Pride
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When introducing Sam Smith and Kim Petras at the 2023 Grammys, pop icon Madonna offered a thought to the audience watching at home: “If they call you shocking, scandalous, troublesome, problematic, provocative or dangerous, you are definitely on to something.”
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The “something” that Madonna is now “on to” is a new song with Sam Smith. “Vulgar,” out now (Friday, June 9) via Capitol Records, is a pulsating dance anthem aimed at taking back the titular adjective for your own pleasure. Each of the pair offers their own breathless, spoken-word interpretations of fierce indulgence of the song’s verses, with Smith proudly proclaiming that “you know you’re beautiful when they call you ‘vulgar.’”
On the track’s chaotic chorus, the bass and beat picks up as a swirl of strings play an entrancing melody to lure listeners even further in. As if to accentuate the point, as the song comes to a close, Madonna accosts the listener: “Do you know how to spell my name? B-I-T-C-H,” she snarls. “Go f–k yourself, you heard me, b—h, say our f–king names!”
“Vulgar” comes after a few weeks of teasing from the pair. Smith first teased the team-up in a social media clip, with the pair each chanting “Sam and Madonna” over and over again. In announcing the single last week, the duo offered some new branding for their team-up, restyling their names together simply as “S&M.”
Both Smith and Madonna are currently ramping up their live schedules; after finishing up the European leg of their Gloria Tour, Smith is bringing their show stateside starting on July 25. Meanwhile, Madonna’s long-awaited Celebration Tour is set to kick off this summer, starting at Rogers Arena in Vancouver, B.C., on July 15.
Stream Sam Smith and Madonna’s “Vulgar” below:
At 11:30 p.m. on Friday, June 2, attorney Brice Timmons was at an event in Memphis aptly named Big Gay Dance Party. He was de-stressing and commiserating with his co-counsel about the lack of action from a federal judge on their lawsuit against the state of Tennessee for its “drag ban.” They had hoped for a ruling before the weekend, but it hadn’t arrived yet — so, they resolved instead to celebrate the start of Pride Month.
Then, they checked their phones; the ruling had just dropped. “It was a ruling that that called the state on the carpet for every every aspect of the law’s unconstitutionality,” he tells Billboard over the phone. “The DJ just stopped the music, the announcer came up onto the stage and just yelled, ‘We won!’ Yeah, that was a high point of my career.”
Throughout his 70-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Thomas Parker found in favor of Timmons’ clients Friends of George’s, a Memphis-based LGBTQ theater company and drag troupe. The judge determined the Tennessee’s Adult Entertainment Act (or “AEA”) was an “unconstitutional restriction on the freedom of speech,” and permanently prevented District Attorney General Steven Mulroy of Shelby County, Tenn. — the defendant in the case — from enforcing the law.
While Timmons says that he is “very proud to have done this work,” he’s not all that surprised by the outcome. “This has not been very challenging legal analysis — it’s just a new generation of bigots trying the same old tricks,” he says.
Those “tricks” Timmons refers to had the state appealing to the interest of protecting children from explicit sexual content, claiming that the law was intended to be narrowly applied to only certain kinds of drag performances in public spaces.
But LGBTQ advocates and community members like Friends of George’s pointed out that the law’s intentional vagueness left the door open for the state to apply the law in a wide variety of ways — a fact that Judge Parker agreed with, saying in his ruling the AEA was “both unconstitutionally vague and substantially overbroad” in its scope.
When looking at the defense mounted by Tennessee, Timmons recognizes the tactics used. “Going into court and lying is a long standing legal strategy for governments that want to abuse their power,” he says. “It’s not that their legal theory is simply incorrect; it’s false. So they had to walk into court, to lie about why the law was passed, to lie about what the law says, and to lie about what the effects of the law will be.”
Timmons’ case, meanwhile, revolved largely around a number of First Amendment legal precedents set by the Supreme Court. In one case — Ashcroft v. ACLU — the Court upheld that a censorship law passed by Congress aimed at preventing children from accessing pornographic material on the internet was a violation of the First Amendment.
“Those laws were much more carefully drafted, and they did not have an a fundamentally inappropriate purpose. They weren’t targeting certain types of performers or certain types of websites,” he explains. “And still the Supreme Court said, ‘The state doesn’t get to insert itself into communicative decision making, unless it does so in just the most carefully, narrowly crafted way.’”
Since the ruling was officially released, the state has not officially announced an appeal — it has 30 days from the date of the ruling to file and appeal on the decision. But Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti told The New York Times in a statement not only that the state planned to appeal the decision, but that he feels the law “remains in effect outside of Shelby County.”
Timmons doesn’t mince his words when it comes to Skrmetti’s claim: “I think it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard a lawyer say.” He points out that while Judge Parker offered a permanent enjoinment to the district attorney general of Shelby County and not the entirety of the state, he still ruled that the law itself was unconstitutional.
“That means there is no constitutional application for that law,” Timmons says. “If Jonathan Skrmetti wants to tell law enforcement officers in the state of Tennessee to go in and force an unconstitutional law, then I guess I’ll just have a cottage industry suing those law enforcement officers.”
As for other states where restrictions or bans on public drag performances have been passed, Timmons says that the Tennessee ruling is going to play a major factor. He knows this from experience — when he answers his phone for this interview, he’s just leaving court in Florida, where he argued as lead council against the state’s restrictive drag law on behalf of Hamburger Mary’s.
“[The Tennessee ruling] was the first thing that the judge here in Florida asked about during the hearing today,” he says. “It seems like judge Parker’s ruling is going to be, you know, a guide for how other courts will address this.”
Timmons says he’s already working with lawyers in Montana and Texas preparing to mount their own suits against their states’ respective drag bans, and that he and his team will “do everything we can to help them.” As for the impending threat of an appeal from Tennessee? “We’ve got a good team of lawyers, and nothing succeeds like success.”
After seeing Maren Morris offer her own interpretation of his iconic style, Willie Nelson has some thoughts. On Wednesday (June 7), Morris graced the cover of Billboard alongside drag stars Eureka O’Hara, Landon Cider, Sasha Colby and Symone. Surrounded by all kinds of different drag, Morris decided to dress in full Willie Nelson drag, complete […]
For a drag performer with a stacked resumé, packed schedule and an ever-shifting wardrobe, Symone could be forgiven for seeming a bit tired. But while speaking to Billboard for a recent cover (alongside Maren Morris, Sasha Colby, Landon Cider and Eureka O’Hara), the only time the RuPaul’s Drag Race season 13 winner shows a hint of exhaustion is while addressing the rash of anti-LGBTQ laws spreading across the country like a virus.
“It’s a distraction from what’s really going on, what’s really hurting kids in the country,” she sighs. “Gun violence is the number one thing that kills kids.” It’s a point that’s impossible to argue: guns recently became the leading cause of death in children and teens between the ages of 1 and 19 in America.
“It’s a distraction. Gay people, trans people, our whole community has always been an easy mark. It’s easier than dealing with what’s actually going on in the country,” she continues. “Ultimately, they don’t want people to feel that they can express themselves and be different — or that there’s a different way of living outside of the norm.”
An urge to break out of the box was exactly what brought Symone to drag in the first place. Growing up in Conway, Arkansas, the self-described “shy, reserved kid” began doing her own makeup after school around age 16. By 18, she left the house in drag for the first time — to attend her senior prom.
A stint at a club on amateur night followed a few months later, and she’s been doing drag ever since. “It gave me permission to be myself,” she says of the art form. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is what’s missing in my life.’ ”
As one of the drag queens to be catapulted into cultural consciousness by the hit reality competition, Symone continues to operate by her own rules. She’ll walk the Met Gala one month, pop up in a music video (“Simple Times”) from Nashville singer-songwriter Kacey Musgraves the next, all while continuing to chart a course through Los Angeles nightlife via the House of Avalon collective.
While the regressive laws aren’t exactly quashing expression in queer meccas like WeHo, Symone knows that other communities aren’t so lucky. “It was very strange. I felt like there’s a contention there,” Symone says of a recent visit to her home state. “It’s heavier, much more than it was when I was growing up… I felt safe enough to go to prom in drag 10 years ago, and I was like, ‘I don’t know if I could do that now.’ It feels more conservative than it did even 10 years ago. And that, to me, is very strange.”
The queen is quick to clarify that the change in the atmosphere isn’t affecting her itinerary: “Is that going to deter me from going home and doing drag or going to the South and doing drag? Absolutely not.” Still, she notes that several of her sisters have begun avoiding drag performances in certain parts of the country because they don’t want to risk their safety by becoming “a focal point” for outraged — and perhaps even violent — people.
“That’s warranted, that’s very valid,” she says. “I just feel like, ‘We can’t let them do that to us.’ But it’s a very hard time. It’s a very difficult time.”
The Drag Race champ is aware that the privilege of expression afforded to her by her platform doesn’t apply to everyone. To queer kids living in states that are passing laws targeting their freedoms, she urges, “Find your family and find people who support you. You may not have them around you in your small town, but there is the internet — build a community and seek solace in that.
“Also, I will say: vote. We can have all the community and all the allyship that we want, but if we’re not voting into office the people that are going to look out for our interests, it doesn’t help. We have these laws coming down the pike because [anti-LGBTQ candidates] are being voted in, and so they feel like they can pass these laws. It’s going to keep happening. So go out in the local elections, midterms — it’s not just the presidential elections [that matter].”
As for where she finds solace these days, it turns out that one of the world’s most fashion-forward and inventive drag queens isn’t all that different from the rest of us. “When I feel bad, TV has always been my respite, my rescue and my solace. It’s how I found out about drag and pop culture, growing up where I did,” she says. “It’s my happy place.”
A version of this story will appear in the June 10, 2023, issue of Billboard.
“To me, this is a Christian crusade,” declares Landon Cider of the ongoing legislative efforts targeting drag and trans individuals across the country. “It’s just eradicating what you don’t understand or what you don’t believe to be morally correct. And in today’s day and age, it is so ridiculous that we still have people using religion to dictate what other people should do.”
Cider, the politically outspoken winner of season 3 of The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula, speaks bluntly and with a firm conviction about most issues. But when addressing the political right’s won’t-somebody-please-think-of-the-children dog whistle attacks on drag, he’s exasperated. “They’re just projecting what’s happening in their own churches,” he says, alluding to the well-documented history of children being sexually abused by priests in the Catholic church.
Some high-profile drag performers are willing to play nice when advocating for their art form, but Cider — who covers the latest issue of Billboard alongside Maren Morris, Sasha Colby, Eureka O’Hara and Symone — isn’t worried about pissing people off.
Before Kristine Bellaluna established the Landon Cider persona, she began developing skills with special effects makeup in high school, fueled by her love of horror films. The Los Angeles native was even sent home one time for “looking too gory,” thanks to a look that involved a screwdriver entering and exiting her flesh. She was involved in the theater growing up but was sidelined when her mother got sick — and then by her own battle with oral cancer as an adult. When she emerged from the fray, she felt an urge to return to the stage, but not in the theater: “I felt like it was not allowing me to be creative as much as I wanted.”
Enter Landon Cider, a “glamdrogynous” drag king influenced by everything from Freddie Mercury to The Lost Boys to the Leprechaun slasher films. Cider made history as the first drag king to win an American drag reality competition in 2019, when he emerged as Dragula’s top dog during a season that streamed on Netflix (the show now airs on Shudder). A trailblazer in his own right, he’s quick to list off the many important drag kings that preceded him, from late 19th century Native American performer Gowongo Mohawk to Harlem Renaissance blues singer Gladys Bentley, up through modern drag godfathers such as Mo B. Dick and Sexy Galexy, who created community and opportunities in New York City and Australia, respectively.
While drag’s presence in the cultural mainstream has exploded in the last decade thanks largely to RuPaul’s Drag Race, the wildly popular series has yet to spotlight any drag kings as competitors, contributing to a lack of parity when it comes to representation. “Our community is a subculture of a subculture,” Cider explains. “With any subculture, you’re going to have microcosm of the world and the society that it exists within — and sexism and misogyny is alive and well in our society, so that exists in the drag community as well…. As a cis woman and a proud lesbian who has been with her wife for 15 years, it’s every day that we face society’s sexist and misogynistic disrespect of women. Honestly, one of the reasons I became a drag king is so I can mansplain things back to men,” Cider laughs. “I’m manspreading mansplaining.”
But with the rise in anti-queer and anti-trans laws and rhetoric, Cider admits that he’s not comfortable manspreading everywhere in America these days. “I don’t plan on taking gigs in some of these states,” Cider says. “And not because I don’t want to stand for what’s right, but I want to come home to my wife. It’s a legitimate fear that we have now traveling to some of these states and some of these locations. And that’s so scary and so sad. Even 10 years ago, people wouldn’t have believed that.”
But staying safe doesn’t mean staying silent, and Cider remains outspoken on everything from racist politicians to misogyny within the queer community. Speaking to the next generation of drag kings, Cider urges, “Don’t let people tell you that you don’t belong. We’ve had too many drag queens — too many men — in charge telling us that we don’t belong in these spaces, or that we shouldn’t share these spaces. But we need you.”
Ironically, those drag gatekeepers could be seen as subscribing to the same rigid view of a gender binary that fuels religious conservatives. And to Cider’s mind, forcing the world into binaries means ignoring reality. “[Those with] conservative religious views, they see things on such a binary because they reject nature,” Cider says. “And nature is not binary. They reject all forms of evolution — not just the earth’s creation, but the evolution of art.”
A version of this story will appear in the June 10, 2023, issue of Billboard.
When speaking to Sasha Colby about the rash of laws targeting drag performers and trans individuals in America, it’s clear that she’s thought a lot about the politicians trying to silence people like her. And she’s probably sized them up with a far greater generosity than they’ve afforded her.
“I don’t even think they are necessarily mad at us,” opines Colby, who became the first trans woman of color to win RuPaul’s Drag Race in April. “I think they understand that our voice is very loud right now. I feel like they understand how much power we hold as a commerce and as people that have a lot of voting power. They’re just trying to scare us back into the closet, for lack of better words, because that’s the only thing that they know how to operate on. They don’t know how to operate on love — they’ve never done that — so they only know how to do fear.”
For the Waimānalo, Hawaii-born entertainer, the effect of fear-based bigotry is sadly close to home. Although her Jehovah’s Witness family would call her into the living room to dance along to Whitney Houston videos on MTV when she was a kid, they met her with less than open arms when she openly embraced her trans identity. Despite coming from a conservative religious background, Colby says there were “so many trans people in Hawaii” around her while she was growing up: “There was a lot of representation, probably to the point where I didn’t realize how many trans people I was interacting with as a kid. Mom’s hairdresser was a full trans woman and I never put it together [until later] — she just seemed like a really cool glamorous lady.”
Colby developed her drag skills secretly as a teenager behind a locked bathroom door. The self-professed “full-on ham” (“I definitely have main character syndrome,” she jokes) stuck with drag over the years because of the control it affords a DIY artist. “It’s one of the very few arts where you are completely in charge of yourself. You’re not working with a team — you’re not contributing to a bigger machine,” she says. “Drag is very personal. In drag, you are a living, breathing art installation — constantly changing, constantly improving. And this art is helping you grow.”
That art took center stage on season 15 of Drag Race, where Colby’s thoughtful interpretations of each episode’s challenges — and wildly acrobatic lip syncs — commanded the spotlight. The show enjoyed some its best ratings in years, with the season 15 finale ratings up 17% compared to the previous year’s.
Now, the naturally empathetic Colby is stepping comfortably into a larger spotlight (she covers the latest issue of Billboard alongside Maren Morris, Eureka O’Hara, Symone and Landon Cider). “It feels really nice to be able to be a trans woman of color that is being asked my opinion, and [who can be] a source of inspiration and safety for a lot of scared queer people out there,” she says. And she’s not letting opportunities to make a difference, whether big or small, slide by.
“I’m on the plane quite a bit, and sometimes I get to be business class. [I’m often] sitting next to people that probably would never talk to a trans person — or they’re watching Fox News right next to me,” Colby says with a dry chuckle. “I feel like I do have a very disarming personality, so that I end up leaving the person at least humanizing my experience so that they can understand what a trans person is.”
Colby’s aim is to get through to people — and yes, voters — who feel like the only way they can get ahead is by putting down others. “We have to make everyone’s human interest everyone’s concern,” she says. “We have to bridge that gap: why can’t you get what you need, but so does everyone else as well?” On a more somber note, she at least hopes that those interactions remind Fox News lovers that trans people — who are four times as likely to be victims of violent crime, according to a 2021 UCLA study — are human beings and not political scapegoats or statistics. “When they see a trans person getting killed, [I hope they] remember meeting me,” she says. “They made a human connection, which will hopefully help them vote in a more equal, enlightened way.”
In the face of everything going on, Colby says she finds solace in music, whether it’s “a good sad girls’ playlist” or the avant-flavored dance music of Kaytranada and Róisín Murphy. She also draws inspiration from her drag peers and friends, such as Brooklyn drag iconoclast Untitled Queen. “She gives me so much life,” Colby raves, instantly lighting up. “She’s a perfect example of what drag is when it’s a fully immersive way of being.”
As a gloriously unpredictable drag queen, she also points to a rather unexpected source of reassurance during tough times: documentaries that show how “human civilization evolves or de-evolves” over the centuries. “The pendulum goes back and forth,” she says. “It’s the momentum of life.” It’s a Zen approach, but don’t let it fool you into thinking Colby isn’t committed to high-kicking that pendulum back from its current far-right swing. Speaking to the next generation, she offers, “We’re going to make sure to make this place a little better for you all, a little safer, so you can feel freedom to express yourselves however you need to.
“And move to a big city whenever you can,” she continues with a laugh. “But vote in the small city at your parents’ address.”
A version of this story will appear in the June 10, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Maren Morris downs a shot of tequila with a wince. “I love that we’re taking shots and then saying, ‘OK, so let’s talk about Ron DeSantis,’ ” Morris says with a chuckle.
The four drag luminaries she’s toasting with today — Eureka O’Hara, Landon Cider, Sasha Colby and Symone — grimace through their own post-shot puckers at the mention of the Florida governor’s (and now, presidential hopeful’s) name. It’s an otherwise cheerful weekday in Los Angeles: Pop jams ranging from ABBA to Doja Cat play in the background as the quintet gabs gleefully about everything from Three’s Company to O’Hara’s adorable dachshund puppy, Princess Pink, who makes occasional appearances nearby.
But the shadow of the world outside can’t stay beyond this room for long. The mention of DeSantis — who recently signed a batch of anti-LGBTQ+ bills into law that collectively amount to a full attack on the civil rights of queer and trans people in Florida — is just one reminder that in 2023 alone, over 450 bills targeting LGBTQ+ rights have been introduced by right-wing politicians into state legislatures across the country, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. That’s more than double the amount of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation introduced in the same legislative session in 2022.
The five assembled today frequently, and fervently, use their respective individual platforms to speak against such attacks on the LGBTQ+ community. O’Hara, Cider, Colby and Symone are alums (and, in a few cases, winners) of some of TV’s most beloved drag reality shows, like RuPaul’s Drag Race and The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula. Morris, who’s moderating today’s discussion, has made a name for herself not only as one of country music’s brightest stars, but as an outspoken advocate — both onstage and off — for queer and trans people, calling out their mistreatment in the music industry and beyond.
The legislation leveled against those communities spans a wide range of issues — censoring discussions of gender and sexuality in public schools, banning best-practice medical care for transgender youth (and in some instances for adults, too), eliminating nondiscrimination protections for the LGBTQ+ community. And another type of legislation has quickly captured national attention: so-called “drag bans.” In March, Tennessee became the first state to pass a bill into law prohibiting “adult cabaret” performances (the definition of which includes “male or female impersonators”) in public or in the presence of minors.
“It’s just now becoming public knowledge how horrible it is there,” says O’Hara, who grew up in Tennessee, her voice quivering. “It’s scary to be trans today and to be a drag queen.” Colby puts it simply: “It’s about controlling queer kids.”
After the state’s ban sparked a legal battle with Memphis-based theater company Friends of George’s, a federal judge temporarily blocked the law. Then, on June 2, U.S. District Judge Thomas Parker ruled that the law violates performers’ First Amendment rights and deemed it unconstitutional. The ruling prevents the law from taking effect in Tennessee’s Shelby County and creates potential for further legal challenges elsewhere in the state. Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti has already said that he plans to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
“This ruling is a turning point, and we will not go back,” said GLAAD president/CEO Sarah Kate Ellis in a statement. “Every anti-LGBTQ elected official is on notice that these baseless laws will not stand and that our constitutional freedom of speech and expression protects everyone and propels our culture forward.”
But LGBTQ+ advocates in Tennessee point out that, overturned or not, the law’s initial passage still accomplished one goal: creating a culture of confusion and fear surrounding self-expression in the state. Due to the intentional vagueness of the law, its enforcement would come down to individual interpretation, sparking hypothetical questions like, “If Harry Styles comes and does a concert at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville and has on a frilly shirt or a skirt or a dress…” posits Morris. “What do we do then? In a place like Tennessee, it’s obviously really meant to fearmonger.”
Maren Morris in drag as Willie Nelson photographed on May 9, 2023 in Los Angeles. Hair by Laura Polko at PRTNRS. Makeup by Diane Buzzetta at Blended Strategy. Drag Makeup Consulting by Landon Cider. Manicure by Queenie Nguyen at Nailing Hollywood. Styling by Dani Michelle at The Only Agency. Vintage shirt and bolo tie, Our Legacy jeans, Nick Fouquet hat.
Munachi Osegbu
At least 15 other states, including Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina and Texas, are either considering or have already passed legislation similar to Tennessee’s drag ban — and that’s creating an impending sense of dread that keeps the drag stars and Morris fired up. “If you don’t want to go to a drag show, don’t go to a drag show. If you don’t want to have your kids at a drag show, don’t take your kids to a drag show. But don’t put that on us!” Symone exclaims. Cider nods in agreement. “The only part of ‘grooming’ that I’m doing,” he says, “is grooming kids to find joy in their authentic selves.”
Maren Morris: How have you been coming to terms with the number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills passing through the state legislatures around the country? I live in Tennessee, and I feel like that’s unfortunately at the forefront for a lot of them.
Symone: I don’t think I’ve come to terms with it; I think I’ve just realized that I am in a rage about it. Growing up, it wasn’t like it is now, and it’s frustrating to see all this hate, this vitriol for people who just spread love and only want to be seen and accepted. I cannot believe in 2023 we’re here. Especially after doing the respective [TV] shows that we’ve done and being embraced over all these years, for it to feel like such a backlash is insane to me. I won’t come to terms with it because we deserve everything that you think that we don’t deserve.
Morris: Have you seen it affect your own bookings or your friends’ bookings?
Sasha Colby: Right now, being in gigs with the other season 15 [Drag Race] girls, I feel like in our group chats we’re all very much on high alert and asking our friends, like Aura [Mayari] who’s in Tennessee, “How is it?” I think everyone’s just being very cautious.
Drag is so popular right now [because] it’s hitting a nerve with people, both good and bad. The bad is that they see how good we’re doing and how happy we’re making people and how out of the matrix we are. Kids are coming! It’s not grooming, it’s just making space for them to be themselves.
Landon Cider: When we were hiding and forced to create secret spaces, we found community. We were bonding and forging these relationships in this underground culture. Now that it’s celebrated in the mainstream, it backfired. It’s thrown in our face. We didn’t force it to be mainstream! They did!
Colby: We weren’t allowed in cis spaces. We weren’t allowed to be anything but outcasts. And then we share it with the world, and they just want to colonize our thoughts as well as everything else.
Symone: I think it does scare them because of the kids. The kids are seeing us, and they grow up saying, “Well, why would I need to be anything other than this?” That is scary for people who are not of this generation and who grew up a different way.
Sasha Colby photographed on May 9, 2023 in Los Angeles. Hair by Jazlyn Simons. Makeup by James Michael Perez. Michael Ngo custom bodysuit, gloves, and boots.
Munachi Osegbu
Morris: There is not a “one size fits all” conveyor belt of parenting; everyone has a different thing. Saying that this is all “adult” — some drag is, absolutely! But I’ve seen the Mrs. Doubtfire reference made a lot, where it’s hilarious if it’s a cis [straight] male in drag. Then it’s OK for the kids to see, but God forbid you see someone truly expressing themselves, entertaining and just being free.
Eureka O’Hara: It’s OK if it’s a joke. But we take this seriously — this gives us inspiration and life. I come from East Tennessee, and I went through all of this times 10 living there. It makes me so mad — I have a trans Black sister who just moved in with me a few months ago, and she’s finally doing OK after 19 years of being abused. And that’s what this is.
You all know it’s not about drag. Let’s be real. These [are] scare tactics, and it just gets me so emotional. It’s about how we express ourselves, and it’s about the youth — because we have the queerest youth we’ve ever had right now. And that’s what they’re mad about. These kids are learning about who they are before they’re 18, 25, 30 years old and still have to deal with abuse like this.
Colby: The whole thing with being trans is they sexualize us. It’s funny when it’s a joke, but as soon as they sexualize us, then they’re going to want to control, like how they do with cisgender women, how they do with kids.
Cider: They’re projecting their own hatred and fear of their own community and their own small “safe” spaces.
Morris: What’s that saying? “Every threat from them is an actual admission.”
Colby: Exactly. It’s always them showing their cards.
Symone: I also just want to put out there that people may think now that it’s just the drag queens, it’s just trans people. But if they can do it to them, then they can do it to anybody else. Don’t think that just because they’re attacking us right now that y’all are going to be somehow exempt from it. We’re just the easiest targets. Just look at history.
That’s another thing that I cannot stand — the misinformation. Know what you’re speaking about, know what you’re saying before you speak. You don’t have to like a trans person. But don’t say things that you don’t know anything about. Educate yourself. Don’t put your stuff on somebody else. What did Madonna say? “Don’t hang your sh-t on me.”
Cider: Don’t push your legislature to take control and tell other people what they can or cannot do [with their bodies]. Usually, it is religious reasons why they’re doing all of this because their beliefs are binary. When we have this particular religious control, they want to put fearmongering into what has been celebrated because they don’t understand it.
Eureka O’Hara photographed on May 9, 2023 in Los Angeles. Hair by Jaymes Mansfield. Makeup by Loris Volkle. Marco Marco custom dress.
Munachi Osegbu
Morris: The fact is, they don’t have solutions for actual problems — this is their niche thing that they get to go off on. I’m from Texas, I live in Tennessee, and I do love the community I have there, but these bills almost incentivize us to turn on one another. They’re rewarding us to turn each other in, which feels kind of like a Nazi Germany thing where we turn on our own communities.
Colby: And they call it “patriotism.”
Morris: With drag being more popular than ever right now, how do you think it ultimately influences pop culture?
Colby: We used to be a mirror — like in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, we would mirror pop culture. Now we get to be pop culture. We are who celebrities, designers, artists want to work with or are inspired by.
O’Hara: Obviously, there’s so much bad that comes from the hatred and the discrimination. But to have it be publicly talked about and having these discussions — like, how many celebrities have stood up for drag lately?
Cider: It’s interesting because it’s kind of the flip for me. As a drag king, I don’t see myself and my version of my art form celebrated the way that the art of drag queens is. So it’s bittersweet because I see my sisters being catapulted into this stardom, and I’m so excited and happy for all of them. But when are we going to understand that kings have been around for just as long, if not longer, in some cultures? Sexism and misogyny take over a lot, and that’s why trans women have been hidden in secret, too; it’s that same misogyny, the same sexism.
I am not trans, but when I see my trans siblings getting attacked… If you attack one of us, you attack all of us. And it’s the same when I see my siblings being celebrated — you celebrate one of us, you celebrate all of us. So I’m celebrating them, but I’m still waiting for us to be recognized and fully embraced. We see masculinity celebrated on the runway on RuPaul’s Drag Race all the time — in the Snatch Game or Victoria [Scone] and Mo Heart doing these very masculine looks — but we still don’t see kings.
O’Hara: You talked about the sexism and misogyny — it’s also the heteronormative culture of “Men are men, women are women,” and seeing a drag king is probably even harder for them to see.
Colby: Because they don’t know how to sexualize and objectify you.
O’Hara: Tea!
Morris: Piggybacking on that, these bills are so vague in their language that it’s intentionally hard to know where the line is between what is drag and what is not, and it’s obviously really meant to eradicate the existence of trans people. I mean, even a lot of these [male] country artists wear tighter jeans than I do.
Colby: And have bigger highlights! But that’s the thing: All the beauty in country music is always so good.
Landon Cider photographed on May 9, 2023 in Los Angeles. Hair by Wigs By Vanity. Makeup by Landon Cider. Fontasia L’Amour suit, ORTTU shirt.
Munachi Osegbu
Morris: It’s elevated, right? Dolly Parton famously said that if she wasn’t Dolly, she would be a drag queen. Especially when I’m going into glam for an event, I’m looking at a lot of y’all’s photos. Like, talk about culture and impact — it affects me, too! I want to sit and be beat for the gods! Even that language — I just said something that was totally born out of this community. I exist in this space of country music, where you don’t have to do much to be seen as a brave voice, unfortunately.
Symone: And that’s why it’s so important for you to be here, because country music — and I’ll also add in rap and hip-hop here — those genres need people to come out and say something more than any other [genre] because those are the ones that are the most heteronormative.
Colby: And they have a lot of people’s ears in America. They are two of the most listened-to genres in the country.
Symone: For you to be here and say those things is so important — we need all our divas. We need you to love us now.
Morris: Are there any specific examples of good, helpful allyship that you’ve seen from artists in the last few years?
Cider: Aside from you, I look at somebody like Lizzo and the show she did in Nashville recently [with drag performers].
Symone: Yes, completely. If you’re going to Tennessee this summer for touring, get the girls up there. Get some kings up there, too!
Colby: The local girls, too, because the local performers are the ones in danger here, especially in these small towns with a lot of drag. I’ve noticed that a lot of small Southern towns have these safe spaces for queer people, and they are the ones who are going to feel the impact of all this legislation first. We get to be the face and the voice and try to do our best, but it’s these small towns that we really have to be concerned about.
Symone photographed on May 9, 2023 in Los Angeles. Hair by Gigi Goode. Makeup by RYLIE. Marko Monroe custom dress.
Munachi Osegbu
Morris: For anyone who may be reading this, what can people do to help?
Symone: Vote. That’s first and foremost.
O’Hara: Go to these organizations that work with lobbyists to watch out for the progression of these bills. Because it’s not just at a state and national level that we’re being harmed. It’s the small community governments, it’s the city governments, it’s these local places. We have organizations like ACLU and places of that nature, every state has those lobbyists — the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition would be a great one for anyone to donate to. Of course you have to vote, but we scream that all day every day. It’s not just about voting for the president.
A lot of times, I think the most important thing is to take care of the people around you who aren’t being looked after. Talk to the quiet queer kids that look scared, that aren’t being social. Go befriend the people that don’t look happy. Stop being mean girls, and that goes for gay people, too. Step up and be there for each other, for someone other than yourself and the people who make you feel cool.
Cider: Be an active ally when it matters. If you’ve shared a smile, a laugh, a memory with a queer person, don’t let that memory hide in the closet. Take that memory where it counts — to your pulpits, to your family reunions, to the locker rooms, to the places where you know you’re going to get sh-t on for speaking out for us. That’s where it matters the most because maybe it’ll open some eyes.
Colby: I always tell my cis-het friends who have children, “You don’t have to go to every protest and stand on your soapbox. What you do have control over is the kids you created. All you can do is leave this world a little better than you left it. Make those kids allies.”
Morris: Is there anything y’all want to ask me?
Cider: You’re using your platform beautifully already, and we appreciate you, we thank you for everything. But it’s also not a hard thing to do, to be an ally and to use your platform in the way that you do. How would you encourage your peers to do the same?
Morris: I have heard the term “Shut up and sing” more times than I can count — that’s always the cutesy little threat that they like to make. So I would say to my peers who are artists and to record-label heads, publishers, songwriters: I don’t think any of us got into this art form to be an activist, but that’s ultimately thrust upon you to exist in this space and to feel like you can sleep at night. You’re going to lose fans along the way — that is just part and parcel of being public-facing. But there is a lane that you’re widening; I see it year over year at my shows, the crowd feels so diverse and so safe. I know everyone likes money, but is it worth your biography saying that you never picked a side because both sides pay money to buy a T-shirt?
This story will appear in the June 10, 2023, issue of Billboard.
I grew up being a huge country music fan, especially of people like The Chicks. Watching their career spiral in such a ridiculous, unfair way was always in my mind — it doesn’t leave your brain once you witness these idols of yours being so unfairly criticized and their careers, at least at the time, ending just for exercising their rights. There is this pressure to stay silent in country music, I think, because of what happened to The Chicks. Artists just look at it like, “It’s good for business to shut the f–k up.” And that just never really sat well with me.
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I think that’s why I’ve become a little bit of a rebellious adolescent in country. In some ways, there’s good in that; you want things to be better, you want everyone to be on the same page, you want everyone to be equally treated. There’s this passion there. But there’s also that sort of insanity and delusion of thinking you can do it all yourself. It’s ridiculous and kind of an almost white savior complex way of thinking: “I’m going to change it all from the inside — me, myself and I.” I’ve had to really take a step back and realize how to not center myself in this conversation every f–king time.
There’s always going to be this nugget of ego in all of us, but I think particularly for someone that looks like me, the education of the last few years has been to shut up and listen to those who are living these horrors every day. I’m shutting up to listen to people that are smarter than me. I am not some torch-carrying savior of country music.
I have not been pulled from the radio — at least not as a reaction to my actions. I’ve certainly lost fans along the way. But I think that’s sort of like spring cleaning. I don’t want to make three albums and go away forever; this is it for me. I don’t love anything else as much as I love performing and writing songs. So, with the effects of the “punishment phase” of speaking out, I couldn’t give a sh-t because I’m going to be doing this for the long haul. You lose some people along the way, but you solidify those that you had from the get-go.
The way the country music industry has treated LGBTQ people has been awful — there’s been almost no representation. There are people like Ty Herndon, who wasn’t able to come out until he was basically not in the industry anymore. But there is progress being made: T.J. Osborne, one of my closest friends, came out a couple years ago, and there’s such support behind him because it’s like, “Yeah, it doesn’t matter.”
In my career, I have been pretty clear with my values and putting my money where my mouth is, and over time, I’ve achieved a larger audience. So to anyone who’s a juggernaut of the industry or to new artists just trying to break right into this: I have worked bit by bit to build my business to where it is. When you speak out or you show up to a rally, you’re going to gain fans and you’re going to lose fans. Even if it’s for a piece of legislation that’s going to affect people’s bodily autonomy, or their way of making a living, or who they can marry, it is going to be political to the other side. You’re going to lose some people, but you’ll also gain some that never looked in your direction before. On a moral level, as a fan, wouldn’t it be so nice to know that you’re paying for a ticket or a T-shirt of somebody that isn’t a sh–ty person? Being inclusive is good for business because you open yourself up to the world.
When I was a guest judge on Drag Race, I did feel like I just wanted to speak from my heart and apologize [for country music’s treatment of the LGBTQ community] as an artist that comes from the genre. I felt like country music in some ways gets overlooked in that community because they rightfully assume it’s not a welcoming community. No “sorry” is going to undo the decades of harm that the country music industry has done to LGBTQ people in terms of representation. I was trying to say that there’s a lot of good people in this genre, and I hope that you don’t write it off forever because of what some artists said on their stage.
We live really close to the Covenant School [where a mass shooting took place in March], and that feeling of being swallowed by this grief, as a mother, has been really tough. My heart is just broken every day, having to pass the entrance of that school. But weirdly, I have never felt more connected to this town than in the last two months. When I went to one of the protests after the shooting, I saw mothers that I’ve had wine and disagreements with, and everyone was so emotionally raw at that moment. It’s awful that it took something so horrible to make that happen, but something in me switched, and I felt like, “I’m really lucky to live here right now.” Community like that is happening on the battlegrounds of these protests. It all comes back to the community that you’ve got to go out and build for yourself. It’s not going to come to you.
And there really is no community like here in Nashville. I’ve heard other songwriters from other places say they’ve been to L.A., they’ve been to New York, they’ve done writing trips abroad, but there’s just something different about Nashville. My heart is country music, and it’s writing songs that are stories, and it’s the collaboration of Nashville writing. It’s a lot harder to try and start over in some other way. I’ve just decided that you have to till the soil you’re on. Don’t get into the greener pastures complex.
For myself, I’m getting out of the sort of game of being the hall monitor of country music, even if I’m probably setting myself up for failure. Everything I’ve done has not been in vain; I’ve been so bowled over by the acceptance and positivity from the LGBTQ community. But I feel like I cannot look at the bad apples anymore. I’m done giving into what they want, which is attention. I think the whole “When they go low, we go high” thing is applicable here. Sometimes I fall into that trap of saying, “No, beat them at their own game. Sink to their level because they don’t operate on the high road.” There’s absolutely truth to that, and sometimes, yeah, you need to ruffle some feathers and not do this whole “Kumbaya” hand-holding thing. But clapping back on Twitter and expecting a different result doesn’t work for me anymore. I’m going to look to where the people are helping and just Mister Rogers this b-tch. —AS TOLD TO STEPHEN DAW
This story will appear in the June 10, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Maren Morris downs a shot of tequila with a wince. “I love that we’re taking shots and then saying, ‘OK, so let’s talk about Ron DeSantis,’ ” Morris says with a chuckle. The four drag luminaries she’s toasting with today — Eureka O’Hara, Landon Cider, Sasha Colby and Symone — grimace through their own post-shot puckers […]
Lizzo just kicked off Pride Month with a bold statement. At her Friday (June 2) concert in Thousand Palms, Calif., the hitmaker invited a group of drag performers to dance with her onstage, and afterward posted a sweet message reminding the LGBTQ community that she’s always going to be here for them.
In a video posted to Lizzo’s social media accounts following her Special Tour’s first show of the month, the “About Damn Time” singer waves a huge pride flag up and down while surrounded by drag queens Kim Chi, Angeria Paris Van Michaels and Kahanna Montrese, as well as drag king Tenderoni.
“Drag is not a crime!” yells the Yitty founder into her microphone, prompting loud cheers from her crowd at Acrisure Arena.
“You’ve always had my back, and I’ll always have yours,” Lizzo later captioned the video, adding, “Happy Pride,” bookended with LGBTQ and transgender pride flag emojis.
Tenderoni was delighted to join the star on stage. “Still can’t believe I performed with @Lizzo tonight!!!!!” he shared in one of several tweets after the show.
It’s not the first time in recent months that Lizzo has used her concert stages as literal and figurative platforms for drag performers. In April, she was joined onstage by Aquaria, Kandy Muse, Asia O’Hara and Vanessa Vanji during a show in Knoxville, Tenn. — aka, the state which has been the center of controversy following Gov. Bill Lee’s signing of anti-LGBTQ and anti-drag laws.
“In light of recent and tragic events and current events, I was told by people on the internet, ‘Cancel your shows in Tennessee,’ ‘Don’t go to Tennessee,’” she told her crowd at the time. “Their reason was valid, but why would I not come to the people who need to hear this message the most?
“Why would I not create a safe space in Tennessee where we can celebrate drag entertainers and celebrate our differences?”
See Lizzo’s video below: