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Summertime may be in full swing, but it’s never too late to find your song of the summer. Billboard Pride is here to help with the latest edition of Queer Jams of the Week, our roundup of some of the best new music releases from LGBTQ artists.
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See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
From Sam Smith’s new collaboration with Calvin Harris to Anne-Marie’s new album, check out just a few of our favorite releases from this week below:
Calvin Harris feat. Sam Smith, “Desire”
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Each time Calvin Harris and Sam Smith have teamed up to make music, the results have been blissful — whether it was the cooled-down stylings of 2018’s “Promises,” or the disco euphoria of this year’s “I’m Not Here to Make Friends.” Their latest collaboration “Desire” follows in those same footsteps; a thundering trance beat and a set of stuttering synth lines perfectly match with Smith’s delicate vocal, as they declare that just “the thought of you is keeping me awake.”
Anne-Marie, Unhealthy
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Trying to encapsulate what Anne-Marie’s Unhealthy is all about is like trying to grab a fish with your bare hands — just when you think you have a good grasp, it manages to wriggle away. But that’s part and parcel of the accomplishment in the pop singer’s latest LP; Unhealthy is about embracing chaos and learning to accept what can’t be fully understood. The sonics match that theme — Anne-Marie oscillates between gorgeously-sung ballads (like “You & I” featuring Khalid), angsty pop-rock anthems (“Haunt You”), and pure pop anthems (“Trainwreck”), the British phenom refuses to just be one thing, when she can be everything.
CHIKA, Samson
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Much like the titular Bible character, Chika is ready to find strength in what makes her vulnerable. On her full-length debut Samson, the rapper goes beyond proving why she deserves recognition for her pen game, and acknowledges the emotional turmoil that has plagued her life for the last few years. Embracing blatant honesty to devastating effect, Chika burns bridges (“Mad”), flexes her skills (“Prodigy”), and weaves a compelling narrative web of an artist rejecting her position as an overlooked superstar. Chika didn’t mince her words, so we won’t either; Samson is a masterpiece.
Shamir, “The Beginning”
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Looking for a throwback to the late ’90s? Shamir has got you covered with “The Beginning,” a scrumptious pop-rock jam that’s ready to transport you straight back to the age of Savage Garden and Third Eye Blind. It’s fitting, then, that the lyrics to the delectable new song are all about looking back on the good old days of a relationship, and realizing that maybe they weren’t as “good” as you thought they were. “The Beginning” is just another reason why Shamir remains a vital voice in the indie pop-rock scene.
Kidd Kenn, “Coming”
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That’s Mr. Kenn, if you’re nasty — and “Coming” will certainly encourage you to access your nasty side. With his latest single, rising rap star Kidd Kenn is happy to go full “WAP,” but this time for the gays, flexing all of the various way that he can get his lover hot over an entrancing melody and booming beat. Yes, “Coming” is exactly what it sounds like — a hip-hop banger for you to press play on immediately.
MAY-A, “Something Familiar”
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When Hamlet said that we would all “rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of,” MAY-A felt that. On her latest single “Something Familiar,” MAY-A gives into comfort over consistency, basking in knowing the person she’s with well, even if she doesn’t really like them all that much. Add in her updated, rocked out sound to give the song a boost of adrenaline, and you’ve got yet another jam from the rising star.
Jaboukie, “not_me_tho”
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If you want to work yourself to the bone to get ahead, that’s just fine — just don’t expect Jaboukie Young-White to join you. On his latest single off of his upcoming new album, the comedian-turned-writer-turned-actor-turned-musician is skewering hustle culture with a carefree, shrugged-off anthem. Throwing up a middle finger to late-stage capitalism, “not_me_tho” is Jaboukie at his most effortless, laughing at the social climbers sweating their way to the top as he casually waves at them from his self-made pedestal.
Check out all of our picks on Billboard’s Queer Jams of the Week playlist below:
Troye Sivan would like to set the record straight — well, not straight per se — about some rumors that have pervaded the internet for the last few years.
On a recent episode of Emily Ratajkowski’s High Low podcast, Sivan declared once and for all that he is not a bottom. “This is actually something I want to clear up,” he told the model-actress. “I wrote this one song called ‘Bloom,’ right? It’s about bottoming. And the lyric is ‘I bloom just for you.’ And people took that and ran.”
Continuing, the Australian pop star said that the queer community online thinks that he is “some crazy power bottom,” when that is simply not true. When asked by EmRata if it was “annoying to have to clarify that,” Sivan said it was not. “I think sometimes people are just surprised, maybe if they go on a date with me, and I’m like, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m not a bottom,’” he said.
Fans expressed their varying levels of shock in the comments section of a TikTok clip, with one saying “I did NOT have ‘Troye Sivan is a strict top’ on my 2023 bingo card.” Some fans, though, felt that Sivan had been pretty clear through his lyrics. “I’ve always understood that. Like he’s saying ‘I bloom JUST for YOU,’” one commenter wrote.
The new clip comes during a big week for Sivan — his latest single “Rush” recently debuted across 12 different Billboard charts, including a No. 77 debut on the Billboard Hot 100, marking his first entry on the chart since 2021’s “You” with Regard and Tate McRae, and his highest debut on the chart to date.
In an interview with Billboard shortly after the song was released, Sivan said that he was already thrown off by the extremely warm reception it received. “I know that I’m really super happy about it, and I also think I am a little bit intimidated,” he said. “It’s a good intimidation, because it just makes me think, ‘Damn, we’ve got to make a great video for the second single.’”
Check out the clip of Sivan on EmRata’s High Low below:
Latto is officially bringing some big energy to the small screen. The 24-year-old rapper made her acting debut in a new episode of the final season of Grown-ish, playing a wine sales representative named Sloane alongside a number of other musical guest stars. Fans can get a taste of Latto’s character in a clip from […]
Since publicly coming out back in 2021, internet star JoJo Siwa has made a point of being as outspoken as possible for her community — and apparently, some organizations did not appreciate that. During her appearance on Thursday’s episode of The Viall Files (July 27), Siwa said that amidst the “overwhelming” attention she received after […]
In the months since internet star JoJo Siwa publicly called out Full House actress Candace Cameron Bure, she’s had a lot of time to reflect. Now, she’s ready to talk about why she doesn’t regret her statements.
During her appearance on the Thursday (July 27) episode of The Viall Files, Siwa looked back on her public spat with the actress and said that in hindsight, she stands by her statements. “It gave me a sense of, ‘OK, you and her are never going to agree, you and her are never going to be friends’ … I am never going to be able to change her,” she told host Nick Viall. “I wish she was able to be a little more open, a little more accepting. I’m OK with calling her out in the way that I did.”
The controversy began when Siwa posted a TikTok in July 2022 in which she quietly referred to Bure as the “rudest” celebrity she’d ever met. When fans pressed her for the story, Siwa shared that Bure refused to take a photo with her at the premiere of Fuller House when she was 11 years old, which hurt her feelings.
Eventually, Bure and Siwa talked and patched things up, with the YouTube star deciding that she would just not speak about the actress publicly anymore. “I actually had a little bit of [a thought] like, ‘Ah I shouldn’t have posted that,’” she told Viall. “She didn’t need that, I didn’t need that, so let’s learn the lesson for next time.”
Then in November, Bure did an interview with The Wall Street Journal, during which she said that her new slate of Christmas films on Great American Family would “keep traditional marriage at the core” by not including LGBTQ storylines. Siwa, at the time, responded to the news by calling her statement “rude and hurtful” to queer people everywhere. “Honestly, I can’t believe after everything that went down just a few months ago, that she would not only create a movie with intention of excluding LGBTQIA+ [people], but then also talk about it in the press,” Siwa wrote at the time.
Talking to Viall, Siwa said that the intention behind Bure’s exclusion is what got her particularly angry. “She wanted to do a movie about that to put down LGBTQIA [people], and that she was specifically going to make movies that had no representation of LGBTQIA [people],” she said. “When you’re doing it out of spite to say that, ‘Too much is about LGBTQIA [people] and you guys suck and I want to make a movie about traditional marriage and you’re not traditional,’ that got to me a little bit.”
While Siwa said that she once felt bad about her criticism of Bure, she’s since decided that she doesn’t need to apologize for disagreeing with someone who doesn’t support her community. “That’s my people,” she told Viall. “I gotta stand up for my people.”
Check out Siwa’s full interview on The Viall Files above.
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