I'm going to take the easy way out today and make what should be an update into a post -- a short one at that. I'm in the middle of reading Amy Hoffman's An Army of Ex-Lovers: My Life at the Gay Community News, and I have several posts in the works, and I haven't been getting enough sleep ... so I'm taking a day or two off from posting. But I'll Be Back.
First, thanks are due to the reader who gave me chapter and verse on several songs by Rufus Wainwright which are clearly sung to or about another male, I stand corrected: Wainwright does sing gay love songs.
I should have included a link to Queer Music Heritage in my music post too. I should also have mentioned Bronski Beat, the openly gay British group, whose lead singer Jimmy Somerville later formed the Communards, and had a bit part in Sally Potter's film Orlando; and probably Erasure as well -- also British. Add "Rough Boys" and Bowie, and Boy George, and the Smiths / Morrisey, and you have another question: why did so much of the interesting queer pop of this period come from the UK? And I use the word "pop" advisedly: openly gay or bi singers who put records (sometimes with gay content) on the charts.
This TV performance by the Communards is the very embodiment of my tagline, "Oh Mary, it takes a fairy to make something tacky." And while there's room in my universe for tackiness -- I can even celebrate it when it's as joyous as it is here -- I want more than that.