Culture

Years before EDM would dominate the airwaves of the early 2010s, artists took its sound, mixed with a healthy blend of punk and pop, to create the electroclash movement in the early 2000s. The underground genre became a welcoming place for the LGBTQ+ community at large, with queer artists like Peaches, Fischerspooner, Le Tigre and dozens more creating forward-thinking dance music that included the community at large. As Peaches told Billboard in 2022, “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to play electronic music, and you can infuse your badass femininity and your badass queerness and make cool music the way you want to.”

In a time before queer and trans artists found themselves in the cultural mainstream, pop superstar Christina Aguilera made sure to give them a platform in her music video for “Beautiful.” Throughout the 4-minute video, Aguilera sings about the importance of self-worth and acceptance while going out of her way to highlight a queer couple and a transgender woman among those deserving to see themselves as beautiful. It may seem like a small gesture in hindsight, but the simple fact is Aguilera centered the experiences of the LGBTQ community in a time when it was still unpopular to do so, making this music video a vital act from one of the biggest pop stars on the planet.

When people talk about sudden, meteoric success today, certain names come to mind — Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, even Chappell Roan. But one band that that achieved similarly speedy success (on a slightly smaller scale) in that category is the Scissor Sisters. In 2004, this New York City pop rock band went from relative obscurity to cultural ubiquity in record time with a retro-pop-rock sound and flamboyant stage presence from leads Jake Shears and Ana Matronic. Within just a couple years of their debut, the group routinely dominated Billboard’s dance charts as they flew their freak flag as high as they could, boldly showing the music industry just how infectious inclusive dance music could be. 

In the 2000s, conventional wisdom within the music industry said that coming out as gay was a career-killer. So, when former *NSYNC member Lance Bass made the decision to publicly come out on the cover of People, it sent a shockwave through the industry. With Bass detailing the various ways he had discouraged himself from speaking about his sexuality and the effect tabloid rumors about his sex life had on him, the boybander made the case for actual LGBTQ+ acceptance in the industry at a time when queer role models were still few and far between.

No, “I Kissed a Girl” is not an example of good representation for the LGBTQ+ community. On her breakthrough single, Katy Perry relied largely on false generalities about queer people and the fetishization of bisexual women in order to shock her way to the top of the charts. Even Perry herself has acknowledged that she could’ve handled the song’s lyrics differently. But the importance of “I Kissed a Girl” as a cultural moment deserves recognition — thanks to Perry’s song, debates over queer-baiting, LGBTQ+ stereotypes and sexual fluidity bubbled up to the surface. All the while, a song commenting same-sex desire climbed to No. 1 on the Hot 100, where it stayed for seven weeks — a feat that was practically unheard of at the time of its release. 

Drag, for most of its long history, was regarded as an underground art form for queer and trans people looking to celebrate the fluidity (and abject absurdity) of gender roles. But in 2009, “Supermodel” singer and queer lightning rod RuPaul Charles decided to bring drag to the masses. Starting as a cult-favorite reality series on LogoTV, Drag Race has spent the last 15 years growing into a cultural phenomenon and ratings behemoth that put hard-working LGBTQ+ performers front and center. Thanks to its ubiquity — especially among younger viewers — Drag Race not only fundamentally altered the way we talk about drag, but rapidly accelerated conversations around queer artistry and LGBTQ+ issues. 

After Madonna, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera stunned audiences with their three-way kiss at the 2003 VMAs, American Idol runner-up Adam Lambert decided to try his own version of the stunt. During a performance of his breakout hit “For Your Entertainment” at the annual awards show, Lambert leaned over to his keyboard player and planted a kiss before closing out the song. The outrage came so immediately, that Lambert found his appearance on Good Morning America the very next day had been cancelled, and his next appearance on a morning show was riddled with questions that highlighted the double standards faced by queer performers in the late 2000s. Yet Lambert never apologized for the kiss because, as he told Billboard in 2021, he had nothing to apologize for. “If it’s par for the course for a female pop star to put on a performance like that, then why can’t a gay male pop star do the same?” he asked. 

While the early 2000s saw artists slowly breaking down the barriers of sexuality in pop music, other genres hadn’t experienced that same level of resistance. In country music, heteronormativity was still very much the norm — that is until pioneering artist Chely Wright flung the closet door wide open. In 2010, Wright revealed in her autobiography and to People magazine that she was gay, joining a select few country artists like k.d. lang and Sugarland’s Kristen Hall who were open about their identities. As she told EW shortly after her coming out, she didn’t think her coming out would immediately change the country industry — but without Wright’s brave disclosure, the industry would be a much different place today. 

As the appointed Mother Monster of the LGBTQ+ community, Lady Gaga was never shy about her love for her queer and trans fans. But when she released her groundbreaking single “Born This Way,” Gaga made sure that her love was more than just implicit. Over the course of four and a half minutes, Gaga gave the queer community a communal rallying cry of self-actualization and radical joy, while never once choosing to shroud the track in euphemism — the song became the first Hot 100 No. 1 hit to use the words “lesbian,” “gay,” “bi” and “transgender” in its hook. It’s a legacy that’s lived on well past the single’s release; in 2017, Gaga became the first person to say the word “transgender” during a Super Bowl telecast when she sang the song for her lauded halftime show performance. 

Much like Chely Wright did for country music, R&B star Frank Ocean opened up new pathways for fellow LGBTQ artists when he shared that his first romantic relationship was with a man. Written as an open letter posted to his Tumblr account, Ocean poetically detailed his first love and declared that while “some things never are,” he and his ex simply were. The letter spawned a media storm around Ocean, with outlets speculating that he had come out as gay, or bisexual, or that he was somehow the “first famous gay rapper.” But others correctly pointed out that Ocean’s complex, unspecific revelation was a watershed moment for music, as one of the most talked about names in the industry — without fanfare or bombast — simply told people a truth about himself.

After years of creating meaningful music rife with quietly queer themes as the frontperson for punk group Against Me!, Laura Jane Grace introduced herself to the world. In an interview with Rolling Stone, the singer publicly came out as transgender, revealing in extensive detail her lifelong struggles with gender dysphoria and her decision to transition. Two years before Time magazine declared society had reached a “transgender tipping point,” Grace’s honesty in describing her lived experience as a transgender woman proved invaluable to those seeking to understand what it truly meant to be trans.

What happens when you bring together two buzzy hip-hop acts, a rap legend, a lesser-known singer-songwriter and the undisputed Queen of Pop for a live, televised performance in front of millions of people? The vast majority of answers to that question would be significantly less surprising that the one that arrived at the 2013 Grammys, when Macklemore, Ryan Lewis, Queen Latifah, Mary Lambert and Madonna joined forces to join 33 LGBTQ+ couples in matrimony. Performing Macklemore & Lewis’ “Same Love” and Madonna’s “Open Your Heart” at the annual ceremony, the quintet made more than a statement — they showed by example what real marriage equality could look like one year before the Supreme Court would finally grant same-sex couples the right to wed.

There are few spaces in music gayer than the Eurovision Song Contest — throughout its nearly 70 year run, the intercontinental competition has acted as an unofficial safe space for queer and trans artists to preach messages of acceptance. Nowhere was that clearer than in the 2014 winner’s performance; Conchita Wurst, the stage name for Austrian drag performer Thomas Neuwirth, became a global headline thanks to her stirring performance of “Rise Like a Phoenix.” Making history as the first drag performer to take home the top prize at the storied contest, Wurst earned a startling victory even as participating countries like Russia and Belarus aimed to remove her from the contest due to her sexuality. But as Wurst sang in her soaring anthem, “I rise up to the sky/ You threw me down but I’m gonna fly.”

After 49 people were murdered at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla. in June 2016, pop singer Sia made sure to honor those who died in a stunning music video. In the clip for her Kendrick Lamar-featuring track “The Greatest,” Sia employed 49 dancers — including her frequent collaborator Maddie Ziegler — to pay homage to the victims of the shooting with a rousing interpretive dance routine. For anyone unaware about the attack’s blatant violence towards LGBTQ+ people, Sia made it perfectly clear by painting a pair of rainbows on Ziegler’s cheeks for the video, marking a stunning message of love and support for a community under attack.

After years spent behind the scenes helping push the boundaries of modern pop music, electronic producer SOPHIE decided to take a step into the limelight. With the release of her debut album Oil of Every Pearl’s Uninsides, the patron saint of hyperpop brought her singular vision to life, including the first time she offered audiences a taste of her own ethereal voice on “It’s Okay to Cry.” That video also saw SOPHIE use her own image, a first for the producer that led to the public at long last acknowledging her trans identity. In releasing the Grammy-nominated project, SOPHIE quickly went from being an oft-ignored underground producer to becoming one of the most talked-about names in music, with the Scottish producer still only earning a modicum of the cultural credibility she truly deserved up until her untimely death in 2021.

With the benefit of hindsight, 2018 was the evident start of the queer pop renaissance we find ourselves experiencing in 2024 (there’s a reason it was called “20-gay-teen”). At the forefront of that push for greater LGBTQ+ representation in music were two artists serving as models for what queer pop stardom could look like: Troye Sivan and Hayley Kiyoko. The latter, deemed “Lesbian Jesus” by her fanbase, released her debut album Expectations to critical fanfare in March 2018, with fans praising her overt lyrics for exploring the inner workings of queer relationships. The set earned her a top 20 spot on the Billboard 200 and a career-first entry on the Artist 100.

Sivan, who spent years building a dedicated online fanbase, delivered his most unabashed queer pop anthems in the form of “My My My!” and “Bloom,” earning him his highest Billboard 200 entry to date with his third studio album Bloom. Chart accomplishments aside, both Sivan and Kiyoko provided the music industry with two different blueprints for what queer pop stardom could eventually look like, helping usher forth a new generation of LGBTQ talent who weren’t afraid to speak to their minds.

It is hard to overstate the cultural stronghold Lil Nas X exhibited with his breakthrough single “Old Town Road.” Blending hip-hop and country to make something fresh, the little-known rapper shot to overnight stardom as his song ruled the summit of the Hot 100 week after week. But it was during the single’s 12th week at No. 1 — a feat only accomplished by a handful of other songs — when the singer decided to share that he was queer. Tweeting out a video for his song “C7osure,” the rapper implied to his fans that he was gay, joking that he thought it was “obvious.” Where stars in years past would have been scared away from coming out for fear of a commercial downturn, Lil Nas X proved that the opposite was true; reigning for another seven weeks at the summit of the chart, Lil Nas X broke and subsequently rewrote the record for the longest-running stay at No. 1, a feat that has only been replicated once since by Shaboozey.

By the time 2019 rolled around, pop-soul singer Sam Smith had already proven themselves as an LGBTQ+ success story — Smith was held up as a benchmark for the album sales in the mid-2010s, with their debut set In the Lonely Hour selling over 12 million copies worldwide. But in September, Smith decided to end the lifelong “war” with their gender identity by coming out as nonbinary and publicly changing their pronouns to they/them. While much of the media storm that ensued involved disparaging comments about Smith’s experience, their impact was clear by the time the year ended — Merriam-Webster announced the singular pronoun “they” as their word of the year, citing a massive spike in searches for the word occurred shortly after Smith came out. Looking back on their decision in a conversation with Billboard in 2022, Smith said they couldn’t be prouder of the legacy their announcement left. “I can speak on behalf of all of my queer friends and say that recognition like that, and just people talking and understanding us like that, is just the best feeling in the world,” they said.

Had Beyoncé simply released an album of house music, fans everywhere still would have rejoiced. But Queen Bey never does things halfway — with her 2022 masterpiece Renaissance, Beyoncé went out of her way to pay tribute to the queer pioneers who helped create the genre itself, and in multiple instances, invited them to join her. Just on album standout “PURE/HONEY,” Bey created a the backbone of the song’s beat using sampled vocals from house and ballroom legends MikeQ and Kevin “Jz” Prodigy’s “Feels Like,” as well as house icon Kevin Aviance‘s “Cunty,” with a closing tribute to the late drag star Moi Renee by sampling her song “Miss Honey.” From the production of the album to the staging of the Renaissance World Tour to the dedication she wrote for the project, Beyoncé made it abundantly clear that Renaissance was for Black queer people everywhere.

When Kim Petras took to the stage to perform “Unholy” with Sam Smith at the 2023 Grammys, she’d already made history — the song’s rise to No. 1 on the Hot 100 made both Smith and Petras the first non-binary and trans solo artists to earn a chart-topping single on the chart. But by the time the night was over, Petras and Smith had made history yet again, becoming the first openly non-binary and trans artists, respectively, to win Grammys. In her tearful acceptance speech, Petras highlighted the importance of the moment, thanking her mother for supporting her transition, and acknowledging SOPHIE amongst all the other “incredible transgender legends before me who kicked these doors open for me so I could be here tonight.”

Amidst a rising tide of anti-LGBTQ legislation around the United States, a coalition of artists decided to do something about it. Just weeks after the state of Tennessee passed two bills that attempted to ban public drag performances and limit access to gender-affirming care for minors, artists including Maren Morris, Allison Russell, Sheryl Crowe and dozens more put on Love Rising, a benefit concert held at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena to raise over $500,000 for local organizations fighting back against the harmful legislation. As Morris put it best during her set: “Yes, I introduced my son to some drag queens today. So Tennessee, f–king arrest me.”

During a year for music that was so often dominated by what fans eagerly referred to as “Sapphic Pop,” no one stood more at the forefront of the movement than Chappell Roan. With a massive breakthrough over the summer — thanks to the excellent timing of an opening slot with Olivia Rodrigo, groundbreaking festival performances and a runaway hit song in “Good Luck, Babe” — Roan’s music soared into the ears of millions of new listeners over the course of 2024. Listening to the lyrics of those songs, fans heard tales of compulsive heterosexuality, hookups with uncommitted women and the beauty of queer-inclusive spaces, all underscored by some of the catchiest tunes produced in recent memory. With her rapid, unceasing rise to the top of pop stardom, Roan definitively proved that the barriers to entry previously placed on queer artists simply aren’t as effective today — if the music is good, then people will listen.