The global hit fetishising lesbians was released 10 years ago this week in a very different pop landscape. Now with mainstream stars from St Vincent and Princess Nokia to Halsey and Marika Hackman singing about their myriad sexual identities, queer female pop has finally come out
The LGBT community has always had a talent for embracing things that are so awful they could almost be good. But even we couldn’t save Katy Perry’s 2008 smash hit I Kissed a Girl, which was released 10 years ago this week. The song was undeniably catchy and camp, but the lyrics were plain offensive. The problem was all those justifications for why a woman might – God forbid! – kiss a girl: drunkenness, a male audience, that beguiling cherry lip balm. For queer audiences, Perry might as well have sung a more succinct phrase: “No Homo!”
Thankfully, there are many better examples of queer female representation in pop today. If in 2008 the joke still stood that all lesbians listened to was Tegan and Sara, today the joke is probably “why are there so many gay female pop stars?” We have US stars such as Halsey and Miley Cyrus improving bisexual and pansexual representation, queer artists Fever Ray, St Vincent and Shura making critically acclaimed music about female desire and pop stars including Janelle Monáe and Princess Nokia signalling their queerness while avoiding definition. Then, of course, there is acclaimed, pansexual French synth-pop act Christine and the Queens, who has legions of young, gay fans. But just what has changed?
Related: Fever Ray: on pleasure, patriarchy and political revolution
Continue reading...by Amelia Abraham via Electronic music | The Guardian
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