The Pink Pound and the Music Industry

Originally published on www.vadamagazine.com

In today’s music industry many artists dominating the charts take time out to lend their voice to good causes. They may relate to problems such as world famine, body issues, war and lately even gay rights. This may seem like something truly commendable as famous individuals lend their name (and hundreds of thousands of twitter followers) to a cause in order to give it a greater voice. However, in relation to gay rights just how much of this advocacy is truly on behalf of those suffering and how much is for personal gain?

This may sound a little cynical to some who believe these stars are truly helping gay men and women across the world become more accepted, which to extent they are. However, whilst having a big name star promoting a cause is a guaranteed way to make a mark for it, for the star it is also a way of gaining yourself a loyal fan base that will stick by you. The audience think you ‘get them’. The cynicism enters when thinking about gay men and women as the power of the pink pound and its appeal to PR executives everywhere is remarkable. Leading mostly metropolitan lives and statistically freer from the financial black-hole of childrearing, our demographic are often thought to have more disposable income. For many this is mostly true.

When you think about gay rights advocacy and celebrities today, one of the biggest stars that come to the forefront of most people’s minds is Lady Gaga. Now I am by no means accusing her of not believing in equality for everyone, in fact she has done quite a lot over the last few years to help LGBT advancement, but you cannot help but feel there is a slight marketing push behind it.

After watching her concert on DVD you are left with the feeling that the chanting about gay rights is a little too much overkill. Sometimes it feels as though she is trying too hard to ensure that those in the audience who are gay know that she loves them. Also when you listen to her album Born This Way, the running theme of gay rights throughout it is incredibly obvious, so much so that it starts to annoy you. It has to be said that the title song of the album was a brilliant way to gain exposure across the world for gay rights (I know it advocated rights and equality for everyone but the message for the LGBT community was much stronger), but also a great way to guarantee gay men and women would buy the single and the album and that it would be played as a gay anthem for years to come.

Now I do not want this to sound like I am ripping into Lady Gaga, after all she wouldn’t be the first star to have a large gay following, although she seems to be one of the first to specifically target them. That said her predecessor Madonna did this but in a much subtler way.

‘Vogue’ was a massive hit worldwide back in 1990 and it is well known now that voguing was very popular on the New York gay scene. Madonna helped bring this facet of gay subculture into the mainstream. However, back then it would have been much harder to publicly back LGBT people through song in the way Gaga has today due to widespread homophobia, the legacy of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 80s and the fact that as a community, equality was still a long way away in many more countries than it is today.

So when you look at it that way pandering to a gay audience has been going on for some time, whether it has been obvious or not. Rewind to the 50s and 60s when the biggest gay icon of them all Judy Garland was selling out concerts all across the world that were known to be frequented quite prominently by gay men. However, back then there was no marketing or pandering to gays and as Judy quipped when asked about her gay following, “I couldn’t care less. I sing to people.“ I’m quite sure that if being gay wasn’t the crime it was back then, some marketing savvy individual would have had her shouting out for gay rights across the globe.

So maybe it’s not the stars, maybe it is the marketing companies and their strategic soapboxing of stars that grinds my gears. By advocating a certain fight for equality they tap into a lucrative market in an attempt to exploit it for all they can. After all, stars such as Madonna and Lady Gaga just want to sing, entertain, love their fans (so they say) and be appreciated. As most people know, companies involved in marketing, advertising and PR are out for one thing and one thing only: Money.

So yes maybe stars are pandering to the capital of the pink pound, but is it because the teams behind them are exploiting them, and in turn exploit the pockets of fans across the world? I’ll let you think about that one.

Giving Thanks: Ryan Murphy

Originally posted on www.biggaypictureshow.com

We’ve been giving thanks to a number of different people from behind the scenes of various television shows that have helped bring LGBT characters into the mainstream over the years, and in their own way helped us become more accepted in society.

This week we’re taking a look at Ryan Murphy, who after working as a journalist for a number of years moved into television in the late 90s. After the success of his teen comedy series Popular, Murphy then went on to create the extremely popular Nip/Tuck and also worked on a number of film projects.

During this time he created the pilot Pretty/Handsome, which dealt with a transgendered storyline, however the show didn’t get picked up and we can only assume that maybe audiences weren’t quite ready for a show like this.

However, audiences who may have been upset by this needn’t be worried, as the forward thinking Murphy soon unleashed his monster hit Glee on the world. The up-tempo original musical television series was an instant hit with audiences and introduced a whole new generation to musicals. But it is his inclusion of a number of LGBT storylines that we have to give him credit for here.

The show includes openly gay and lesbian characters and relationships and deals with the issues of closeted homosexuality – as well as being young and openly gay. Also, during the wake of the It Gets Better Campaign he created a storyline that showed audiences just how harmful homophobic bullying can be, and showed young people that they could be themselves in the Born This Way episode.

In the most recent series he has also introduced the character of Wade Adams, who has to deal with the issues that come with being trans, something that hasn’t truly been tackled on a scale like this on American television, especially with such a young character.

It doesn’t stop there though as Murphy has since gone on to create two more hit shows; American Horror Story and The New Normal. The former, despite being a nail biting, eye hiding horror story, has incorporated a number of LGBT characters throughout the first two series, and even demonstrated just how hard it was to be gay back in the 1960s during the second season. The New Normal on the other hand shows us just how far our society has come as it centres on what is by all means a new normal in society, an LGBT couple having a baby, which is told in both a funny and heart warming way.

Yes it’s easy to say that for the last few years Ryan Murphy has helped shape a number of attitudes when it comes to LGBT people in society, and has helped tackle the issues faced on a vast scale in funny, horrific, touching and beautifully laid out stories.

Against Gaga

Originally published on www.differentscene.co.uk

Unless you’ve been living underneath a rock or in a small cave for the last three years then you’ve definitely endured the bid for world domination by one miss Lady Gaga. She has enjoyed huge success with sell out tours, platinum records galore and has every gay within a 50 mile radius of her falling to the ground in a Gaga induced mess. But doesn’t she just get on your nerves?

Now I, like most, am guilty of being drawn in by the perfectly crafted pop songs she’s launched over the past few years, and I am most definitely guilty of trying to emulate the Born This Way dance (that kind of resembles a chicken jumping over hot coals) on a drunken night out.

But amongst this plethora of songs, dance routines and bat shit crazy outfits you have to admit that she is quite possibly one of the most annoying people to hit the pop charts in recent years. Originality seems to be one of the main words that follows Gaga around, and this association is one thing that really annoys me about her, so lets look at this shall we? First of all lets just get something out of the way, Madonna did it first and Madonna did it better, way better!! The way she has crafted her huge theatre-esque stage shows are a complete rip off of what Madonna started way back in 1990 with the Blonde Ambition tour, the way that she uses sex and sexuality and juxtaposes it with religious themes was something the Queen of Pop herself started way back in the 1980s before Gaga was even born, does anyone recall the Like A Prayer video, the one that was almost banned by MTV? Yeah thought so. Well without this we wouldn’t have Lady Gaga because to be perfectly honest nothing that she has come up with has been totally original it has all been rehashed from someone who did it years before.To be honest we could probably detect where her career is going next by just looking at what Madonna did next.

Her original fashion isn’t even original. Yes I know she has worn a number of shocking outfits, the meat dress is the first that springs to mind and yes in her defence this was very original, but the attempt to shock with an outfit wasn’t. She recently dressed as a man for the MTV awards something else that was done back in the 1980s by Annie Lennox and then again a few years later by Cher, and I believe Madonna did something along the same lines in her 1989 music video for Express Yourself. Another musical icon she has ripped off is musical psycho Grace Jones, who even denied Gaga the chance of a duet due to her ‘copying her style’ you only have to look at photos on Google to see where she’s coming from.

Now I can’t spend forever looking at how Lady Gaga’s originality is anything but original, otherwise I would probably be here for a pretty long time, and I mean pretty long. So I’m going to look at one more thing about her that really annoys me, her self riotousness, lets be honest she pretty much thinks she’s god, and why wouldn’t she with everyone putting her on a pedestal and bowing down at everything she does. The woman could probably release an album filled with noises her body makes while she sleeps and it would probably sell a million copies, but I digress.

The woman is catering for the gay market, which is good there’s nothing wrong with that, look at Cher she’s done pretty well out of it. But Gaga has aimed everything towards gay fans, almost pigeon holing herself as a gay artist but to be perfectly honest this just appears to be some form of cleverly crafted PR, because if she appeals to the gays in every way possible, whether it be musically or politically, she’s tapped into an extremely lucrative market with quite a lot of disposable income who will buy her records. She does deserve a round of applause for that in all fairness.

But at the end of the day, when you watch her on TV or a video of her concert you just want to grab her, slap her and tell her that this isn’t a political rally, we don’t care about what you have to say, just shut up and do your job which is singing. This is one of the reasons I am yet to see her live, although I would probably enjoy two hours of listening to her music performed live I would have to resist the temptation to crash the stage and slap her when she decided to give some speech to the audience mid way through a song. It’s almost like she thinks she’s is some modern day Martin Luther King JR, Mother Theresa or even Jesus.

Yes I do love me some Gaga, but I just wish the woman would disappear for a while and come back with her own look and just sing and perform, instead of just rehashing someone else’s career whether it be a political career she’s rehashing or a pop career.