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With 2025 officially under way, it’s time to get some new music from your favorite queer artists playing, pronto. Billboard Pride is proud to present 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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From Lucy Dacus’ excellent new solo track to Perfume Genius’ ode to anxiety, check out just a few of our favorite releases from this week below:
Lucy Dacus, “Ankles”
Leave it Lucy Dacus, phenomenal modern singer-songwriter and one third of alt-rock trio Boygenius, to craft a stunning song steeped in queer intimacy. “Ankles” is unlike much of Dacus’ previous work — guitars are swapped for string sections, sonic spareness for grandiosity — but still retains the core tenet of her artistry: writing singular experiences into practically universal songs. From beginning to end, “Ankles” is a career-best showing for Dacus, and a testament to her enduring talent today.
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Perfume Genius, “It’s a Mirror”
In a time where anxiety seems to be more and more the norm, Perfume Genius is here with a definitive track to capture just that feeling. “It’s a Mirror” bathes itself in themes of isolation and loneliness, while letting the musicality carry out bigger and bolder sounds for the artist born Mike Hadreas, as he waxes poetic on the seemingly unbreakable cycle of paralyzing angst. “It’s a diamond, my whole life is/ Open just outside the door,” he croons.
Chloe Moriondo, “Shoreline”
Chloe Moriondo has made a name for herself in the music business as a purveyor of big, messy thoughts through wild, often hilarious songwriting. So it’s jarring when she never goes for the joke on “Shoreline,” their stunningly spare new single. Instead, Moriondo aims for earnestness, landing bolts of truth directly into your heart as she reels from the “first big breakup” of her life through effortless metaphor, simple production and a gorgeous vocal performance.
Zora, Belladonna
Belladonna, at its core, is a horror story told from the oft-neglected perspective of a black trans woman fighting for her life. But don’t let that fool you into thinking that Zora, the talented Minnesota singer/rapper/producer behind it’s creation, is a victim. No, Belladonna makes it clear from the jump that Zora is instead taking firm control of the narrative, spinning tales of desire (“Sick Sex”), secrecy (“Hush”) and revenge (“Bodies in My Room”).
Jasmine.4.t, You Are the Morning
Meet your new obsession Jasmine.4.t, the first British addition to Phoebe Bridgers’ Saddest Factory Records and a rising alt-rock star in her own right. With her stunning new album You Are the Morning, Jasmine tells her own transition story on her exact terms, examining sex (“Skin on Skin”), queer friendships (“You Are the Morning”), trauma (“Guy Fawkes Tesco Dissociation”) and navigating the complexities of finding your truest self (“New Shoes”). Keep your eye on Jasmine.4.t — if Morning is any indication, than she’s only at the start of a long, fruitful career of incredible alt-rock stardom.
Check out all of our picks on Billboard’s Queer Jams of the Week playlist below:
Wilkommen, bienvenue, howdy partner! Country star Orville Peck is set to make his Broadway debut as the Emcee in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club. On Wednesday (Jan. 15), Cabaret announced that the “Dead of Night” singer would take over the iconic role from Adam Lambert starting on March 31, where he will be joined […]
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Bob the Drag Queen is used to dealing with unruly fan bases. Now, he’s putting fans of both The Traitors and Real Housewives on blast. In a series of messages posted on X Sunday (Jan. 12) and Monday (Jan. 13), the Drag Race winner and cast member of The Traitors season three called out fans […]
After Carrie Underwood made headlines Monday (Jan. 13) for announcing she would play at Donald Trump’s inauguration, a former RuPaul’s Drag Race star decided to mock the country star online. In a post to her Instagram Stories on Monday evening, Drag Race season 14 contestant Kornbread “The Snack” Jeté shared a recent post from the […]
Ariana Grande is opening up further about Glinda’s sexual orientation after saying in November that her Wicked character “might be a little in the closet.”
In a Variety cover story published Thursday (Jan. 2), the singer-actress was asked to elaborate on her thoughts about Glinda’s possible queerness in relation to Cynthia Erivo’s Elphaba, with whom the “Good Witch” nurtures an intense, passionate love-hate relationship. The two women’s dynamic is only ever referred to as a friendship in the original Broadway musical, but in Grande’s eyes, it might be something more.
“I think she’s a person who loves so much, and I do think that it goes beyond gender,” the R.E.M. Beauty founder told the publication of Glinda. “I also think that the ways in which she loves Elphaba so much, and that forgiveness and that unconditional love that they share — I think they’re in love with each other.”
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“I know, yes, it’s platonic …,” she amended before cutting herself off, not wanting to reveal too much ahead of Jon M. Chu’s second Wicked film. “But we’ll talk about it more in depth in movie two.”
Author Gregory Maguire, who penned the bestselling novel on which the Broadway show is based, also shared his thoughts on the sexual tension in the book between the two characters in a December interview. “That was intentional, and it was modest and restrained and refined in such a way that one could imagine that one of those two young women had felt more than the other and had not wanted to say it,” he told Them. “Or perhaps because a novelist can’t write every scene, perhaps when the lights were out and the novelist was out having a smoke in the back alley, the girls had sex in the bed on the way to the Emerald City. I wanted to propose this possibility, but I did not want to make a declarative statement about.”
Grande’s new interview comes over a month after the first Wicked hit theaters Nov. 22, 2024, quickly becoming the top-grossing movie adaptation of a Broadway musical ever. Its sequel, Wicked: For Good, will arrive almost exactly a year later in the fall of 2025.
Grande previously spoke about her character’s sexuality in a November interview with Gay Times, candidly telling the outlet, “Maybe Glinda might be a little in the closet.”
“You never know! Give it a little time!” she’d added. “I mean, it is just a true love. And I think that transcends sexuality, it’s just kind of a deep safety within each other.”
The “We Can’t Be Friends” musician’s co-leading lady agreed at the time. “I think Elphie … she goes wherever the wind goes,” Erivo told the publication. “I think she loves Glinda, I think she loves love. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with celebrating the deep connection that both of them have … it’s a relationship, it is true love.”
See Grande, Erivo and Chu on the cover of Variety below.
Sure, the sun will come out tomorrow, but for right now, viral comedian Randy Rainbow isn’t looking forward to a new day dawning on Donald Trump‘s presidency. In his latest parody video, Rainbow sits down for another faux interview with the president-elect, this time mocking Trump for his widely criticized cabinet picks, specifically calling out […]
At the start of 2024, Chappell Roan was a rising pop singer-songwriter with a core but mighty following. She had released her debut solo album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, in September 2023 to critical appreciation but not much commercial fanfare. By February, she kicked off Olivia Rodrigo’s North American arena tour as its opening act and soon after booked a few appearances at the biggest U.S. music festivals including Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza, mostly on afternoon side stages.
Yet the April release of her stand-alone single, “Good Luck, Babe!,” coincided with Roan’s album flying into the top 10 of the Billboard 200 as her back catalog quickly populated the Billboard Hot 100. By the time of her previously booked festival gigs, her name had become synonymous with pop stardom — and she used each set to prove why, showcasing her undeniable stage presence and audacious wardrobe at every stop.
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Apparently, behind the scenes, Roan was just as astonished. “In the moment, it was all so fast that we didn’t even get a chance to talk about what the f–k was going on,” says Roan’s stylist, Genesis Webb, with a laugh. “We were so focused on moving to the next thing that we didn’t have a moment to process.”
Chappell Roan’s “Eat Me” outfit at Coachella in April.
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By July, when the organizers for Chicago’s Lollapalooza witnessed her outsize crowds at festivals like Governors Ball and Boston Calling, they met to hastily figure out how to accommodate the throng of fans Roan would inevitably assemble at their own event. “It became a safety concern more than anything else,” says Huston Powell, a promoter at C3 Presents, the company responsible for booking the iconic Chicago festival. “There’s an egress-ingress point to the left of the stage that she was going to be playing, and we knew that the number of people wanting to see her could cause a massive traffic jam on that hill. On the main stages, we had a layout that could handle more people with more barricading, so we decided to move her set.”
Ultimately, Roan’s Lollapalooza performance broke an attendance record for the largest day crowd ever seen in the event’s 30-plus-year history — without a headline billing. And while Powell can’t offer a specific number of people in the audience for the star’s headline-making set, he can confirm what he saw with his own eyes. “There were at least three or four other acts playing at the same time, and the crowd is usually somewhat evenly split between the stages. But just by the sheer appearance, looking around at the number of people in the park and the people you could eyeball at other stages, the vast majority were watching Chappell’s set. We anticipated it would be big, but this completely exceeded expectations.”
Dan Nigro, Roan’s producer-collaborator, explained to Billboard in June that her path to the center of the cultural zeitgeist proved that nothing is more powerful in the industry than good buzz.
“The fact that she’s so phenomenal live means people are finally able to see in real time how good she is. That then becomes this word-of-mouth thing, and it’s wonderful to see her have such old-school success,” he said. “She’s so good at what she does that the system is working again. It really is that simple.”
Her wrestling outfit at Lollapalooza.
Erika Goldring/WireImage
Roan herself told Billboard in 2022 that her career lives and dies by the success of her live performances. “If I’ve learned anything, it’s that the live show is where the heartbeat of the project is,” she said. “Luckily, it’s my favorite part of what I do.”
Part of her runaway success on the festival circuit came largely thanks to Roan’s maximalist costuming, a running feature along her path to pop stardom. When she started headlining her own tours in 2023 — following the release of her now-Grammy-nominated debut album — Roan decided to create themes for every show, encouraging fans to dress up along with her. Webb says they kept that trend going for Roan’s festival performances, commissioning eye-catching, distinct costumes for every gig. “I think we did 16 different looks all told for these festivals,” she says.
Whether Roan was dressed as a giant pink butterfly at Coachella (in a loving tribute to Deee-Lite’s Lady Miss Kier), the Statue of Liberty at Governors Ball or a professional wrestler at Lollapalooza, she thrived when embracing the outsize nature of her job, creating headlines around her phenomenal costuming and anticipation for what would come next. Webb points out that it’s a tried-and-true method for pop stars, with artists like Lady Gaga and Katy Perry building their own fame with dazzling outfits at the outset of their careers.
“I think it’s the zeitgeist of it all — it’s knowing that this is supposed to be fun,” she says. “It felt like there hadn’t been a pop star in a really long time to have people wanting to see a live-performance look as much as they do with her.”
Her Statue of Liberty costume at Governors Ball in June.
Astrida Valigorsky/Getty Images
With that anticipation came unprecedented crowds. Powell saw the numbers Roan drew at Boston Calling and Coachella, which helped his team plan ahead. When an act dropped out the weekend before Austin City Limits in September, C3 Presents promoter Amy Corbin says the festival seized the opportunity to place Roan’s performance on its main stage as well. “When it happens, we look at ways to adjust programming to ensure we are delivering the best fan and artist experience,” Corbin tells Billboard. For the second time this year, Roan’s set drew “the largest crowds in the sunset slot in ACL Fest history,” she says.
Roan’s festival season has since ignited conversations in the live industry about how to recapture the energy that she — and her fans — brought. “We’re all trying to find the next Chappell Roan,” Powell says. “I think sometimes bands worry about what time of day they play and where they play — but if anything, this showed that if you’re hot enough, audiences will come no matter what.”
This story appears in the Dec. 14, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Weekend Update had SNL‘s Jane Wickline singing a comedic song as Sabrina Carpenter Saturday night (Dec. 14) — one that named pop stars like Taylor Swift and Harry Styles, both of whom the internet has no problem gossiping about when it comes to sexuality. Carpenter apparently hasn’t been a big part of that particular rumor mill. In the sketch, Wickline portrays the “Taste” singer as feeling left out.
“A lot of people on the internet like to start these juicy rumors about whether pop stars are gay, and this is a new song that I, Sabrina Carpenter, wrote called ‘When Will Even One Person Do That About Me?’” the SNL cast member explained ahead of performing a parody based on what Carpenter might think of it all.
Of course, the song sounded nothing like an actual Carpenter hit. “I can’t look or sound like her. She’s completely perfect,” Wickline said, but added, “For the purposes of this song, I am her.”
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“Taylor Swift sings about a crush on her best friend/ And you all cry ‘lesbian’ because she didn’t phrase it ‘my boy best friend,’” she sang in front of a keyboard.
“In a music video, I make out with Jenna Ortega/ No one doubts me at all when I say this is a metaphor for one of my ex-boyfriends/ And that is all it was, but no one ever wondered,” Wickline’s Carpenter said. In the next verse she pointed out that making out with her female co-star in “Taste” merely resulted in online chatter like “I heard this song is about Shawn Mendes.”
“Help me/ Just tell me where I’m doing wrong/ Why am I the only straight pop star/ Taken at their word?/ It’s lonely/ I do gay stuff and you don’t get mad/ I just want the same treatment/ I want to have mystique/ Why don’t you think I’m either bi or pretending that I might be/ I’m not bi or pretending, but why does no one think I’m lying/ I just want you to think I might have secrets,” she sang.
Wickline went on to remind everyone that Carpenter also locked lips with a female alien during the MTV Video Music Awards stage in September, while performing a medley of her hits.
“I also made out with a girl alien at the VMAs/ Nothing!” she lamented in her song.
Carpenter hasn’t commented on the bit.
Watch the “Weekend Update” that pokes fun at Carpenter in the clip below. Elsewhere during the Chris Rock-hosted episode, musical guest Gracie Abrams played “That’s So True” and “I Love You, I’m Sorry.”