The Queer Hear

I blog with an ear for queer music and queer issues in the music industry. Expect new artist highlights, album reviews and Macklemore hate. Image from the German National Archives.

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Queer Hearo: Beth Ditto

When it comes to outspoken, bad ass, fabulous pop stars, Beth Ditto is one of my favorites. Lead singer of Gossip, Beth Ditto is a shining light for the queer community, fat community, feminist community, and fans of disco-inspired tunes everywhere.

Since Gossip's mainstream breakthrough in 2006, Beth Ditto has been in the public eye, posing nude in magazines and being unabashed about being a feminist, a lesbian, and fat. She married her girlfriend in 2013.

She's also been a fashion icon, with daring outfit choices and incredible hair and makeup. (Who honestly doesn't wish they could pull of a punk asymmetrical cut and no eyebrows the way Ditto does??)

She's spoken about weight and body image openly, and about the harassment and scrutiny that women face every day.

To top it all off, she's an incredible vocalist, capable of delivering catchy dance tunes and power ballads. For her talent and her punk pride, Beth Ditto is a queer hearo.

"Queer Hearo" is a series on The Queer Hear that highlights LGBTQ music artists with talent and something to say. Last week’s Queer Hearo was Laura Jane Grace.

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Rocco Katastrophe-Let Me Go

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Tegan and Sara-Closer

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Laura Jane Grace of Against Me! is getting her own AOL video series - Alternative Press

Watch a trailer for her new series, 'So Much More.'

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Queer Hearo: Laura Jane Grace

One of my favorite new heroes is also one of the coolest women in punk right now: Laura Jane Grace. Grace was well-known in punk music for years as the lead singer of Against Me!, before coming out publicly as a transgender woman, with the support of her band and wife.

Grace's announcement made headlines, making her an icon for transgender individuals everywhere. She's been frank about her experience and how her transition has changed her life (though this is certainly not required of transgender individuals, and extremely problematic behavior when the press pries into unwilling people's lives).

In 2014, Against Me! released "Transgender Dysphoria Blues," a raw, angry, powerful album about being the other in a world of cis people. The short album packs a punch with its raucous tunes and pointed commentary.

For being both an incredible musician, incredibly punk, and incredibly brave, Laura Jane Grace is a queer hearo.

"Queer Hearo" is a series on The Queer Hear that highlights LGBTQ music artists with talent and something to say. Last week’s Queer Hearo was Billie Holiday.

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Frontman For Christian Band Jars Of Clay Speaks Out For Marriage Equality | Truth Wins Out

Not a queer band, but of all the Christian music groups out there, these guys have some of the most talent (and given that I listened to nothing but Christian music, jazz and classical for the first 12 years of my life, I should know). Really encouraging to see more Christians standing up for equality.

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Gossip-Men in Love

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Sleigh Bells' 'Rill Rill': A Queer Reading

I'm not sure if either of the members of Sleigh Bells are queer-I can't find any proof of it-but damn if I don't have big old queer feels for their song "Rill Rill."

Remember that? The dreamy guitar riffs and the repeating message of "sixteen six six six"? Right away, this song takes me back to high school, and buried lesbian feelings.

The speaker opens by setting the stage, asking the person (I'm assuming it's a girl because that's how I relate to it) to "have a heart." She's sixteen and the speaker knows the part. "We're just the weatherman, you make the wind blow" describes the power and magic of being a teenage girl. One is discovering their adulthood, independence and sexuality. 

But the subject is also insecure, thinking about "every straight face" and worrying about what her boyfriend might think about her braces. The speaker reassures her that she's "all about them."

The girl is sixteen and trying to succeed, with straight A's and ready to cut girls in the bathroom, the song says.

In the second verse, it turns more to the relationship between the speaker and the girl. The girl is a tarot pack and the speaker knows it, perhaps implying multiple facets of her personality, evoking the ideas of both chance and multiple destinies based on chance. But the two girls could "fist fight drunk like the Parent Trap," the speaker says, implying a close relationship, almost sisterhood. A few seconds later, the speaker says, "We fall asleep in the middle of the fury," an implication of peace within each other inside the turbulence that is adolescence.

Whenever I hear this song, I can't help remembering my time in high school. Scene-setting details bring the whole feeling back, and the speaker becomes the first girl I ever fell for, a dear friend, with whom I had long phone conversations and slumber parties, falling "asleep in the middle of the fury."

But she was straight and I was straight and we had boyfriends and homosexuality was a sin and I was in denial. And every time "Rill Rill" comes on, it's those same feelings again, the struggle, the freshness, the power and the fear. And it's my queer teen anthem.

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Chill Out, Get Sad: XX

If you haven't heard the xx, then you probably didn't watch the 2010 Olympics with that one speed skating commercial that featured the intro track off their debut album, XX. Based around a sparse electronic aesthetic that is as simple as their band name and cover art, the xx are quietly addicting.

The entire album is built around the concept of space, with Jamie xx building airy, ethereal beats to which Oliver Sim and Romy Madley Croft add the most understated vocals. Songs like "Infinity," "Stars" and "Basic Space" echo that sentiment. Even the subject matter of the songs is simple, and heartbreaking in their simplicity, like "Islands," in which Croft sings, "I am yours now/So now I don't ever have to leave." 

This album came into my life just as a girl broke my heart. Not broke, completely decimated it. And I curled up in the space of the tracks and cried to them until I stopped crying and started thinking about the love I wanted in my life. A life where I belonged to someone, never had to leave, never had to fear. A life of simplicity and ease.

In all, XX is a quietly melancholic album, but an immensely powerful one that doesn't fade with the years. 

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Electrelane-To The East

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Queer Hearo: Billie Holiday

If there's a jazz songstress with a more smokey, soulful voice than Billie Holiday, I don't know her. Leave the silky vocals to the Ellas and Dinahs; Billie's got grit. 

And not only was she a hugely influential voice in her day, but she was also a very out bisexual woman (it's even rumored she wooed movie star Tallulah Bankhead).

Billie's famous for a deep, soulful, jazzy voice. If there's one thing that I admired, it's that her singing isn't purely technical. You know you're listening to Billie when you hear emotion cracking through (like in her rendition of "Strange Fruit"). She was so influential that her life and death inspired books, movies and poems.

For being not just a fabulous bisexual woman, but also a musical icon and legend, Billie Holiday is a queer hearo.

"Queer Hearo" is a series on The Queer Hear that highlights LGBTQ music artists with talent and something to say. Last week’s Queer Hearo was Debbie Harry.

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Austra-Beat and the Pulse

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Quear Hearo: Debbie Harry

ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME. In the biggest news ever (or maybe since Ellen Page came out) one of the greatest rock stars of all time has announced that she is bisexual.

That's right, Debbie Harry, of Blondie (and also my fashion inspiration for a couple years in high school), came out last week in an interview with a German magazine. She said though she's had more relationships with men, women are more "sensual."

Her coming out will make listening to "Heart of Glass" and "Rapture" among others way more enjoyable, I know. And now I have to go through her catalog doing a queer reading of everything! Love seeing out bisexual women! Especially when they're as fierce and cool as Debbie Harry!

For being one of the greatest rock vocalists of all time and being out and proud, Debbie Harry is a queer hearo.

"Queer Hearo" is a series on The Queer Hear that highlights LGBTQ music artists with talent and something to say. Last week’s Queer Hearo was Katie Stelmanis.

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Basically I'm really upset about Coachella

Excuse me while I talk a little less about queer artists and a little bit more about festival culture and why I get upset every time someone mentions Coachella. And living in California, recently graduated from college and working at a newspaper, I hear a fucking lot about Coachella.

Let's start by saying that I LOVE music. And I love a good show. I got to see Baths perform last week, and that man's vocals are surprisingly awesome live (which isn't always easy when singing in falsetto). I love going to festivals, getting grubby and muddy and jamming to music all day and night.

But I hate Coachella, even though I've never been, because to me, this festival seems more about the scene than the music. Tickets are hundreds of dollars and they sell out before the lineup is announced! And the crowd? All the rich white college kids who don't have to work and can travel on the weekends and do drugs. I'm sick of privileged students telling me, "Why don't you just buy a ticket? Why don't you just get your dad to buy it for you? Why didn't you just request off work?" Because I don't have that luxury. Not every person has a rich dad to pay for school and food and rent. Some of us work for that.

And then there's the mad cultural appropriation. People in craft store war bonnets and bindis. And this is cool! Basically, Coachella is the cesspool of people I absolutely cannot stand and do not want to have anything to do with. It's a waste of some cool tunes.

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Gossip-Heavy Cross

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Nostalgia jams.

Tracy Chapman-Fast Car

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Quear Hearo: Katie Stelmanis

Few artists are quite so personally important to me as Katie Stelmanis, the lead singer of Austra. Her phenomenal, ethereal voice enchanted me in 2011 with the release of Austra's first album, "Feel It Break." Since then, she's been instrumental (music puns, lol) in helping me come out.

I first noticed Austra in the video for "Beat and the Pulse," which featured women in varying states of undress with bizarre prosthetic batwings and webbed fingers and tails, etc., dancing with each other. Then I heard Austra's "Lose It," a song about fearing losing a relationship with a man and eventually, finding another, a woman. This song was maybe the most important song in my life in the months before I came out.

Katie herself is a classically trained vocalist and pianist, having performed with the Canadian Children's Opera Choir. Her huge voice carries over Austra's great electronic beats,adding an enchanting aura to the music (which fits well with a common theme of witchcraft in the music). 

She's vocally out as a queer woman, writing songs that push the borders of gender and sexuality (have you read my review of "Olympia"?) and performing in events like Pride Toronto.

For her incredible music and for being an inspiration, Katie Stelmanis is a queer hearo.

"Queer Hearo" is a series on The Queer Hear that highlights LGBTQ music artists with talent and something to say. Last week’s Queer Hearo was Sia.