Music is an art deeply rooted in personal identity. Artists pour their hearts out to create music that not only speaks to them but can speak to a plethora of people who can relate to the struggles and triumphs of the artist. One group of artists who have broken barriers and established both a unique fanbase and sound in the popular music landscape are members of the LGBTQ+ community. LGBTQ+ artists not only face unique struggles in both their personal lives and careers, but they’ve also left a distinct and noticeable impression on the popular music of their cisgender and heterosexual counterparts.

 

Firstly, in order to successfully understand the impact LGBTQ+ artists have on popular music, one must understand some things about the LGBTQ+ voice and why it’s unique. It’s important to note that not all LGBTQ+ experiences are the same, for example, the experiences of a cisgender member of the community may be entirely unique when compared to a transgender member of the LGBTQ+ community and vice versa. However, this difference of experience does not mean that there aren’t some uniform themes in queer art. Many artists’ music have similar themes regarding acceptance, love, and social issues. Queer artists are put into a unique position with their platform, a platform in which they can fight for social justice through art as well as represent themselves through an outlet in a positive and introspective manner. 

 

Queer artists and attitudes are nothing new in popular music, in Queer Tracks, authors Doris Leibetseder, Professor Stan Hawkins, and Professor Lori Burns contend that artists like David Bowie and Lou Reed, some of the most iconic musicians of the twentieth century, had their roots in queer art. Glam rock was all about the glitter, and artists would essentially douse themselves in glitter. This glitter, which Leibetseder, Hawkins, and Burns say “was a subversive form of expression, which was connected to drag queens and transvestites and therefore to homosexuality” (Leibetseder et al.) Here we can see some the earliest historical roots of queer influence on popular music at-large. While glam-rock introduced this new, more androgynous image of the rockstar, with the tight clothing, eccentric makeup, and, of course, the glitter

 

Over time though, popular music has evolved. Glam-rock is a thing of the past, we don’t see many artists doused in glitter like Bowie was anymore, but what we do see is artists influenced by queer sensibilities in the mainstream. One such example is Charli XCX, an English singer-songwriter who most people are probably familiar with due to her hit from the film The Fault in Our Stars’ soundtrack “Boom Clap”. Since Boom Clap, however, Charli has taken a much different approach in her musical endeavors,  Charli XCX was a frequent collaborator with the now-deceased Sophie, a transgender avant-garde producer known for pushing the envelope of popular music with her abrasive production style. In an interview with Thora Siemsen of lennyletter.com, when asked about her earliest memories of her escape into music, Sophie says something that relates not only to her own career, but the careers and youths of many queer artists, she says:

           “I would be on my own a lot of the time, doing music. It was an escapism thing. I also had quite a lot of brothers and sisters growing up, who I’m close with, but they probably had best friends. I didn’t really have a best friend. I had good friends, but music, I suppose, became my escape, like this friend I was looking for that was about the same stuff as me. It takes a while, as you might know, to find your people.”

 

Here, we see the common theme of escapism in the life of Sophie. This notion isn’t unique to her life, however, as many queer artists report similar experiences and reflect those experiences in their music. Perhaps the influence Sophie has had on mainstream pop is best seen through the lens of Charli XCX, the aforementioned frequent collaborator’s latest album “How I’m Feeling Now”, which explores the isolation Charli felt in the midst of the Coronavirus lockdown. The album has bubble-gummy production, heavy in bass, and takes influence from the PC Music scene, a scene based on abrasive, avant-garde, and overblown pop music which was at its height in 2015 and spearheaded by Sophie and her collaborator A.G. Cook. Here we see the exact same feeling of isolation and escapism described by Sophie in her interview in a piece of popular music under a large label, Atlantic Music. 

 

To say that isolation is the only theme and characteristic of queer music would be disingenuous. Where artists like Sophie use the isolation they felt in their youth to guide their art, artists like Arca, the Venezuelan electronic music producer, create music that as described by Professor Wayne Marshall of the Berklee College of Music, “combines experimentalism and sensuous accessibility in bold ways, and his atmospheric, affecting, radically open beats offer themselves as dramatic scaffolding for vocals” (Marshall). Arca’s big break came when she produced for Kanye West on his hard-hitting and gaudy 2013 LP “Yeezus”. Here, we saw West, one of the biggest artists on earth, employ a queer artist in order to create a unique sound suitable for his loud and brash record. This theme doesn’t end here, with numerous artists employing the same queer artists. Take pop icon Madonna’s 2015 track titled “Bitch I’m Madonna”, this too, was produced by Sophie, and another LGBT icon in his own right, Frank Ocean, tapped Arca for production on his 2016 visual album “Endless.”  Ocean’s coming out as bisexual in 2012was a big deal in the musical world. Ocean was a hip-hop artist primarily known for his association with the “Odd Future” collective. Ocean coming out as bisexual led to conversations regarding the concept of masculinity in hip-hop and R&B and facilitated one of the first examples of an openly LGBTQ+ hip-hop artist. Ocean not only appealed to a generation of youth who found solace in hip-hop music, he also appealed to a generation of youth that felt isolated by the very music they found so much enjoyment in because of the traditionally masculine and heteronormative themes in hip-hop.

 

Lastly, one notable characteristic of LGBTQ+ music and art is the unique relationship that the art has with the internet and the relationship between queer artists and the internet. In the article “‘My laptop is an extension of my memory and self’: Post-Internet identity, virtual intimacy and digital queering in online popular music”, Michael Waugh of the Cambridge University Press aptly describes the relationship between the new internet and post-internet age and queerness.

“Intimate Post-Internet relationships drive explorations of gender and queer identity in the work of many musicians operating within the Post-Internet aesthetic. These artists fuse the fluid conceptual framework of queer theory with posthumanism to create a thematic trend that I dub ‘digital queer’. (Waugh)

The internet has consistently shaped the lives of many, and the same goes for queer artists and people. This new era of communication has given artists new ways to express their sexuality and gender identity, which then morphs into new genres. Take the queer-dominated space of “hyperpop”, a genre built on the PC Music scene, hyperpop formed from the internet, and the lyrics and sensibilities, often pertaining to isolation, sexuality, and depression, represent those roots. In “LGBTQ and Out on Social Media — but Nowhere Else”, John Paul Brammer of NBC news explores this exact idea, citing examples of LGBTQ+ communities online that create distinct ecosystems and senses of belonging for LGBTQ+ people – even when the real world outside doesn’t. Just because the outside world may seem cold to queer art at times doesn’t mean that the influence that cisgender and heterosexual artists take from queer art aren’t evident – they’re clear all throughout the musical world.

 

LGBT artists have contributed greatly to popular music, whether it be the original trailblazers, modern electronic producers, or anyone in between, queer art is alive and it isn’t going anywhere. The influence that LGBTQ+ artists have on their cisgender and heterosexual counterparts is undeniable. The modern popular music landscape wouldn’t be possible without LGBTQ+ artists and their influence. The themes of isolation and abrasive production that queer artists bring wouldn’t be as present in popular music without queer influence.