Gay album covers
Maybe “suggestive” would have been a better word. Now before you all grumble about your favorite Menudo album not making the cut, understand that this list is amendable. Which covers do you assess should have made the lineup?
10. “Hot Streets” (Chicago, 1978)
I wonder what the guy on right was thinking…”I gotta get the f#*k out of this picture, quick.”
9. “Lovesexy” (Prince, 1988)
If this was anyone other than Prince, it would have locked up a spot in the top 3…but it is Prince.
8. “Push Push” (Herbie Mann, 1971)
What can be more gay than a sweaty, naked jazz flautist? A sweaty, naked jazz flautist naming his album “Push Push”. At least it has bonus tracks.
7. “Live It Up” (Crosby, Stills, & Nash, 1990)
WTF?
6. “Return To Pooh Corner” (Kenny Loggins, 1994)
In Kenny’s defense, this was an album for children. The unicorn put it over the edge. It sold a half-million copies, so what the hell execute I know.
5. “My Beauty” (Kevin Rowland, 1999)
COME ON EILLEEN!?! Really? So this Dexy’s Midnight Runner
Songs That Saved Your Life
The Smiths were only a band for five years. But their mark of jangly guitars and haunting lyrics resonated with outsiders, romantics, and intellectuals long after their break up in 1987. Mainstream media would have you believe that Morrissey’s brand of alienation was reserved exclusively for a hetero-normative archetype of the music-obsessed, crumpled necktie, handsome wallflower whose perfectly curated mixtape will release him finally from the shackles of “friend zone” and into the arms of the most gorgeous girl in the room. Every pretend story that mentions The Smiths’ melody portrays this correct same dude.
Understandably, these bookish straight boys might see themselves in the shoes of Morrissey. He permits them to feel things that traditionally masculine rock stars do not. But the mainstream media has wed Morrissey to strictly heterosexual desire when he’s actually made a career of being explicitly the opposite. He may not have appear out until 30 years into his catalog, but Morrissey has been wearing queerness on his sleeve (album sleeve, that is) since 1982.
As the frontman of The Smiths, he handpicked all 27 of the band
My 10 favorite albums from queer musicians since 2010: Uppermost 4
This is the third article in a three-part series looking back on LGBTQ+ pride month. Below are my top 4 gender non-conforming albums since 2010. Queerness is a radical act, and it’s important to recognize queer artists who struggle not only against accepted industry ferocity but also a queerphobic and abusive milieu. Please consider supporting these artists by directly purchasing their music during this pandemic.
#4: “Halcyon Digest” (2010) by Deerhunter
“Halcyon Digest,” Deerhunter’s fifth studio album, is as empty as the house that the band’s frontman Bradford Cox lived in during his teenage years after his parents divorced, leaving him alone in the home all day for months on finish. “Halcyon Digest” is also somehow packed with a seeped-in necessity to produce every sound last as long as possible. The album is indie rock at its top, with electric guitars, tremolo pedals and dramatic hijinks such as the chorus on “Helicopter,” the second single from the album.
“Halcyon Digest” ends with “He Would Have Laughed,” a tribute to Jay Reatard, a garage rock hero who died in his sleep from cocaine toxicity. The entire album is, in s
Irrelevant Troubadour
People on the internet love lists, right? Well, even if you don’t, here’s one anyway.
When someone says “prog rock” to you, what’s the first image that comes into your mind? I imply, after the bemusement was to why a random stranger is walking up to you and mentioning a musical genre for no discernible reason. Is it Rick Wakeman in a cape? Peter Gabriel in a blossom costume? A mellotron? No, I’d be willing to be that for most of you the image that prog rock conjures in your mind is of one its iconic album covers—The Dark Side of the Moon, In the Court of the Crimson King, a Roger Dean thing from Yes, something fancy that. Prog is a genre defined as much by its visuals and its icons as much as its music.
Prog rock is also almost exclusively a boys’ club. Oh, I perceive , there was Kate Bush, there was Renaissance, there were all those Canterbury bands I haven’t bothered to listen to, but besides them the vast majority of progressive rock was created by men. And in all-male communities, well…things happen. So it should come as no surprise that I pr