlight pioneering artists like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Gladys Bentley, whose bold expressions of sexuality through their music paved the way for future generations.

Join us as we honor the immense contributions of trailblazing musicians such as Little Richard, Johnny Mathis, and Liberace. Discover how these icons navigated their unique identities and overcame societal barriers, from Little Richard's dynamic presence as a queer Black man in the mainstream to Johnny Mathis's advocacy for civil and gay rights. We also explore Liberace's multifaceted career and the public speculation surrounding his sexuality, revealing the powerful intersection of music, personal identity, and activism.

Fast forward to the 1980s and beyond, where music became a sensory regulation tool and a form of resistance. Relive the legacy of Freddie Mercury and Divine, and feel the beat of George Michael's transformative journey from Wham! to his solo career. We'll also share a fascinating fun fact about Olivia Records, a pioneering feminist recording label championing lesbian musicians and activists. This episode is a heartfelt tribute to the LGBTQ+ artists who have left an indelible mark on both the musical and cultural landscape, inspiring future generations to come.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:23

Happy Pride, happy Pride.

Speaker 2: 0:25

Happy pride, happy pride this episode is going to include a whole bunch of of queer pop artists. However, we just want to note that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of lgbtq plus musicians, artists, all types of people that we may never know of, scattered throughout human history, even in the pop genre, which is considered such a new genre. Obviously, this is not going to be an extensive list, because there may be some people that we will just never know about, and I just want to take this moment to also honor them, because they are also pinnacles of queer history, even if we will never know it.

Speaker 1: 1:09

Plus, we'd be here for days, I mean, listing out all of the many, many copious amounts of people that have contributed to the genre. I mean there's just no way we can include everyone.

Speaker 2: 1:14

So, yeah, this episode is also going to include people who never publicly came out prior to their passing or never really quite identified as queer. However, their influence on the future of queer music is something that just is undeniable, to the point where they have to be honored by being on this list, even if they themselves never quite came out of the closet, because you know, that was real. It's still real hard, but it was only harder the further back you go.

Speaker 1: 1:44

It doesn't mean that they haven't contributed to the genre, along with all the other big names that we know very well. I read something online that was so funny, Speaking of Freddie Mercury. It said Freddie Mercury and Stevie Nicks simultaneously birthed it one night, referring to gay pop, at a coke-fueled orgy, and neither one of them can remember it. It just lived on, it just kept reproducing. I thought that was. It hits the nail right on the head for me.

Speaker 2: 2:10

That's genuinely a vibe. I have a small story about Freddie Mercury. When I was in middle school I first started getting into Queen with my old friend and we were obsessed and we were like, oh my God, we have to see them live, we have to see this man live, we have to see him Having no idea Freddie Mercury was dead. We had no idea Because, you know, we were in middle school.

Speaker 1: 2:33

That's hilarious.

Speaker 2: 2:33

So we both go to our parents and are like Mom. We have to see Queen and Freddie Mercury live. And my mom looked at me like that's funny. Should I break the news now? I cried as if he died yesterday. I cried as if he died like two days ago that's like finding out santa claus isn't real.

Speaker 1: 2:58

It's like, uh, you just broke my heart literally and I have to process.

Speaker 2: 3:02

I need a minute so yeah that's the story of how I found out freddie mercury was dead way later than I should have. Also another notable person missing who has no record of saying anything about this specific conflict but is just missing from this list, is prince. The reasoning behind that is because, as I was personally doing research into Prince, I discovered some rather concerning claims of homophobia from some of his old bandmates who were lesbians or are lesbians. I just personally didn't feel comfortable including someone who had been accused of homophobia on a list specifically meant for LGBTQ plus pop stars or people who were fundamental to the evolution of queer people in pop.

Speaker 1: 3:48

Especially since the accusations have come from his bandmates, meaning that they share the stage. They're like a family, so nobody knows you better than your family. It's not like these accusations came from trolls on the internet.

Speaker 2: 4:00

Yeah, exactly, Just a brief history of pop in general, just so that we all got kind of idea. The first major pop stars were seen in the 20s, 30s and 40s. However, pop music charts didn't come around until 1952. So as we talk about a lot of these early pop stars, we won't be mentioning anything like their songs on the charts, because the charts didn't exist until 1952. From there you'll hear us mentioning things like how many songs they have on search. This happened during an interesting time culturally, as this was the first time in Western culture we saw the transitional stage between childhood and adulthood being recognized and teen culture is born.

Speaker 1: 4:37

Teen culture.

Speaker 2: 4:38

First we'll move into the 20s through the 40s, because that's you know, figured that breaking that down by decade would be kind of a lot. So we're just going to do it the 20s to the 40s, because that's you know, figured, that breaking that down by decade would be kind of a lot. So we're just going to do it the 20s to the 40s.

Speaker 1: 4:49

First up we have Bessie Smith. She was a wildly renowned jazz artist during the jazz age and she was nicknamed the Empress of the Blues. And she was most popular during the 1930s because she was a female blues singer and she also wrote some of her own music. They had overly sapphic theming in her text queen shit love her yep gertrude ma rainey.

Speaker 2: 5:14

She's considered the mother of blues. She's one of the earliest known american professional blues singers. She wrote and performed songs with overtly sapphic themes throughout her career and was public about her affairs with other women. So she was one of the artists from this time period where many didn't come out, who was very public about her sexuality.

Speaker 1: 5:33

You know who just popped into my head. I know we're in the wrong genre, but Billie Eilish. Did you hear her new song yet?

Speaker 2: 5:39

I haven't.

Speaker 1: 5:40

Oh, it's called Lunch. It's called Lunch and it talks about eating another woman out. It's amazing. The lyrics are amazing.

Speaker 2: 5:50

Yeah, anyway, I divert I will have to check that out who I feel like. Many people definitely have heard of Gladys Bentley at this point in time. They had a stint on Tumblr where Gladys Bentley was very shared and reblogged often and stuff like that, which I found very fun. Gladys Bentley was an American blues singer, pianist and performer during the Harlem Renaissance during the Harlem Renaissance and they performed at Harry Hanbury's Clam House, a well-known gay speakeasy in New York, as a Black, cross-dressing, lesbian performer. That was where, like the big break, came their voice, their presence, everything about them was just alive and very, very like stole the room.

Speaker 1: 6:42

That took the cake on top of their already badass piano playing because, from what I understand, they were a pretty accomplished pianist and just musician in general. So then we have Alberta Hunter. Alberta was a blues singer who, unlike many at that time, sang with a cabaret influence and improvised lyrics a lot, and was known for improvisation. She had an on-again, off-again relationship with Lottie Tyler, the niece of the comedian Burt Williams, and the two remained close until Tyler's death. Hunter kept her romantic relations with other women sort of quote-unquote under wraps and never publicly came came out. But she was one of the ones that paved the way for this genre of music, for queer people to be in music be in music 100.

Speaker 2: 7:32

It's one of those things. Within the aftermath of her death, reading through her journals and stuff like that was more how the truth of her life was able to be discovered. You, you know. As the new Hot Topic, pride merch says, historians would call us best friends.

Speaker 1: 7:49

There you go.

Speaker 2: 7:50

I don't know if you've seen that that's one of Hot Topic's Pride merch selections for this year.

Speaker 1: 7:55

Is it really it's?

Speaker 2: 7:56

a BBT crop top that says historians would call us best friends.

Speaker 1: 8:01

That's epic, that's marketing.

Speaker 2: 8:08

Good shit so yeah if anyone's interested in that one. It killed me, it's cute. So then we have George Hanna. Very little is known about him, as he only recorded two tracks ever, however. One of those tracks was called Freakish man Blues, with freakish being a known term specifically for gay men at the time and that was specifically in the black community at the time. Freakish was a was a very. What's the word I'm looking for? A term used, a label, a term used for, for for gay men, specifically within the black community.

Speaker 1: 8:38

I mean it kind of makes sense. I mean I think we call ourselves freaks too a lot. Honestly, I kind of like it. I kind of like that I don't know like of all the ones I've heard I actually like it. It's kind of endearing. You know it could be derogatory, but it's also we can own that shit.

Speaker 2: 8:55

You know it's kind of cute, I kind of like yeah and then we got lucille bogan.

Speaker 1: 8:59

lucille was extremely open and honest about her life's experiences. Through her music she touched on experiences as a sex worker in abusive relationships. Throughout her song, bd Woman's Blues, she explores her affection and attraction for other women. So I love that Pretty risque for the time.

Speaker 2: 9:19

Yes indeed. And then we move into the 50s, 1950s, woohoo, yes. And we have first up Willie May, big Mama Thornton, and I guarantee you, I promise you, if you have never heard of this woman, you have heard her song. You have. There is no way you haven't, because she was the original writer and performer of Hound Dog. Like, like the Hound Dog, you ain't nothing.

Speaker 1: 9:51

But a Hound Dog Crashing all the time.

Speaker 2: 9:55

Yeah, yeah, she also is the original writer and performer of Ball and Chain, which would then be performed by Janis Joplin later on.

Speaker 1: 10:04

Yeah, she was huge. Yeah, yeah iconic in the rise of the feminism and stuff in the 70s.

Speaker 2: 10:10

Absolutely so. Yeah, a lot of her music would end up being brought into the mainstream by white artists like Elvis with Hound Dog and Janis Joplin with Ball and Chain. Music would not exist as it does today without her influence on it. And while she has never publicly came out as LGBTQIA+, her songs, performances and presence helped bend gender binaries and expectations of the time, paving the way for queer artists after her. Everything about her took that gender binary and just warped it. That was one of the reasons why her performance of Hound Dog truly never could become as famous as Elvis's. Of course, obviously, there was the idea there was. You know, he's a white man, she was a black woman. Of course, with that alone, his stealing of her song would always be more famous than her original version. Another big part of that is the fact that Hound Dog was a very sexually charged song and it touched audiences more. It was more palatable to audiences when it came from a white man than from a black woman.

Speaker 2: 11:15

A lot of her music was like that, where it was very sexually charged. It broke the gender binaries at the time because it showed that women can also want it. Not just want it, but be the pursuer. Be the one you know.

Speaker 1: 11:33

Yeah, it also perpetuated that stigma of silencing a woman who was in touch with her femininity, her sexuality, her pleasure centers, who spoke about pleasure. And I think it's really important that people understand, because I don't think a lot of people know that Elvis's music was not written by him. It was written by a woman of color, you know.

Speaker 2: 11:56

Most people don't know that Most people don't.

Speaker 1: 11:58

Most people, even today, most people don't, and it's amazing. So I love the fact that this is being brought up, because a friend and I actually were discussing this very thing. We were talking about American music and basically it's kind of what we're talking about Blues in America, not classical music that came from the Western world, but how American music started here and told stories about the older generations and told stories of their lives and how that evolved over time. And one of the things that actually came up was this very thing and she's like yeah, did you know that Elvis's music was written by a black woman? And I was like I had no idea. And she's like yeah, but I've been listening to American music my whole life and I'm like I mind blown. So I love the fact that this just came up. It's amazing.

Speaker 2: 12:44

Yeah, no, it's, it's fantastic. And if you guys have not heard her version of Hound Dog, the original version of songs like Hound Dog and Ball and Chain, I heavily recommend looking into them. They are available on both YouTube and, I believe, on Spotify. I do believe Willie Mae, big Mama Thornton, has her own Spotify profile that was started like posthumously. I may be mistaken my brain is a little mushy today, so you know but definitely on YouTube.

Speaker 2: 13:14

Yeah all of those songs are available on YouTube and I heavily recommend going and giving them a listen, because they are fantastic.

Speaker 1: 13:19

Yeah, I'm gonna do the same actually. So now we're moving into Johnny Ray. Johnny Ray was bisexual and he helped define the genre we now know as rock and roll, writing and recording two dozen of the top 40 hits over his entire lifetime, and his bisexuality was considered an open secret to those that were close to him. His ex-wife was reportedly telling her friends that she would quote straighten him out. Eventually, he was arrested on several occasions for soliciting male undercover officers, and he had a long-term relationship with his manager, whose name was bill franklin yes, and he another one was really, really interesting music and there was actually very fascinating.

Speaker 2: 14:00

There was whole articles of just being like no, johnny ray wasn't gay, he was bi. Get it right. And I was very like you know what we stand a bi king. I love this. So, yeah, I thought that was fantastic. Yeah, next up we have the one, the only little richard. So the effect he has had on the musical and cultural world is completely and totally undeniable and also unquantifiable. I feel like it's one of those things where I don't unless you could see a world where Little Richard never got famous or never existed I don't think it can be quantifiable. His effect on the cultural and musical world, right Like.

Speaker 1: 14:47

I think that's fair to say Absolutely, yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:49

Like it was, just it's absolutely unquantifiable. He broke into the mainstream as a queer Black man who performed and lived with an authenticity the world was starving for at the time. No one could say it better than Little Richard himself in 1953 when introducing himself at the club matinee in Houston, Texas. Little Richard, king of the blues and the queen too.

Speaker 1: 15:14

I love that. I love that he's both the king and the queen, that is-.

Speaker 2: 15:17

And he himself said that. That's how he introduced himself. And you know what? No one can say it better than him, exactly. Yeah, that's how he identified.

Speaker 1: 15:24

That's how he introduced himself and you know what? No one can say it better than him Like. Exactly that's how he identified, that's how he presented and I, I love that he accepted and and just totally owned both of those equally. That's a, that's a true bisexual.

Speaker 2: 15:34

Oh yeah, a lot of his personal style and and just general stage presence is something that he was taught by a drag worker, drag Queens and different sex workers that he was friends with throughout his younger years. There was a thing where it was um, there was one specific drag queen I cannot remember their name and there was a whole joke of who wore the pompadour first yeah little richard or this.

Speaker 2: 16:01

Like you look at a picture of this drag queen and it's like wait, is that little richard? No, no, it's wait. What? Like they look? It's crazy.

Speaker 1: 16:09

It's actively kind of insane, uh, that this will be an article that will eventually be available, you know, through uh patreon you know, sources and such and things so y'all can take a look at that more in depth once we have all that going hint, hint, hint but you're right, true showmanship and contributed uh, I believe it was over seven decades of music blues, funk, just performances, pieces that really evoked emotion, and that was the key piece. It was like, like you said earlier, just things, people like feelings that people were craving or thinking or feeling but nobody had the balls or ovaries to talk about at the time and he was doing it through true showmanship. It's absolutely fantastic work. Yeah, so next up we have Johnny Mathis 43 hit singles and 74 titles on the Billboard 200 under his belt. Johnny is a musical force.

Speaker 1: 17:02

Throughout his career he supported civil rights. He supported gay rights. He used his platform for good to sing alongside activists to get the word out, to get out his messaging. In 1982, during an interview with US Magazine, he inadvertently came out by stating quote homosexuality is a way of life I've become accustomed to, and at the time that he made that statement, he did believe that he was off the record, but it is in fact on the record. Yeah, I think that's happened with multiple artists where they've made comments and then it really has. They just there's no privacy with artists, right? They're just always in the public eye. It doesn't matter.

Speaker 2: 17:48

They have to watch every single move they make, every single thing that comes like out of their every little phrase yeah, like it's. Bro. Hold on one second. I need a moment. Sorry, my pants and my underwear were not being my friend.

Speaker 1: 17:58

I get it. That's why I don't wear them.

Speaker 2: 18:01

Thank goodness, no, you're valid.

Speaker 1: 18:03

I stopped wearing them like two years ago, never looked back.

Speaker 2: 18:06

Valid, alrighty. So for the last of the 50s we have Liberace. Liberace was a master of performance, starting with the TV show that brought him to fame in 1951, the Liberace Show to his time, doing live concerts that got grander every year and flexing his prowess on the big screen in Sincerely Yours. He had a plethora, a whole ass array of things he was capable of. The TV he did perfectly, concerts, movies like he was a performing star yeah, he was also a child prodigy fair, fair.

Speaker 2: 18:41

I could see that yeah yeah unfortunately, his brilliant career was embroiled in personal controversy over his flamboyant style and even legal battles at times, due to publications speculating over his personal life and sexuality. So he sued multiple different publications throughout his life for making statements stating he is queer without his consent or without his you know. Like anything, it's basically defamation.

Speaker 1: 19:09

Right Not to be confused with suing people for calling him something that he wasn't.

Speaker 2: 19:14

Right, that's basically what he sued for. Is he sued for defamation? He sued these newspaper publications for defamation for assuming on and speculating about his sexuality, which to each their own, that is an entirely personal battle for every single human being who goes through it Exactly.

Speaker 1: 19:30

Yeah, just because you're queer doesn't mean that you want to be targeted in every news outlet under the sun while you're trying to make music and be an activist for the queer community. Yeah, just live.

Speaker 2: 19:40

Yeah. The callousness and disrespect around this speculation is just so beyond visible in what happened surrounding his death. Shortly before his passing, the public and newspapers were speculating that he had AIDS, something him and those close to him vehemently denied. After his passing, his doctor announced to the public and put on his death certificate that he had passed due to cardiac arrest. The local county coroner, raymond Carrillo, brought different information to the public after an autopsy was performed. As the LA Times stated in their article published February 10th 1987, liberace died as a direct result of having AIDS. The Riverside County coroner said Monday afternoon, contradicting statements by the entertainer's family and the death certificate signed by his physician.

Speaker 1: 20:30

Yeah, fuck that guy. And apparently he had pneumonia which actually complicated, you know, as a result of having AIDS complicated. That's what led him to his death ultimately.

Speaker 2: 20:38

Do you want to hear the worst part?

Speaker 1: 20:39

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 20:40

This coroner, who went against his wishes, his family's wishes, his physician's wishes, didn't even go to prison.

Speaker 1: 20:47

It's hard, even today with the medical narratives. I mean, those narratives are so so they die so hard. People are not being held accountable and you know, sometimes in practice, what I find is that people do the best with what they have, sometimes not all the time, but they fell prey to the brainwashing, to the institution that is the mainstream narrative.

Speaker 2: 21:07

I'm at the point where I truly cannot handle people who cannot have the basic amount of empathy or compassion or understanding for just anything out like. I can't do it anymore. I really can't.

Speaker 1: 21:19

I truly truly can't I get that?

Speaker 2: 21:21

Anyway, we're getting into the 60s, free love.

Speaker 1: 21:24

We are moving into the 60s, yeah. So moving on with Leslie Gore, she was an American singer and she also was an actress. She was very powerful and she had very emotive vocals, which again is one of those things that were very attractive during that time. She's just a brilliant mind, her voice is timeless and she's known for classics like it's my Party. You guys all know that song, it's my Party, I'll cry if I want to, and she at just 16 years old, which is crazy. And then also, you Don't Own Me, and that was a song that would become an anthem for feminism when she was just at the ripe age of 17. So she's an icon and that's incredible.

Speaker 2: 22:03

Just real quick. I just think it's so funny. You Don't Own Me ended up being written by two men and then she was the one who sang it and I just think that's really fucking funny that this like it's appropriate. This timeless feminist anthem happened to be written by these two guys, so they ended up writing it for her voice. Like they wrote it with her voice in mind to sing it, but like I just think that's really funny that it ended up being written by just like these two fucking guys.

Speaker 1: 22:30

But it's also super appropriate for her to have gone viral with that at that age as a female during the 70s, the rise of feminism. I mean I remember hearing stories about you. You know, biker gangs and things like that. If their partner was a female, if they were married, they rode bitch, they rode on the back. And a lot of times you see these bikers and gangs going around with t-shirts. On the back of the their wife's shirt it'll say property of, and then whoever the guy you know, whatever the husband was, riding the bike and it's like, literally, you know, shoot and pull and whatever, go get me a beer bitch. Like they didn't get their own shit, they didn't make their own dinner.

Speaker 1: 23:02

No, that's fair Women were property of. So this is like you don't own me.

Speaker 2: 23:06

Yeah, this song came out in like the early 60s and, like I said, no-transcript.

Speaker 1: 23:48

I mean because you think the rise of feminism in the 70s just happened out of nowhere. No, it was set up by the 60s. Oh yeah, no 100%.

Speaker 2: 23:54

You know it was set up by the 60s. Oh yeah, no 100%.

Speaker 1: 23:56

You know, it was set like this is the mindset changing in real time.

Speaker 2: 23:59

We talk about the rise of feminism as if it just happened in the 70s. The rise of feminism can be traced back to the suffragettes. I was going to say that the rise of feminism can be traced all the way back to black women, you know, trying to fight for their own when these are ideas that very recently gained names. But the ideas themselves are older than time.

Speaker 1: 24:21

Yeah, exactly, you just nailed it. I got full body chills when you said that, because it's true, there's long, long, long deep-seated roots.

Speaker 2: 24:29

Absolutely yeah, it's just one of those things where we didn't have names for it until, as we really started to organize, to create real movements around these things, they no longer were just ideas, they were movements.

Speaker 1: 24:42

Yeah right, kind of sounds like queer languaging too, you know, like we didn't have names for certain things or certain processes and now we have names you know to put with them. Yeah, so Leslie Gore. While she was attending Sarah Lawrence, which was an all-girls college, she was studying literature and drama. She began to explore her sexual orientation and in the early 2000s she came out as a lesbian. She was hosting a TV show on PBS in 2004 called In the Life, which focused actually on LGBT plus issues, and in 2005, she officially came out in an interview where she explained that she had been in a long-term relationship with a jewelry designer by the name of Lois Sasson since 1982. The two lived together until Leslie Gore died from lung cancer.

Speaker 2: 25:32

All the way in 2015.

Speaker 1: 25:33

So the two were together from 1982 until 2015, when it's pretty incredible which like wow, I mean you just got this, just blew my mind because I, I love I man. The her songs remind me of my childhood and say that.

Speaker 2: 25:46

So this is just like super cool, like fun facts I do get it because my mom really loves leslie gore, so I understand like being reminded of childhood from her. Yeah, um, next up we have jackie shane. Shane was a transgender r&b, blues and soul singer whose music career was climbing upward in nashville, tennessee, due to her agnatic stage presence and soulful voice. By 1959 she was forced to move to toronto, canada, after being witnessed to and almost the victim of a violent racist mob.

Speaker 2: 26:19

Them magazine about the artist states Jim Crow made life dangerous enough for any Black person in the South, let alone a teenage boy who openly wore makeup to school and a four-length Black gown to her draft board. So Jackie moved to Toronto, canada, for her own safety, where she ended up finding much more success and accolade in the Canadian audiences as a trans woman of color. Just really, really beautiful them article about her and very, very beautiful presence that she seemed to carry with her and I I love her vibe and yeah, the story of the mob. Very beautiful presence that she seemed to carry with her and I I love her vibe and yeah, the the story of of the mob that that she ended up narrowly fleeing from along with her best friend was very, very, a very startling tale of something that you know is so recent in our own history.

Speaker 2: 27:15

And she was a trans woman.

Speaker 1: 27:17

Yeah, very cool. Next up we have chavela vargas. Uh, chavela was a costa rican singer who sang her own vibrantly warm and revolutionary interpretations of mexico's ranchera songs. And ranchera songs were traditionally sentimental style, so men backed with guitars, trumpets, other instruments I mean you see that today, little small ensembles just kind of jamming out to traditional songs. Chevella would weave ballads in this style using her voice and guitar alone, so it's just her and her guitar. She was known for wearing men's clothing and ponchos and smoking cigars and excessively drinking, and what I find is super fascinating is that during this time she was very close friends with Frida Kahlo and it was rumored that they had an affair. And if you guys know who Frida Kahlo is, I love her work. She was also openly bisexual.

Speaker 2: 28:14

We will definitely be doing an entire episode about Frida in the coming months. That is something that, oh really, oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:23

Oh my God, no, I'm kidding. I love Frida, I love me some Frida.

Speaker 2: 28:28

Yeah, it was one of those things where, as soon as I wrote her down in here, I was like oh, I know what we're doing. We have to.

Speaker 1: 28:36

So she was known also for wearing men's clothing and she was also known as being a trailblazer in her, you know, gender nonconformity. So her artwork is amazing. It reflected, you know, similar ideas of like her, just being like well ahead of her time, Just like Chavila Vargas with her music, Just this feeling of just being ahead of where the time is. You know just these ideas that were so, you know, cutting edge or whatever, for lack of a better word. But a lot of Frida's work was basically based like. Her paintings were based around her gender, her sexuality, her identity, a lot of queer theming. So I'm looking forward to diving into that in the future.

Speaker 2: 29:19

No, I understand Literally. Like I said as soon as I was like wait a minute, oh my God. No, we have to.

Speaker 1: 29:23

Yeah, and talking about Frida Kahlo is making me think of Georgia O'Keeffe. When I was out in New Mexico working with the Santa Fe Opera, there was the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum that housed all of her artwork in Santa Fe, new Mexico, and all of her paintings that everybody says like, oh, they look like she paints flowers, but of course they all look like vaginas, you know, or vulvas or some kind of you. Just you can't help but not notice. It's like hello, but that's you know. Anyway, we could do an episode on her too. That would be cool. I love that.

Speaker 2: 29:50

I love that Anyway.

Speaker 1: 29:54

Anyway, moving on to the 1970s, hey, yes, here we are.

Speaker 2: 29:59

So the 70s. First up we have David Bowie.

Speaker 1: 30:04

I've never heard of him.

Speaker 2: 30:05

I mean.

Speaker 1: 30:05

I'm totally joking. I'm totally joking, I actually Wait. I think I got you for a second. Can I find it?

Speaker 2: 30:10

For half a second, can I? I have a cat pin. It's my David Bowie cat. My ex got it for me for my birthday, like seven years ago.

Speaker 1: 30:20

Very cool, it's a.

Speaker 2: 30:22

David Bowie cat. I love him. But famously fluid icon and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, bowie spent most of his life dedicated to music, even through his struggles with mental health and the loss of his older brother, terry, to suicide his first hit single space oddity came out in 1969 and was inspired by 2001 space odyssey, while stoned out of my mind.

Speaker 2: 30:49

So he went to see 2001 space at his odyssey, just ripped off his ass and inspired space oddity and I I love that that song is. Oh my God. I used to listen to that a lot when I was 17 and going to school in bright red tutus over torn leggings.

Speaker 1: 31:09

Great memories. That's the, that's the power of music.

Speaker 2: 31:12

you know, great memories 100%, according to David Bowie's buyorg's page. After decades of conflicting interviews, it seems that likely that bowie was indeed bisexual. In a 2001 interview with blender, he was asked if he still believed that saying he was bisexual was the biggest mistake I ever made. Bowie's response confirmed his bisexuality and explained his previous denial. Interesting, long pause. I don't think it was a mistake in europe, but it was a lot tougher in america. I had no problem with people knowing I was bisexual, but I had no inclination to hold any banners or be a representative of any group of people. I knew what I wanted to be, which was so. That's why he backtracked on being bisexual. It was because the American audiences found out and could not look past that it was the only thing that they wanted to talk about, that they wanted to even like allies. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 32:24

You know how sometimes like like we love our allies but you ever meet an ally.

Speaker 1: 32:28

That's like a little much right and you're just like well also, I mean, if you're a musician and that's your art form and you're expressing your art form and you're trying to send out messages, or even you know subliminal messaging through your art form, and people are totally missing the boat on it because you're so infatuated with your, your identity or sexuality, et cetera, that you can't see Like you missed the point. You know exactly.

Speaker 1: 32:54

it's like it's cool that people are queer, but also like, okay, let's move on exactly so anyway, speaking of queer bands, the b-52s, four of the five original band members identify as being queer or, in the lgbtqia plus community, ricky wilson, ke Keith Strickland, fred Schneider and Kate Pearson. So they didn't set out to explicitly write queer anthems. Schneider says, quote I guess subconsciously we were trying to say something, but it was sort of a stream of consciousness, it was so out there. So I guess you know what that's saying is that they didn't specifically write queer theming, but just being a reflection of who they are, it just came across that way.

Speaker 2: 33:43

Can I just read this article quote? It just makes me so fucking happy. I'm sorry, this article quote just made me so happy. When I found it I was like yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 2: 33:53

So there was an article about B-52s on Billboard, and the author of the article writes punk in their subversion of convention and celebration of the absurd. They were also definitely fun at a time when President Ronald Reagan wouldn't so much as say the word gay or address the fact that AIDS was quickly becoming a pandemic, one that would claim Ricky as one of its earliest high-profile casualties. At the time, the message that LGBTQ kids like me took from them felt urgent and necessary. Weird is good, and it's where the party's at.

Speaker 1: 34:29

Damn.

Speaker 2: 34:31

I love that Wow.

Speaker 1: 34:33

Yeah, that's very layered.

Speaker 2: 34:35

Great like this is a period of time these are so many kids that just they're told nah, you're too much, this is not what you need to be, you need to fit a mold. And then there's this band. Being weird is good, we're weird Come with us. Weird is where the fun is. Come on. And that's nowadays, like that's such a common thing. You know, like weird is good, weird's where the fun's at, To see like the early stages of it makes me emotional, like I love it.

Speaker 1: 35:02

It's amazing and ironically he becomes a casualty and he's high profile. So imagine how much worse people who aren't high profile, imagine how much worse their experiences are. Like it just puts so much into perspective. I love that Okay.

Speaker 1: 35:16

so to finish up the decade of the 1970s, we have Klaus Nomi. Even though he was gone far too soon due to the complications of AIDS, he was one of the first in the art world to die to the illness. The German vocalizer was known for his wide range of bizarrely memorable stage presence. So throughout the 70s he was immersed in the East Village art scene and he was known as quote the singing alien. He was beloved by David Bowie.

Speaker 2: 35:44

Yeah, for all my Vocaloid fans out there, for all my Vocalizer fans out there, go check out Klaus Nomi. You would love their vibe. It's K-L-A-U-S-N-O-M-I Go check them out. K-l-a-u-s-n-o-m-i Go check them out. My vocalizers out there. You will really appreciate just the energy and the very, very cool shit.

Speaker 1: 36:04

I'm about to download a playlist myself.

Speaker 2: 36:07

Fair Vocalizers are very fun.

Speaker 1: 36:10

Sounds like an awesome, awesome human.

Speaker 2: 36:12

It's a really fun genre of music to stim to. I find vocalizer music really good when I'm feeling understimulated and. I need something to like feel and vocalizer and like synth music is really good for that.

Speaker 1: 36:26

Yeah, music is really good. If people don't have music in their lives, our nervous systems tend to get dysregulated very easily, with overstimulation, everything fighting for our attention coming at us like a fire hose and we can't regulate our nervous systems. So I think music is really good to help find regulation, but also like tapping, dancing, rhythmic stuff for people in general.

Speaker 2: 36:48

It is fantastic.

Speaker 1: 36:49

So we're moving into the 1980s, which I love because I was born in 1980. It was a great decade, ooh.

Speaker 2: 36:57

That is a great decade. If you don't know Freddie Mercury, I'm going to need you to crawl out from under the rock and go look up Queen and just enjoy. Freddie Mercury was internationally acclaimed throughout the 70s and 80s. Mercury was a singer, songwriter and showman. Extraordinaire Songs from his time with Queen have become cultural mainstays. Decades after he died from AIDS-related complications, mercury was engaged to his longtime friend, mary Austin, who would care for him at the end of his life, and was in a seven-year relationship with Irish hairdresser Jim Hutton until Freddie died in 1991 at 45 years old. Freddie died in 1991 at 45 years old. We Will Rock. You is played at every sporting event. We Are the Champions is the end of almost every movie about sports. There's just so many of their songs Somebody to Love from Ella Enchanted. So many of their songs are used throughout pop culture to this day.

Speaker 1: 37:57

Yeah, Even in 1984, which was two years after the Gay Men's Health Crisis Organization was formed in New York to help combat AIDS, Freddie scored his first solo hit called Love Kills. Everything was about subtext with Freddie Mercury.

Speaker 2: 38:10

Next up we have my girl.

Speaker 1: 38:13

Divine, we have my girl, divine, divine.

Speaker 2: 38:17

Divine was also known as harris glenn milstead and better known as the incredible inspiration for ursula, the are we talking about this previously, but this is the drag queen who would inspire the creation of ursula. While divine isn't necessarily considered a pop star, she was, however, a singer, performer and drag queen who stole the stage and the silver screen as well. She became a well-known celebrity throughout the 80s, but life was hard for her Her as a child in the 50s and 60s, as a very young queer kid. You know she got bullied a lot in her youth and stuff like that. However, that would change at the age of 16 when she would meet a boy who lived down the street that we know pretty well.

Speaker 2: 39:02

John Waters is referred to lovingly as the Pope of Trash. I love that man, oh my God of divine, from the name and to the image and just general like trashy, dirty, sexy, beautiful, like just her. That divine was he. He helped craft that whole image and he would direct almost every feature film that divine was in. They were a duo. They worked together consistently throughout both of their careers.

Speaker 1: 39:43

Yeah, that's pretty amazing, because I know that they're both in cinematic and theatrical productions, which is super cool, and I know she's adopted this like female drag persona. That is just, I mean, unmistakable. It's awesome. She looks like Ursula. It's like uncanny when you look at the pictures. Awesome, she looks like ursula.

Speaker 2: 39:57

It's like uncanny when you look at the pictures, like I'm telling y'all, if you have not seen divine, if you do not know what she looks like, I need you to go look up an image. It's incredible. I promise you your jaw will hit the floor.

Speaker 1: 40:07

Yeah, that's ursula yeah to a t. I mean it's creepy and that's how much yeah and, and that is dead ass.

Speaker 2: 40:15

The only reason that I am upset with the Little Mermaid remake is the fact that Ursula should have been played by a drag queen. She was inspired by a drag queen. Everything from her voice to her, she is a drag queen Like how did they? And the fact that they did not cast a drag queen to play her makes me mad.

Speaker 1: 40:34

Like literally, how did they miss that? That that is such a key identity to the fabric of the piece. Like how does that get missed unless you did that shit intentionally?

Speaker 2: 40:45

they just put melissa mccarthy in drag makeup. That's literally what they did they took a cis woman and put her in drag make that's.

Speaker 1: 40:52

That's like the metropolitan opera using canned music or something like. You know it doesn't work exactly so yeah, like that's.

Speaker 2: 41:00

The only critique I have of the remake of the little mermaid is the fact that ursula should have 100 been played by a drag queen, because that is how you honor that character. That is how you honor that character, and that is also how you honor howard ashman, the Disney composer who helped make her happen.

Speaker 1: 41:18

Right.

Speaker 2: 41:19

Like that's how you honor the history that allowed Ursula to occur the way she is. Like that's the only way to properly honor that history.

Speaker 1: 41:30

Totally feel that Next up we have George.

Speaker 2: 41:33

One last, but certainly not least yeah, certainly not least George Michael.

Speaker 1: 41:36

In his younger years of performing he was part of a band, wham W-H-A-M. Exclamation point, I'm sure everybody's familiar with that. He was performing all over the world, including being the first Western pop group to perform in China. Super cool, which.

Speaker 2: 41:51

I didn't yeah, yeah, that's fascinating.

Speaker 1: 41:54

That's when, I guess, touring started becoming a thing. Right? Yeah, george Michael. He made his debut as a solo artist in 1987 with his Grammy award-winning album Faith, and in 1998, he faced personal controversy due to an arrest at an LA park for lewd acts in a public restroom. He held a press conference during which he came out as gay restroom. He held a press conference during which he came out as gay, and while he's best remembered for his time in music, his true impact through philanthropy was only understood after his passing, with so much of his time and money going to help others.

Speaker 2: 42:28

And he did most, if not all of it entirely anonymously and asked that that information not be released. I think the only reason it was was because the organization owners, after his passing, decided to come forward and be like hey, just so you, the public, know, if it wasn't for George Michael, we would have been underwater long ago he kept us afloat. I mean it makes sense being honest about someone being a good person is okay. It makes sense why he would want that to stay hidden, because it looks like publicity.

Speaker 1: 42:59

Yeah, I totally get that. That totally makes sense. So, kit, do you want to jump to that fun fact?

Speaker 2: 43:05

Absolutely. I'd love nothing more. In 1973, a collection of women came together to start Olivia Records, a feminist recording label that put out over 40 albums during its groundbreaking two-decade run that opened the door for a wave of lesbian musicians, artists and activists. Outro Music.