Pride
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You can tell everybody … that Sir Elton John was named Time magazine’s Icon of the Year in 2024.
In a new cover story for the publication — which will reveal its pick for Person of the Year on Thursday (Dec. 12) — John sat for an interview in which he looked back over his career, and considered his own legacy. “If people remember that we tried to change the world a little bit, we were kind, we tried to help people … And then, apart from that, there was the music,” he said.
Writer Belinda Luscombe makes a compelling argument for John earning the title. “The candle that is Elton John has been inextinguishable, no matter how strong the wind. His 57 U.S. top 40 hits were mostly released during his wild-child youth, but he found a second act in writing songs for animated Disney movies, for which he won two Oscars, and a third in writing songs for Broadway musicals, for which he won a Tony,” she writes. “There’s a whiff of fourth act about him as he moves into the mash-up phase of his career, lending his melodies — and some vocals — to a new generation of performers.”
Throughout his wide-ranging interview, John talked about myriad aspects of his life, including his faith, sobriety and relationship with his late mother. He also reflected on aspects of his job in the industry, including his distaste for performing in music videos. “Music videos should be made by good-looking people like Harry Styles. I’m not very good at looking at myself,” he explained “I don’t think you ever lose that body consciousness. I just think it stays with you forever.”
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The star also spoke about the recent news that Tammy Faye, the Broadway musical he wrote music for, closed less than a month after its Broadway debut. “It’s a shame for everyone who put so much work in it. But that’s what happens when you take a chance,” he said. “It’s a fairly political piece of work. And with that you have to press somebody’s buttons. The buttons we pressed … with the critics weren’t the right ones.”
Among the many people to speak on John’s behalf in the story were a number of modern pop performers whom John personally championed. Dua Lipa, who collaborated with John on his hit song “Cold Heart,” said that it never felt like John was courting her for a collaboration due to her star power. “It was because of our friendship,” she said. “Singing alongside one of my musical heroes was a no-brainer. His music has been able to soundtrack my life from the very beginning.”
Meanwhile, pop phenomenon Chappell Roan also shared her own anecdotes about meeting John, and she revealed the piece of advice he gave that changed her perspective. “The advice he gave me was that the songs will come,” she said. “He thought that he wouldn’t have the ideas, but they were absolutely there. He just had to let them come to him. So that’s a good reminder.”
See Time‘s cover featuring Icon of the Year Elton John below:
Elton John
TIME
Early on in their Thursday night (Dec. 5) performance at the Kings Theater in Brooklyn, NY, drag stars Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme told their crowd of a few thousand fans that they intended to do things a little differently this year.
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The pair have been performing together in various iterations of their annual Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show for the last seven years, with each successive variety performance becoming more involved, plot-driven and deeply meta than the last. Their 2023 show, as they point out during this year’s production, revolved around their show itself turning on and trying to kill them.
So for 2024, the dynamic duo told their audience that they just wanted to keep things straightforward — some lighthearted fun, some good laughs, and that winning parody combination of “a pop song you heard on the radio all year, plus Christmas,” as DeLa put it. Nothing fancy, just an easy, simple holiday show.
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What ensued, while it was of course not at all what the duo described at the outset of their performance, proved exactly why these Drag Race alumni make such a perfect pair on the stage. Across two acts and two hours, Jinkx and DeLa managed to not only encapsulate the manic brilliance of their now-historic run together, but to also deftly (and often bluntly) address and audience still reeling from the political chaos of the last month.
Fans of the The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show will have plenty to celebrate with this year’s iteration, as the pair keep on the tradition of building a loose narrative around a Christmas-themed concept. This time around, Jinkx delightfully informs the audience that they’re doing a Nutcracker riff (or “nut-gobbler,” as DeLa accidentally calls it), as the pair get shrunk down to toy-size and participate in the well-loved Christmas ballet. It’s a welcome shift, seeing the usually-grinchy Jinkx getting excited for the holdiays, while the often-optimistic DeLa gets her opportunity to make fun of the centuries-old ballet at every given opportunity.
The song parodies are also back, and arguably better than ever. Jinkx and DeLa once again meld their own original songs with new versions of holiday classics, American standards and a heaping helping of 2024 pop hits. A now Broadway-minted Monsoon flexes both her musical and comedic chops on the early standout performance of “Secular” (to the tune of Wicked‘s “Popular”) as she delights in leaving the more Judeo-Christian aspects of the season behind. Meanwhile DeLa stuns with a rendition of Beyoncé’s “Texas Hold ‘Em” that sees the star crooning about missing snow in a globally warmed winter of unseasonably warm weather — although, when it happens this much, we really shouldn’t call it “unseasonable,” as DeLa points out.
The standout running gag from the show, though, comes in the form of the pair desperately trying to find an appropriately funny (and Christmas-y) Chappell Roan parody. DeLa tries her best early on — conjuring up clunky visions of a “Red Reindeer Place” and attempting to incite a “Femininomenon” in the city of Bethlehem — before Jinkx tells her to just give it up. But the pair finally triumph with their own, double-meta version of Roan’s breakout hit “Hot to Go,” this time singing about the difficulty of coming up with a Chappell parody before settling on spelling out “Hot Coco.”
While the show certainly has plenty of fun songs and hilarious jokes — Jinkx’s ongoing infatuation with and seduction by The Nutcracker had the Brooklyn audience in stitches — the show’s core comes into full focus during it’s second act, when both Jinkx and DeLa partially drop the facade of the show to look at the context they’re performing it in.
In an interview with Billboard back in October, both Jinkx and DeLa expressed their desire to get to the core of our current system of political division, and how those divisions have made the holidays and even harder time of year for everyone, especially in the LGBTQ+ community. “At a hard time of year, a bunch of people get to come together and look at some beautiful visuals, outfits, props and performances from our brilliant cast,” DeLa said at the time.
While I won’t give away the show’s clever plot, I can say that the Act II breakdown from Jinkx & DeLa landed exactly where they wanted it to. As the pair use the structure of their show itself to process Donald Trump’s re-election in November, they dig even deeper to get to the emotional crux that the audience at the Kings Theater was feeling. When Jinkx woefully declared that she — like many of us — was “so tired of caring,” DeLa delivered the needed reality check: “I’m tired of people not caring.”
The fabulous costume design and gifted background performers helped elevate 2024’s Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show to new heights, that’s for certain. But the thing that always made this zany show work is what worked best for the 150th time on Thursday night; a pair of best friends and talented performers who know exactly how to balance the real with the delightfully absurd.
In the opening moments of his latest project, Troye Sivan makes it clear that his career would not be what it is today had it not been for the queer artists who came before him. “I’m definitely not fighting for my life on the street — I get to make music videos and I get to be true to who I am,” he said. “I do feel like I really carry that with me with kind of a sense of guilt because of how lucky I feel.”
The acknowledgement comes from Sivan’s appearance on a new installation of the Audible original series Origins. Throughout the episode, Sivan dives deep into his personal backstory, examining key moments from his early life that helped foster his love of music today. In the process, he takes a look forward at where his career is headed — and what that means for music at large.
Sivan isn’t the only artist taking a deep dive on the new series. With four episodes released on Thursday (Dec. 5), Origins also delves into the childhood stories of Victoria Monét, Kali Uchis and Dominic Fike.
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Ahead of his appearance on the series, Billboard spoke with Sivan about the importance of acknowledging his queer forebearers, the “lightning in a bottle” feeling of his co-headlining Sweat Tour with Charli XCX and what’s giving him hope in dark times.
You speak a bit in this episode about the queer artists and bits of pop culture who came before you that helped pave the way for your career. Why is it important for younger listeners to learn more about our queer elders?
I feel that understanding the contributions of queer artists who came before us is vital. They navigated challenges we can’t even imagine, often at great personal risk, to express their truths and create art that resonated with their experiences. For me, it’s about honoring their legacy and understanding the cultural and historical context that shapes our present.
When you look at the very queer pop moment that we’re living in now, how do you acknowledge your place in pushing this genre forward?
I feel incredibly fortunate to feel a small part of a moment where queer voices are more visible and celebrated in pop culture. My aim has always been to create authentic art that felt true and genuine to me. I’ve always felt that people are smart and in tune to what is real, which actually makes my job fairly easy — to listen to myself and to make something real to me, that I like, and that I am proud of.
You also speak in the episode about the internet as a place for you to explore your sexuality. Obviously, the internet has changed a lot, especially over the last few years. Do you find yourself worrying for the continued curation of those safe spaces online?
I don’t know what I would have done without the internet — it has been a crucial platform for so many in the LGBTQ+ community to explore and express themselves. It’s changed a lot, and I think people always need to be weary and keep safety in mind, but I do also feel that there will always be those safe havens and communities online that foster a feeling of being seen and heard, if you know where to look.
We also get to hear you talk about the start of your acting career in the episode. Do you see yourself returning to acting any time soon, or are you more interested in focusing on your musical career?
Acting has always been a passion of mine, and I cherish the opportunities I’ve had in that realm. While music remains my primary focus, I’m open to exploring acting projects that resonate with me and scare me. I feel lucky to be able to approach acting like this, as a passion, rather than a day job.
You wrapped up the Sweat Tour with Charli last month. How do you feel looking back now on that experience today in terms of the arc of your career?
The Sweat Tour felt like lightning in a bottle. Reflecting on it, I already feel so nostalgic for it and see it as a bright highlight in my life. It spoke to all the things that feel so important to me — pop, community, collaboration, friendship.
We’re living through some pretty scary times for queer and trans people around the world. What’s giving you hope about our collective future with everything going on?
The resilience and solidarity within the queer and trans communities gives me hope. The same strength and resilience that’s got us to this point is present in our communities today.
From controversial awards show performances to community-affirming song releases, the last 25 years saw LGBTQ+ music move from the fringes to the forefront of pop culture.
Despite the fact that Wicked is undeniably “Popular,” the film won’t be making an appearance in Kuwait theaters any time soon. According to a report from Variety on Wednesday (Dec. 4), the Jon M. Chu-directed musical adaptation has been removed from theater listings across Kuwait just days before its slated release in the country on […]
Village People founder Victor Willis is once again tackling two issues surrounding the disco band’s 1970s smash hit “Y.M.C.A.”: Donald Trump’s use of the track in his 2024 presidential campaign and the characterization of the song as a “gay anthem.”
In a lengthy Facebook post on Monday (Dec. 2), the 73-year-old singer-songwriter doubled down on why he chose to let the president-elect play “Y.M.C.A.” at rallies and events leading up to his win in November, with Willis saying he “didn’t have the heart” to block the usage — despite originally asking Trump to stop in 2020 — upon realizing that the politician seemed to “genuinely like” and was “having a lot of fun” with “Y.M.C.A.” Plus, as Willis noted, the dance tune has only “benefited greatly” in terms of chart placements and sales since the twice-impeached former POTUS incorporated it into his campaign.
“Therefore, I’m glad I allowed the President Elect’s continued use of Y.M.C.A.” the musician wrote. “And I thank him for choosing to use my song.”
Willis also pointed out that Trump had, according to him, obtained the necessary license from BMI to play the song. The artist previously noted that the billionaire was legally allowed to use “Y.M.C.A.” in an October press release, in which Willis also stated that — despite supporting Democratic opponent Kamala Harris in the 2024 election — he would not go through any channels to bar Trump from using the track as it would’ve been “stupid and just plain hateful” to do so.
Controversy surrounding Trump’s unauthorized use of artists’ music is nothing new, with Village People — prior to Willis’ change of heart — being just one of many acts since the polarizing president elect’s first White House bid in 2016 to ask that he stop playing their songs at campaign events without direct approval. This year alone, Beyoncé, Celine Dion, the Foo Fighters, Jack White and several others issued statements slamming Trump for doing so, while Isaac Hayes’ estate went as far as filing a lawsuit against the politician in August for using the late soul singer’s “Hold On, I’m Coming” at multiple rallies.
However, as Willis noted in his post, it can pay to be on Trump’s playlists. In November, “Y.M.C.A.” ascended to the top of Billboard‘s Top Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales chart more than four decades after its release, spending two weeks at No. 1. And according to the Village People star, the song “is estimated to gross several million dollars since the President Elect’s continued use of the song.”
As for another debacle that has “reached a fever pitch” amid Trump’s continued use of “Y.M.C.A.,” according to Willis, the singer wrote that any branding of the track as a “gay anthem” is “completely misguided” and “damaging to the song.” He also threatened legal action against “each and every news organization that falsely refers” to it as such starting in January 2025, although he personally doesn’t mind if “gays think of the song as their anthem.”
“This assumption is also based on the fact that the YMCA was apparently being used as some sort of gay hangout, and since one of the writers [Jacques Morali] was gay and some of the Village People are gay, the song must be a message to gay people,” Willis wrote. “To that I say, once again, get your minds out of the gutter. It is not … such notion is based solely on the song’s lyrics alluding to [illicit] activity for which it does not.”
“Y.M.C.A.” has indeed been widely adopted by the LGBTQ community over the years, with many interpreting the lyrics as references to the gym chain’s reputation as a popular cruising site back in the day — plus, the track comes from a 1978 album titled Cruisin’. Even so, Willis’ latest post is not the first time he’s sought to distance the track from the gay anthem label, writing in a 2020 Facebook post: “No one group can claim Y.M.C.A. as somehow belonging to them or somehow their anthem. I won’t allow my iconic song to be placed in a box like that.”
Clearly, Willis hasn’t budged on his stance in the four years since. “The true anthem is Y.M.C.A.’s appeal to people of all strips including President Elect Trump,” he concluded in his Monday post. “But the song is not really a gay anthem other than certain people falsely suggesting that it is.”
MUNA fans, rejoice — your “Prayer” has been answered by Katie Gavin. On Monday (Dec. 2), Gavin appeared on SiriusXM’s The Coffee House, where the MUNA frontwoman delivered a pared-down, acoustic rendition of Madonna‘s hit single “Like a Prayer.” Putting her own spin on the beloved track, Gavin’s new rendition swaps out Madonna’s high-energy gospel […]
A little over halfway through her newest project, RuPaul’s Drag Race superstar Alaska Thunderfuck nurses a glass of whiskey while bemoaning the circumstances she finds herself in. “Could you imagine?” she shouts. “A musical about drag queens. Who would be dumb enough to buy a ticket to see that?”
If the audience at Manhattan’s New World Stages on a chilly Monday night in November is any indication, quite a few people. Drag: The Musical, which debuted its off-Broadway run back in late October, takes the well-trodden subject matter at its center and aims to create something new — and, refreshingly, something radically honest.
This latest iteration of the show — which she stars in and co-wrote with Tomas Costanza and Ashley Gordon — has been an adjustment for the Drag Race winner. “Doing eight shows a week is kind of unhinged, and it’s much more work than I am used to doing,” Alaska tells Billboard. “But I’m also grateful that, if I’m going to do eight shows a week, it’s this show and it’s these people.”
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On its surface, the two-hour rock musical tells the story of two competing drag bars — The Fish Tank and The Cat House — as they struggle to stay open amid financial pressures. But underneath that familiar exterior is a love letter to the art of drag, and a timely coming-of-age story about self-expression and authenticity in the face of societal rejection.
Along with a number of positive reviews, the show has received one very important co-sign from venerated queer idol Liza Minnelli. The legendary performer serves as a producer of the show, and introduces the audience to the story through a surprise voiceover at the very start of the performance. “I mean, that is an actual ICON, in all-capital letters. We couldn’t be more lucky and grateful to have her fairy dust sprinkled upon us,” Alaska says. “It doesn’t get old — every night I’m back stage and I’m in a furious quick change, but I am loudly saying the words along with her. I still cannot believe it.”
The show exists within an established tradition of musicals examining drag as an art form. Over the last few decades, shows like La Cage Aux Folles and Kinky Boots aimed to present drag to an audience that may have otherwise never seen it. Nick Adams, who stars in Drag as the Fish Tank’s glamorous proprietor Alexis Gillmore, originated the role of Felicia Jollygoodfellow in the 2011 Broadway production of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert — and yet he says Drag: The Musical stands out amongst its prior counterparts as a particularly honest look at the lives of drag queens.
“This show is very representative of drag in 2024, which means it’s not specific to one idea,” he explains. “It’s not just female illusion, it’s a lot more than that, and we really capture the essence of that in a way that [musicals] didn’t before. I think it challenges people to look at what the art form of drag is outside of those parameters.”
Alaska agrees, adding that the original intension behind the story was to take the tropes of past drag musicals and flip them on their head. “I did not want the main story to be about the straight people learning about drag culture, I want it to be about the drag queens and their lives,” she explains. “You’re on the drag queens’ turf, and it’s their world, and the straight guy is the one who is constantly confused and saying ‘what the f–k is going on here.’ It’s an inversion of that formula.”
Drag: The Musical has been in the works for nearly a decade — after beginning to write the show in 2016, Alaska, Costanza and Gordon brought their vision for this story to life with a 2022 concept album, featuring stars from the world of musical theater, stand-up comedy and drag itself. The trio fleshed out the show’s script and put on a limited run of the live show at The Bourbon Room in Los Angeles, before transferring the show to its current off-Broadway home.
As Alaska recalls, the evolution of the musical has been nothing short of transformational. “The only constant has been change. Every time we put the show up, we learned more about the structure, how to make it funnier and better,” she explains. “We were changing this right up to the debut, because you just want to fine-tune everything and get it to its peak form.”
Adams, who has been involved with the project since the 2022 album, remembers early performances at The Bourbon Room, and how the bar atmosphere provided its own set of pros and cons for the show. “There was a scene in the Bourbon Room show where I was laying over top of a bar and my character is at his lowest point,” he says. “And I look down, and this woman in the audience is just chowing down on some chicken wings and drinking her beer. It was just so unique.”
That sort of interaction underlined part of the show’s charm. Where other portrayals of drag focus on the glitz and glamour of the art form, Drag: The Musical leans heavily into the fact that drag, at its core, is messy. The show’s queens (portrayed by bonafide drag stars Jujubee, Jan Sport, Luxx Noir London and others) often find themselves cramped into closets that act as dressing rooms, while early showstopper “Drag Is Expensive” breaks down the financial reality of performing in custom-made costumes night after night.
“I always felt like in movies and in musicals that deal with drag, it’s always ‘look at how fabulous everything is,’” Alaska says. “We wanted you to be able to smell the f–king bar that these queens are working in. The floor is sticky, it’s all kind of a mess. That is the drag that I come from, where you’re in the kitchen and your mirror is propped up on the walk-in refrigerator.”
Yet despite the show’s many lighthearted moments, Drag: The Musical goes out of its way to touch on real issues facing the community it celebrates. Fish Tank queen Dixie Coxworth (played by Liisi LaFontaine) spends an entire song explaining the often-complicated politics of being an AFAB drag queen (“One of the Boys”). A particularly arch portrayal of real estate investor Rita LaRitz (J. Elaine Marcos) highlights the real-life urban gentrification of queer spaces. A secondary plot involving Alexis’ brother Tom (New Kids on the Block’s Joey McIntyre) lays out the pitfalls of straight privilege through multiple musical numbers.
“That’s a tricky thing with theater — sometimes, plotting can feel so on the nose like you’re trying to check every box, that it becomes a question of ‘what story are we actually telling now?’” Adams says. “But I think we do a delicate dance between being muppets and then all of a sudden being serious performers going, ‘This is a real problem.’”
Even with a multitude of issues touched on throughout the show, Drag never falls into the trap of feeling preachy or oversimplified, a fact Alaska credits to her work with Costanza and Gordon. “I’m a drag queen, Tomas is straight guy, and Ash is a straight woman who does drag and writes music for drag queens,” she explains. “We all brought our own perspective, we trusted each other immensely.”
Perhaps the show’s most impactful plotline comes in the form of 10-year-old Brendan (played by Yair Keydar and Remi Tuckman), who is utterly fascinated by drag, but doesn’t have the unequivocal support of his family to explore why that is. In the tear-jerking ballad “I’m Just Brendan,” the young man doesn’t come out or express dissatisfaction with his gender identity — he just likes what he likes and doesn’t understand why others have a problem with a boy playing dress up.
The song was written long before the conversation of children’s involvement at drag shows became a political cudgel for right-wing lawmakers, and Alaska says that the show hasn’t changed its Brendan plotline to reflect that reality. “When I’m loving drag the most is when I’m seeing it from a childlike place of expression. So, we wanted to touch on that and connect to that part of drag, because it’s often the best part of it,” she says. “This is just a young person who wants to express himself in a way that he’s not currently allowed to. That speaks to literally everybody who’s a human person.”
Even though the show doesn’t delve directly into the current political reality for drag performers, Adams can’t help but notice that something shifted after Donald Trump won the election in early November. “I felt the shift that Wednesday after Election Day,” he says. “The crowd was electric that night. People in the audience were placing more importance on the show than they did the Monday before. Queer art is even more important than it was a few weeks ago, and we’re now almost charged with more power.”
The production, meanwhile, shows very few signs of slowing down — tickets are currently still available through March, and a number of upcoming casting substitutions promise a longevity that often alludes other off-Broadway productions.
When it comes to the musical’s Broadway aspirations, Alaska simply shrugs. “I don’t know how all of that works, it’s not my world — I don’t understand what circumstances have to happen for a transfer to happen. But of course we’d love to make it to Broadway,” she says with a smirk. “Who has a Broadway theater we can borrow? I’m ready, I’m flexible, let’s do it.”
Back in October, Ariana Grande wowed audiences with her comedy chops while hosting Saturday Night Live — and in a new interview, her Wicked co-star Bowen Yang is breaking down how one of the audience’s favorite sketches came directly from Grande. In an Interview Magazine conversation with SNL legend Will Ferrell, Yang explained that the […]
As audiences continue holding space for the lyrics of “Defying Gravity,” Wicked star Cynthia Erivo is making sure that they understand the intention of her green-skinned heroine. On Tuesday (Nov. 26), Erivo spoke with Variety about the creation of her version of the iconic character, saying that she wanted her Elphaba to be intrinsically similar […]