![]() lang, the Indigo Girls), all the way to today, a moment that young pop star Hayley Kiyoko teasingly refers to as “ #20gayteen.” And so it has evolved, with the late ’80s and early ’90s giving a particular showcase to lesbian and bisexual women in pop (Meshell Ndegeocello, Melissa Etheridge, k.d. Undergirded by punk’s jagged energy and the electric, over-the-top styles of glam and disco, new wave made space for unconventional queer personalities and for pop to address the AIDS crisis. Despite its great appeal to many a very hetero man, many of punk’s early groundbreakers were LGBTQ+, from Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks, who was never shy about his sexuality, to Darby Crash of the Germs, who was sadly closeted during his short life. The ’70s brought glam and disco, gender play, and explicitly queer nightlife back to the mainstream we can’t forget that decade’s great gay pop icon, Elton John, and its great bisexual ones, David Bowie and Freddie Mercury. In fact, Springfield was one of the first pop icons to come out to the public (as bisexual, in 1970)-and, notably, she covered Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me,” as subversive a song as there ever was, on her debut album. ![]() Even in the prescriptive world of ’60s pop, where teen rebellion was anticipated and pre-packaged, there were artists like Lesley Gore and Dusty Springfield. Jazz can’t be imagined without the contributions of giants like Billy Strayhorn (of Duke Ellington’s band), who was openly gay, and, later, Cecil Taylor, who found that three-letter word was too limiting. ![]() This didn’t stop LGBTQ+ musicians from shaping American pop culture.
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