Gay anthems aren’t all sparkles and belting

Originally published on www.sosogay.co.uk

The gay anthem is something that has become synonymous with the gay community over the last couple of decades. From ‘Over the Rainbow’ to ‘I’m Coming Out’, all the way through to ‘Beautiful’ and ‘Born This Way’, sung by Judy Garland, Diana Ross, Christina Aguilera and Lady Gaga respectively; and that’s only a few songs and singers off the top of my head.

There are plenty more where they came from as the gay anthem can date back to as early as the 1920s with ‘The Lavender Song (Das Lila Lied).’ The song is often thought to be one of the very first gay anthems as it was produced during a brief moment in time when the quality of life for gay men and lesbians was improved in the German Weimar Republic, and was written after the first international conference of sexual reform. Even ‘Over the Rainbow’ is more than 70 years old, and when it comes to listing gay anthems today we can usually see the formula used to create it: a bit of struggle, a dash of hardship and the mandatory big voice to belt it out.

However, the one thing I have noticed when it comes to the lists of gay anthems is that they are always rather mainstream and obvious choices. These lists tend to contain a number of artists closely associated with the gay community in one way or another. It’s not unusual to see gay anthems being listed as everything in the back catalogue of artists like Madonna, Kylie Minogue and Barbra Streisand, which in all honesty is a little limiting. After all, there are plenty of songs from other genres, besides disco and Broadway show tunes, that contain songs that can be viewed as gay anthems and in fact convey a message that many of these often-recognised anthems do.

There are two very specific songs that spring to mind from the rock genre, which may surprise you because it isn’t an obvious place to look for a ‘gay anthem’. The first of these songs is ‘Minority’ by Green Day. The song unashamedly shouts out about wanting to be the minority and not, as they put it, ‘the moral majority’. You can see that this song is giving a voice to all those people who are persecuted because they aren’t the white, straight, middle class American suburban family that are married with two children and a white picket fence. In a way, this song, much like Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way‘, is giving a voice to anyone and is a song about rights and embracing who you are. However, as a rock song it doesn’t really make the standard lists which are filled with big voice divas belting their way through four minutes of self-discovery.

The second song that stands out is ‘Standing in the Way of Control’ by American rock group Gossip. The song itself was written as a response to the denial of gay marriage in America, something that the gay community across much of the world can understand. Despite receiving considerable chart success here in the UK thanks in part to its use in the promotional advert for teen drama Skins, and being heavily considered as an alternative indie floor-filler, it is often overlooked for what it is actually about – equal rights, which automatically puts it in the alternative gay anthem category. Furthermore, a lesbian with a big voice sang it and, even though Beth Ditto isn’t your conventional diva, that surely gives it enough credit to be a gay anthem.

There are many more songs by various artists that could also be included on this list of alternative gay anthems. Just listen to a handful of songs by Placebo whose songs were used throughout Queer as Folk USA due to their subject matter, specifically ‘Taste in Men’. Then there are artists such as Peaches, whose gender-bending stage antics and controversial lyrics about sex and sexuality automatically put her high on the ‘gay icons’ list. But songs such as ‘I U She‘ convey a message that, although we are forced into boxes, it is ultimately ourselves who choose how and who we have sex with, something that many in the gay community know about. Clearly there are more songs out there other than Broadway tunes that give gay equality a voice, and in many cases they have far more substance to them than those by the big voiced divas.

Even though stereotypically rock and indie music aren’t considered to be favourite genres of gay people, it certainly has many songs that the gay population can relate to.

Icons: Truman Capote

Originally posted on www.differentscene.co.uk

This week in DS Icons section we are going to be taking a look at someone you may or may not have heard of; Truman Capote. Who I hear you ask?  Capote was an American author who wrote many short stories, nonfiction and plays during his 40-year career.

He spent much of his childhood moving around different places and was raised by a number of his family members. Capote began writing from a young age and said that it was something he would do when he finished school, so where as some children would have sport or the piano he had writing, and it’s a good job too he made a pretty good career out of it.

Truman Capote is also the inspiration behind the character of Dill in what is possibly one of the most famous books of all time, To Kill a mockingbird? This is due to his friendship with author Harper Lee at a very early age when they lived in the same neighborhood. You have to admit, that’s pretty remarkable that two extremely talented people were living in one place, and on top of that they were friends.

Capote shot to fame during the 1940s as he began to carve out a career for himself as a short story writer, and after one story caught the eye of a publisher it resulted in his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms. Which contains many underlying themes towards coming of age and homosexuality and is also semi-autobiographical as it shows Capotes coming to terms with his own homosexuality. Which does classify him as a gay icon. This book subsequently launched him to fame and the book went on to spend nine weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. He was partly launched to fame due to the controversy that surrounded the photo on the back of the book, which was interpreted in many ways. However the effect was lasting and Capote had finally made it in the world he was so keen to break into.

Fast-forward a few years into his career and we come to the book that was an inspiration for a movie that everyone will know; Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Yes the Audrey Hepburn starring movie of the 1960s was based on a novella written by this incredible author and was a complete turning point in his career, but greater success was yet to come. In 1966 he released the book Cold Blood, which he had spent six years working on, he even enlisted the help of friend Harper Lee. The book gained him a great deal of praise for the literary community, even though certain aspects were questioned. The book is considered to be his greatest work.

As a openly homosexual man who claimed to have had numerous sexual encounters with heterosexual men, you have to admire the boldness of Capote, considering this was long before homosexuality was accepted or even legal, also for putting the underlying themes in his written work that touches on homosexuality, this is why Truman Capote is certainly a modern day gay icon. Even more so if you’re not quite into big musical divas such as Barbra Streisand.

Capote sadly died of liver cancer in 1984, but he has had a number of posthumous releases. Following his death the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin was established and was to be funded by the revenues of his written work. The award also paid homage to his friend Newton Arvin, who was fired from his job after he was exposed as a homosexual.

And that is why he truly is not only a literary icon, but a gay icon too.