At the risk of sounding like a Macklemore song, when I was in the sixth grade I thought that I was gay. I had a crush on the boy who sat to my right and the girl to my left in my math class. It was a confusing time, but it made the class more enjoyable.
What was much less enjoyable, however, was the sleepless nights and constant thinking about what on Earth I was feeling. I didn’t understand it, and I didn’t have many resources to help me figure it out besides the depths of Tumblr. If you don’t know what a Tumblr is I envy you a little, and if you didn’t spend nights under the covers taking “Am I gay?” quizzes on the internet, we probably had a pretty different preteen experience.
While I choose to believe BuzzFeed quizzes that solve your sexuality crisis are timeless phenomena, queer culture in the media has changed entirely. In recent years, television, video games and music have finally begun to embrace the fact that we exist, and now more than ever LGBTQ+ artists are loud and proud on the charts.
I’m not talking about the kind of gay pop that Jojo Siwa naively thinks she created, but artists who have been putting in the work for years.
Chappell Roan gave herself one more year of making music before going to school. She began the year with around a million monthly listeners on Spotify and now has over 21.5 million. Roan may seem like an overnight sensation to some, but her first album, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess,” was released independently in 2023 after Atlantic Records dropped her, and she has music on Spotify dating back to 2017.
Many people discovered Roan’s music after she opened for Olivia Rodrigo on the Sour tour, and have since grown attached to her debut album. The Rise and Fall is an upbeat pop album that makes the listener feel like they’re walking alongside the singer while she comes to terms with the fact that she is a lesbian.
Songs such as “Red Wine Supernova” and “Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl” show that queer joy is real, and that figuring out who you are is a good and exciting thing. The scary back-and-forth of the experience is also shown through “Naked in Manhattan.” The lyric “could go to hell, but we’ll probably be fine” hit me like an arrow despite the fact that it’s cased in a song you could be dancing to.
Ushering in her new era with the recent release of “Good luck, Babe!” Roan tackled the complex topic of compulsory heterosexuality. Comphet is common in queer culture, and it’s when a person may romantically engage with someone of the opposite gender because they feel pressure to. Most people in the community can relate to this in some way, whether it be something they grappled with personally, know a friend, or have dated someone who’s dealt with this.
Roan’s rise to fame is coming at the same time as that of Reneé Rapp, another lesbian singer/songwriter who faces accusations of being an overnight sensation or an industry plant.
Rapp has also been performing for years but got her start in the world of theater. She won the national high school musical theater competition, The Jimmy Awards, in 2018 and soon after made her Broadway debut as Regina George in the “Mean Girls” musical before it was shut down due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
When the 2024 version of the musical movie was released and Rapp reprised her role she became a more mainstream celebrity. Four months before that release, she came out with her debut album “Snow Angel.”
“Snow Angel” takes you through Rapp’s life as a 20-something-year-old girl who identified as bisexual at the time. This debut album explores themes of romantic relationships, friendships and the relationship Rapp has with herself. Songs such as “pretty girls” focus on her sexuality and the way that straight girls sometimes act toward women who are out. The title track, “Snow Angel” talks about a past experience Rapp had during a relationship with a man, spotlighting her bisexuality with the lyrics “but I still look for him in her.”
Rapp re-came out as a lesbian during her January 2024 appearance on Saturday Night Live when she was introduced in a skit as “little lesbian intern Renee.” Since then, Rapp has repeatedly had to clarify and defend her sexuality, saying on social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) “If I say I am a lesbian I am a lesbian.”
Seeing the success of two queer women and watching them gain the love of the public has been so important to me. I hear their success stories and see little bits of my own. I listen to their interviews and I relate to them in the way I relate to a friend.
Music made by queer people is important. It’s important for kids growing up like me with nowhere to go and no one to talk to. Queer music is safe. No child will turn gay because they hear Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” in the supermarket.
Queer media will not hurt anyone, but it could save lives.
