LESPOP
“She doesn’t kiss me on the mouth anymore,” sings indie-pop sensation Halsey in the opening line to her single, “Strangers.” It’s a summery, 80’s inspired duet with Fifth Harmony’s Lauren Jauregui. Both singers are openly bisexual; the track is a love song between two women struggling with their relationship and their feelings for one another. Halsey described it as Pat Benatar meets Stevie Nicks meets Daft Punk, and as strange as that sounds, it’s spot on. But it’s not just catchy–it disrupts a disturbing trend in contemporary pop music: it’s the first love song Halsey wrote using female pronouns. In an interview with Zach Sang, she said: “I just love that Lauren and I are two women who have, like, a mainstream pop presence doing a love song for the LGBTQ community….It’s very rare to see it from a female perspective.”
Rare may be a bit misleading here. If you’re willing to dig deep into the discography of Ani Difranco and Kehlani, it’s not particularly difficult to find music by female artists that uses female pronouns, or to hear songs about women who are in love with other women. Lesbian love songs that chart, however, are indeed rarities. Straight women can make “queer” music that gets radio play, but these songs are often more damaging to the LGBTQ+ community because they make same-sex relationships seem trivial and/or taboo. Enough has been written about Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl” and Demi Lovato’s “Cool For The Summer,” but they both contribute to a larger cultural phenomenon: lesbianism is either fetishized, demonized, or marginalized, so naturally, lesbian love songs from female pop stars as big as Halsey are hard to come by. Tegan Quin of Tegan and Sara asked Q Magazine: “Where’s the Sam Smith or Troye Sivan of lesbians? It doesn’t have to be us. Good Lord, we’d get out of the f**king way.”
Tegan and Sara are the ultimate contemporary lesbian icons. The Canadian duo recently made the jump from indie alternative to pop with their seventh studio album, Heartthrob, which ranked at #3 on the Billboard charts. They performed with Taylor Swift, won a Juno Award (think the Grammys for Canada), and even earned an Oscar nod for their performance of “Everything is Awesome!!!” in The Lego Movie. After facing enormous sexism and homophobia following their debut into the alternative scene, pop sensation-ism was both a surprising and somewhat inevitable step for the twins. This may be because, while alternative music is somewhat known for its exclusivity, pop music is most known for its mass appeal, and in turn, its inclusiveness.
Tegan and Sara have yet to reach Halsey, Katy Perry, or Demi Lovato levels of pop acclaim. In 2013, their lead single “Closer” became the band’s first charting track, coming in at #90 on the Hot 100. And one of their incontestably queer singles, “Boyfriend,” off their 2015 album Love You To Death, made the Critics’ Picks 100 Best Pop Songs of 2016 list, coming in at #87. The critic opened his entry with a sarcastic lamentation: “Today in pop singles that should have been massive hits.” And he’s got a point–“Boyfriend” should have connected with straight men and gay women alike and dominated the radio waves with its unreasonably catchy hook. The ugly truth of why it didn’t is the same reason overtly gay love songs don’t chart: mainstream society is still deeply uncomfortable with homosexuality, gender role reversals, and perhaps most of all, queer female empowerment.
“Boyfriend” is, in essence, the response to Katy and Demi. The song chronicles the trials of a woman–the singer–who is seeing another woman. But the other woman clearly doesn’t take their relationship as seriously. It’s a singsongy manifestation of being on the receiving end of mixed signals: “I let you take advantage ’cause it felt so good / I blame myself for thinking we both understood.” It’s an all too typical lesbian dilemma: falling for the straight girl. But Sara said the song isn’t only about seeing a woman who’s still in the closet; rather, it’s about a girl who doesn’t want to be exclusive. Her use of “boyfriend” was tongue-in-cheek, playing with and satirizing traditional gender roles in romantic relationships and what they entail. It’s surprisingly layered for a bubbly pop song, allowing for multiple readings of the song depending on the listener’s experience. In an interview with Buzzfeed, Sara said: “The idea of a guy being like, ‘I totally relate to ‘Boyfriend,’ girls are always playing these games with me,’ and I’m like, ‘I know.’ I think there’s a part of me that wishes I lived in a world where it was like that.”
Sam Smith is inarguably one of the most celebrated queer voices in pop music. However, he consistently uses the gender neutral “you” rather than opting for “he/him” to sing about his lovers. He once said in a Fader interview: “I’ve made my music so that it could be about anything and everybody — whether it’s a guy, a female or a goat — and everybody can relate to that.” There is a lot to be respected in a decision like that. However, it remains that the use of same-sex pronouns in pop music plays a key role in normalizing homosexuality. It gives queer listeners a feeling of genuine inclusion in a society that ostracizes them, and it gives straight listeners more exposure to queer emotionality, showing them that love is love is love, no matter who the recipient is.
After seven years of identifying as bisexual, I came out as a lesbian in the summer of 2016. When I finally told my father, he said that he thinks his messy and tumultuous divorce with my mother “made me gay.” I said, “No, dad. Joan Jett’s cover of ‘Crimson and Clover’ made me gay.”
If you haven’t seen the video, it’s well worth a watch. It’s almost too campy in a way that only an 80s rock video can be, and yet somehow, it’s still sexy. It fades into a closeup of Jett’s lips as she practically whispers the first line: “Ah, now I don’t hardly know her / But I think I can love her / Crimson and clover.” She whips her hair around in slow motion, clad in a red cut off tank top and black leather pants. At one point, her eyes widen as she sings to the camera: “My my, such a sweet thing / I wanna do everything / What a beautiful feelin’.” That was my sexual awakening, as I’m sure it was for so many young lesbians (colloqually known as “baby dykes.”) But the thing I find most fascinating about Jett’s “Crimson and Clover” is her use of pronouns.
Or rather–her nonchalance toward them. In the original, Tommy James sang about a woman, using she/her pronouns throughout the song. Jett did not bother to change these pronouns, in turn, making the song about a woman lusting after another woman. Nothing particularly remarkable there. But what is remarkable is that Jett’s rock-y version of the song hit #7 on the Billboard charts in 1982. It was her second highest charting single behind “I Love Rock N Roll,” which charted at #1.
Today, Joan Jett is a lesbian icon. And while she has never made any public statements regarding her sexuality, her music speaks for itself. Jett was always an anomaly, transcending gender norms of pop stars of the time like Olivia Newton-John and Pat Benatar. Her style and attitude, which today would be seen as overtly queer, were alluring both to straight men and gay women. She was sexual, but on her own terms–almost aggressively so. The juxtaposition between a racier sensuality that would typically appeal more to straight men and a more forceful allure that might appeal more to lesbians dictates the dichotomy Jett navigated throughout her career. In order to be successful and compete with the Madonnas of her peer group, she had to appeal to straight men. But Jett, already a symbol of counterculture, was still able to live her (presumably) queer truth through her music. Those men who were attracted to her in the “Crimson and Clover” video needed only to listen to the words she was singing to understand who she was. But when have men ever really listened to what women are saying?
In 2016, a 24-year-old Brooklyn-bred rapper called Young M.A skyrocketed to rap superfame. Her single “OOOUUU” took over the hip-hop scene all across the country. It’s still nearly impossible to go to a hip-hop club in New York without hearing the boozy, swag-ridden party jam at least twice. And if you haven’t already caught on, Young M.A is a lesbian.
It’s no secret–in fact, many of the bars in “OOOUUU” make it very clear: “If that’s your chick, then why she textin’ me? / Why she keep callin’ my phone speaking sexually?” The soon-to-be iconic lyric: “You call her Stephanie? I call her Head-phanie!” Or my personal favorite: “When you tired of your man, gimme a call.” The thing is, this was not as obvious to other listeners as it was to me as a lesbian. And that’s because those listeners thought Young M.A was a man.
Specifically: “Baby gave me head, that’s a low blow / Damn she make me weak when she deep throat” caused a lot of controversy among male hip-hop heads. The lyric references the use of a dildo for fellatio during lesbian sex, a concept that is completely lost on many straight men. Young M.A. even commented on the controversy: “I mean, I understand, you know, guys that don’t understand. Because they’re not a dyke. You understand what I’m saying, but all the dykes out there, they know exactly what I’m talking about. It ain’t for a guy to understand. If you don’t understand, you don’t gotta understand it.” On more than one occasion, in fact, she’s told her male peers and fans that her sex life is not meant for them to understand, question, or criticize.
“OOOUUU” peaked at #19 in the Billboard Hot 100, and in 2016, Young M.A was the first female rapper to breach the top 10 in the Hip-Hop charts. But I can’t help but wonder, would she have had the same amount of success and acclaim if she had looked and sounded more like a gender-typical woman? And now that the public knows she’s a woman–a woman who has made a firm and empowered statement about her sexuality–will she ever chart again?
The difference between Young M.A, Joan Jett, and Tegan and Sara is their reputation. Jett, by refusing to address her sexuality publicly, forced audiences to see her only as a rockstar. Tegan and Sara, however, are known equally as artists and as lesbians. And Young M.A, falling somewhere between Jett and Tegan and Sara, seems to be building a career on normalizing herself, her sexuality, and her gender identity, particularly within the Black community. There are many well-known lesbian musicians, such as the Indigo Girls, k.d. Lang, Mary Lambert, and Melissa Etheridge, who are very well-known as lesbian artists, but none of these women were ever verified “pop sensations” in their respective times. Lambert did gain some visibility for her refrain in Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s “Same Love” in 2013, but it’s worth noting that song was intended to be an anthem for the LGBTQ+ community. And despite the fact that many of these women opt to use gender neutral pronouns in their songs, they still fail to break into the mainstream. It makes perfect sense that artists like Sam Smith, Joan Jett, and–to an extent–Young M.A choose to separate their music from their identities: no one has really been able to meld the two yet.
There’s a conspiracy theory that in reality, there are lots of queer popstars who are still closeted to the public for that very reason. Pop artists like Janelle Monae, Missy Elliot, and Miley Cyrus have been objects of speculation for years now. In the adjacent film and TV scene, countless rumors swirled about Kristen Stewart’s sexuality until she recently officially came out after years of keeping her love life under lock and key. In an interview with the Sunday Times, Stewart said: “…I think that saying things so bluntly is absolutely important, but at the same time, the only reason I haven’t ever done that is because there is an ambiguity to that and I wanted things to be really real for me.” But Stewart’s point of view may very well be the anomaly. In a time in which sexual fluidity is becoming more and more widely acknowledged, many Millennials are questioning the need for labels altogether. That being said, many Americans outside of more liberal circles have yet to accept the LGBTQ+ community at all. This division may lead many queer popstars, who naturally want to appeal to the widest possible base, to avoid more explicit expressions of their sexuality. So instead of blunt declarations like Halsey’s, Tegan and Sara’s, and Kristen Stewart’s queer fans look for subtext, dog whistles, and perhaps most importantly, visual evidence.
In the gay community, Carly Rae Jepsen is sort of an icon (Carly “Gay” Jepsen.) She makes catchy dancey music, her cropped cut looks just like my girlfriend’s, and her songs just seem…gay. She earned her spot in the queer hall of fame for her “Call Me Maybe,” at the end of which the object of her desire turned out to be in love with her male bandmate. Then, her 2015 song “Boy Problems” has perked the ears of many a lesbian such as myself. On the surface, it’s about the importance of female friendships over–wait for it–boy problems. The track opens with the voice of Sia over a phone line: “Listen, just leave, or stay, but I’m done listening to it.” Jepsen then comes to terms with her boy problems and realizes she’s “got worse problems.” She ends up breaking up with her boyfriend, and she doesn’t care. Why? We would argue, maybe she’s queer, maybe Sia is her girlfriend. A stretch? Probably. But juxtaposed with the music video, which features an all-girl cast having a glittery dance party, and Jepsen’s Joan Jett-reminiscent black mullet, the references may not be as far-fetched as they seem.
Queer artists like Shura, Awkwafina, Syd the Kid, and Hayley Kiyoko, as well as allies like Betty Who and Hailee Steinfeld continue to make music for the lesbian and queer female community. But their tracks still fail to chart. Many tastemakers in music and entertainment have expressed doubts about out popstars and movie stars, arguing that “personal life should remain personal.” What those people don’t understand is the real life repercussions of being part of a marginalized and underrepresented group. For a community with statistically higher rates of depression, abuse, and suicide–and rates that increase significantly when it comes to LGBTQ+ people of color–visibility is the first step toward progress. But pop music is an industry ruled by straight, white men. How is it to progress past unintentionally kissing a girl, seeing one another in secret, or publicly displaying affection strictly for male pleasure?
In my eyes, Halsey is a bisexual icon. Along with artists like Frank Ocean, she is redefining queer identity while still being forthright about who she is. She can go from casually making out with her female fans on stage, to getting felt up by the Chainsmokers’ Drew Taggart, to proudly creating music for her LGBTQ+ fans. “Strangers,” which dropped at the end of May, peaked at number 100 on the Hot 100. It’s also worth noting that “Strangers” is Halsey’s 3rd most listened to song on Spotify. A narrow victory, but a victory nonetheless. Unfortunately, we still have a long way to go.
In the Q Magazine interview with Tegan and Sara, Sara made an important observation about queer women in the mainstream: while LGBTQ+ women have made huge strides in the past few decades, there’s disquieting trend among them. “It’s great to see Kristen Stewart, St. Vincent and Cara Delevingne but they all work in the same world. They’re all very beautiful, they’re all white, they all fit a certain kind of femme identity. Women of color who are lesbians? Forget about it. Trans guys and women of color? Forget about it.”
As the Internet makes the world smaller and smaller, maybe pop listeners will realize that a love song is a love song, no matter what gender is singing it. Maybe the next lesbian pop song will peak higher than Halsey’s and get enough radio play for us to all get tired of it. Maybe same-sex pronouns in music will start to sound normal to us.
Maybe this article will become completely obsolete; I hope sooner rather than later.
To hear the music mentioned in this article and more sapphic pop songs, check out LesPop: The Playlist on Spotify!
