Next June will mark 50 years since the modern gay rights movement ignited, kindled by the Stonewall riots. Much has changed since then. In the original coverage of the riots, the New York Daily News’ headline mocked “Queen Bees Stinging Mad”. The New York Times wouldn’t use the word “gay” for another two decades. Today, newspapers commonly police their pages for the slightest whiff of homophobia. Yet, even in far more benighted times, music conveyed the codes and emotions of gender nonconformists everywhere.
For Pride month, here’s a selective playlist featuring those recordings that best express both gay yearnings and society’s changes, over the last century.
1. Ma Rainey – Prove It On Me (1928)
More than 40 years before Stonewall, the forthright blues belter Ma Rainey delivered a no-nonsense come-on to women, complete with a kiss-off to men, in case you missed her sapphic point.
2. Noël Coward – Mad About the Boy (1932)
For years, this classic Noël Coward song passed as straight in cover versions by female artists from Dinah Washington to Marianne Faithfull. But when the author’s own version finally came out, it made plain the same-sex lusts that inspired a classic.
3. Billy Strayhorn – Lush Life (1938)
Though lyricist Billy Strayhorn wrote Lush Life in the 1930s, for a long time he would only perform it in private. Later, it became a jazz standard, with lyrics that pivoted on an antique meaning of the word “gay”. Strayhorn’s clever lyrical dodge gave him both plausible deniability and a pathway towards an eventual truth.
4. Gene Howard – The Man I Love (1962)
In the early 60s, a straight singer who sang with Stan Kenton’s band generously agreed to voice an album intended for a gay audience on which he sincerely serenaded another man with some of the most passionate love songs ever written. It became a cult item, beloved by stars like Frank Sinatra and Liberace, as well as gay audiences on the east and west coasts. In the years since, the album has been unearthed as an early gay treasure.
5. The Kinks – Lola (1970)
Ray Davies’s empathetic, and accepting, story of a cross-dresser proved so compelling, it became a top 10 smash, even in an infinitely more homophobic time.
6. David Bowie – All The Young Dudes, as popularized by Mott the Hoople (1972)
Glam rock specialized in sending mixed messages about sexual identity. Dudes made the lust of its narrator blatant when he announced his intent to “chase some cat to bed”. The simultaneously proud – and pained – music Bowie wrote to match his words turned Dudes into an anthem for all gay rock fans.
7. Lou Reed – Walk on the Wild Side (1972)
With savvy assistance from Bowie and Mick Ronson, Reed managed to smuggle Andy Warhol’s entire underground – peopled with drag queens, hustlers and drug addicts – right into the heart of the charts.
8. Jobriath – Take Me I’m Yours (1974)
The first “openly gay” rocker who was actually gay, Jobriath embraced BDSM in this cheeky cult fave.
9. Rod Stewart – The Killing of Georgie Parts I and II (1976)
Yes, Stewart’s classic indulged a hoary gay cliche by ending in tragedy. But the deep love he displayed for his doomed friend Georgie – drawn from a true-life story – expressed sentiments otherwise unstated by rock stars of its day.
10. Sylvester – You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) (1978)
With his ecstatic vocal and driving disco beat, Sylvester captured the sound of liberation in a song.
11. The Village People – Go West (1979)
Just as Scott McKenzie’s San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) lured hippies west in 1967, this Village People classic functioned as a welcome mat for gay people at the community’s adopted homeland by the bay.
12. Sister Sledge – We Are Family (1979)
This classic redefined the entire LGBT community as its own family, decades before same-sex marriage became, in some places, the law.
13. Elton John – Elton’s Song (1979)
At the commercial nadir of his career – five years after he came out as bisexual and more than a decade before he come out as a gay man – Elton released the most poignant queer song of his career. Co-written with Tom Robinson (of Glad to be Gay fame), Elton’s Song told the sad tale of a young boy’s hopeless crush on another boy. In the recording, the genders in question were blurred, but the accompanying video made them stirringly clear.
14. Pete Townshend – Rough Boys (1980)
Townshend’s randy song, which caught him longing to “bite and kiss” a rough trade punk, exposed the homoeroticism that underlies so much rock’n’roll. It’s found in everything from the phallic guitars to the boys’ club bonding of its classic bands.
15. Diana Ross – I’m Coming Out (1980)
For decades, Miss Ross’s declarative disco smash has served as the ultimate invitation to not only state your identity, but to revel in it.
16. Bronski Beat – Smalltown Boy (1984)
Both the song and video for Boy confronted audiences with the pain and shame of gay bashing.
17. The Smiths – There is a Light That Never Goes Out (1986)
The most poignant depiction of gay miserabilism ever, fired by a once impossible desire.
18. Pet Shop Boys –- It’s a Sin (1987)
Shame, the sad cousin of pride, found cathartic expression in the Pet Shop Boys’ thrilling redefinition of “sin”.
19. Madonna – Vogue (1990)
Yes, Malcolm McLaren appropriated the black gay world of “vogueing” before Madonna did. And RuPaul alluded to it with a far greater authority in Supermodel. But Madonna’s hit reached the largest audience and treated that demimonde with the chic it deserves.
20. REM – Losing My Religion (1991)
At the peak of REM’s fame, a still closeted Michael Stipe wrote a song, matched to a hit video, that contained “the hint of the century” about his true identity. It stands as a classic example of coding in the Bill Clinton-era of “don’t-ask-don’t-tell”.
21. Nirvana – All Apologies (1993)
As the top rock star of his day, it took real balls for Kurt Cobain to assert that “everyone is gay” in this seminal Nirvana song. The singer had a deep identification with the outsider, which made him a hero to gay people. More, Cobain’s song offered a bracing corrective to the macho aspect of rock he abhorred.
22. kd lang – What’s New Pussycat? (1994)
Not only did kd lang become one of the first major pop stars to come out, amid a mini-wave in the early 90s, she did so, in part, by performing one of the randiest odes to a female body part ever. Her take on the campy track turned Pussycat from the ultimate straight man’s leer into a lustful lesbian rallying cry.
23. Vampire Weekend – Diplomat’s Son (2010)
The New York band brought same-sex desire to modern indie rock with a song whose lyrics have the lilt of poetry.
24. Frank Ocean – Forrest Gump (2012)
While Ocean hinted at his bisexuality in his work with Odd Future (in a song like Oldie), he took full ownership on this woozily romantic song found on his official debut solo album, Channel Orange.
25. Mary Lambert – She Keeps Me Warm (2013)
Lambert’s same-sex love song became an urgent rallying cry in the battle for marriage equality when she lent its chorus to the Macklemore and Ryan Lewis smash Same Love.
26. Against Me! – True Trans Soul Rebel (2014)
No one captured the anxiety, and bravery, of the transgender experience with more authority than Laura Jane Grace, leader of the punk band Against Me!. Though Laura wasn’t open about her identity at the time the song appeared, the music expressed the feelings she would later write about with unflinching candor in her raw autobiography, Tranny.
27. Perfume Genius – Queen (2014)
With consummate subversion, Perfume Genius turned inside out the antique image of gay people as vampires lurking in the shadows ready to strike the innocent. Queen repurposed that threat as an expression of gay power.
28. Miley Cyrus – Bang Me Box (2015)
The same artist who appropriated twerking for middle America created one of the most raw odes to lesbian sex on record.
29. Kim Petras – I Don’t Want It At All (2017)
When her satirical send-up of young girl greed became a viral hit, Kim Petras set herself up as the first transgender teen idol.
30. Troye Sivan – Bloom (2018)
Though gay pop stars started publicly announcing their sexual identity in significant numbers in the 90s, it would take another two decades before some would make the gender they desire explicit in their lyrics. Troye Sivan epitomized the evolution with Bloom by lionizing the boy he hoped would end his virginity.
- This article has been amended on 7 June 2018. Gene Howard was originally called George Howard in error.
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