50 Defining Songs of LGBTQ+ Pride: A History of Queer Pop Music
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Pitchfork
Summary
This article explores the deep, intertwined history of LGBTQ+ culture and pop music over the last 50 years, highlighting 50 defining songs. It traces queer contributions from early blues pioneers like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith through the Pansy Craze of the 1920s-30s, and continues through the post-Stonewall era with artists like Frank Ocean, Tegan and Sara, Jobriath, Troye Sivan, and Grace Jones. The piece positions queer artists and audiences as central to pop music's evolution, not peripheral to it.
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Twitter / X50 Defining Songs of LGBTQ+ Pride: A History of Queer Pop Musicpitchfork.comKey quotes
· 3 pulledLGBTQ+ people have always been at pop's vanguard, as performers and audiences; the history of pop music is queer history.
Blues originators like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, both openly bisexual, helped form the foundation of what would become R&B and rock'n'roll.
In the 1920s and early '30s, Prohibition's end gave way to the 'Pansy Craze': cabaret drag performances that brought gay nightlife to the masses and carried their aesthetics into mainstream musical theater.
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