‘Men who openly like men is a huge threat to the status quo’: Why are gay pop stars excluded from the music industry? | music

AAt the turn of the decade, gay and non-binary pop stars seemed poised to take pop music by storm. Lil Nas

But the initial promise has stalled. Lil Nas In October, Khaled released his first album since his ex-wife revealed it last year, but it sold only 10,000 copies in the first week in the United States. A previous album, 2019’s Free Spirit, sold about 200,000 copies in its first week, briefly unseating Ariana Grande as the most-streamed artist on Spotify.

After chart-topping fame with Years & Years, Alexander’s debut solo album, this year’s Polari, reached No. 17 in the UK, with no singles in the charts apart from Dizzy, the UK’s 2024 Eurovision entry, which reached No. 42. He told me that being in a “major poster machine… felt like I was trying to pull off an impossible magic trick.” When it comes to selling gay music to the public, he says, “guys who openly like men pose a huge threat to the status quo and the patriarchy, which makes it difficult to get mainstream support.” Only Sivan has remained culturally relevant, if not commercially dominant, thanks in part to clever collaborations with two of pop music’s biggest female stars, Charli XCX and Ariana Grande. How did gay artists lose their place in the pop scene?

One surprising reason may be that “there aren’t a lot of male pop stars,” explains Michael Cragg, the music critic and author of Reaching for the Stars, a 2000 pop oral history. At least, he says, not in Madonna’s tradition of bombastic spectacle. “A lot of male artists have drifted into the beige world of Ed Sheeran and Lewis Capaldi,” says Cragg, where today you can “sell millions of albums” with a back catalog of songs. Cragg cites Callum Scott, best known for his stripped-down cover of Robyn’s Dancing on My Own, as an example of a gay singer who has successfully fallen into this “beige world”. However, Scott’s latest tour has taken him to venues such as the 2,300-capacity London Palladium, while Capaldi headlines the 65,000-capacity BST Hyde Park stage next summer.

As for gay men in pop music, says Jason King, dean of the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, “There’s no question that there’s a glass ceiling. It’s not as if we’ve always had hundreds of gay men in pop topping the charts, and now suddenly we’re facing a drought.”

You might argue: what about the 80s? From here, the decade appears to be a golden age for gay pop, thanks mostly to British men: Freddie Mercury (who was a British Parsi), Elton John, George Michael, the Pet Shop Boys, and Dead or Alive’s Pete Burns. But at the time, there were only a few people coming out: pretty much only Bronski Pete and Frankie going to Hollywood. Although the straight audience’s illiteracy about gay culture was proven when Mike Reid of BBC Radio 1 snatched Frankie’s 1984 single “Relax” off the air because he realized what it was actually about. For most people in the mid-1980s, what were now unmistakable as queer codes—makeup, androgynous styling, elaborate hairstyles—referred only to “glamorous pop stars,” which also created an indelible blueprint for how a pop star looked and sounded under any mask.

However, the AIDS epidemic has halted much of this progress. The Pet Shop Boys’ US career is believed to have stalled because their 1988 video Domino Dancing was viewed as too gay. Mercury died in 1991. Elton John came out in 1992 when he was past his pop music peak, and George Michael didn’t come out until 1998. Gay pop stars are rarely allowed to be open about their sexuality in ways that are also commercially successful, as with Bronski Pete’s 1984 single Smalltown Boy or The Scissor Sisters in the early 2000s. Indeed, lasting success has become more elusive.

Which is why Lil Nas Here was a black gay man breaking records, winning awards and shaping popular culture, thanks to brilliantly provocative music videos like Industry Baby, in which naked men danced in prison bathrooms. It seemed as if real change had arrived. But within the industry, “record companies weren’t in the business of signing hundreds of gay men to pop, hip-hop and R&B,” King says. Or as Vincent, a gay singer, says: “Once the industry found one, that was enough.”

In contrast, queer female pop stars have achieved widespread exposure, including Chappelle Rowan, Billie Eilish, and Janelle Monáe. Rowan’s now-familiar presence on the charts makes it easy to forget how incredibly successful she has been with sexually explicit songs about being lesbian. Its mass appeal is due not only to the quality of its music, but also to the gender dynamics of social stigma and homophobia, Cragg says: “If you’re a straight guy, you can bash Pink Pony Club because you’ve seen all the memes of burly men liking the song. But if the most played artist on Spotify is Troye Sivan or Sam Smith, you might worry that your friends will think you’re gay or less of a man.”

For gay women in pop music, King says, “There’s a way in which their sexuality can be easily reclaimed through the straight male gaze, so men don’t feel left out because of their queerness.” The same “logic” does not apply to male eccentricity. Even if a male performer finds a supportive label, manager, publicist or booking agent, being labeled a “gay pop star” can still limit his reach — especially if he sings about gay sex.

“I was working with this famous songwriter and I was so close to making this dream come true with a huge deal,” Vincent says. Two days ago, the clerk said, “I don’t see a place for you. I don’t know how I can make this work.” Now an independent artist, Vincent has about 102,000 monthly listeners on Spotify: a pretty good number, but dwarfed by your average major-label star with a big marketing budget.

These are the opportunity costs and financial consequences that come with being a pop star. This prompts some artists to take on behind-the-scenes roles as writers and producers, such as MNEK, who says: “Major labels aren’t looking for an openly gay pop star. They’re looking for something that will sell and be palatable to families and middle England.” He now “works mostly with women”, producing the kind of pop songs that gay male acts would have a hard time selling.

That’s another hurdle gay male singers face: attracting pop music’s biggest audience, straight women, who may not relate as easily to gay men as they do to lesbian women. That’s partly why Sam Smith (who later came out as non-binary) chose not to use gender-related pronouns on their debut album, “so it could be about anything and everyone,” they said.

Gay artists also cannot rely on their own community to support them. While gay men come out in droves to support their favorite female singer, they often reserve their harshest criticism for male (and non-binary) singers, especially anyone who doesn’t conform to their punitive aesthetic ideals. Troye Sivan, Sam Smith, Khalid, and MNEK have all faced backlash: criticism often boils down to the fact that they are either “too black, too feminine, or too big,” says Vincent. By contrast, seemingly straight acts like Harry Styles and Benson Boone can push the boundaries of masculinity through a coded style, and still remain hugely popular.

All of this puts gay singers seeking pop stardom in a difficult position – a situation that is likely to worsen as equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people faces increasing threats around the world. Recent polls find that only 54% of US citizens support same-sex marriage (down from 70% in 2021). Pride parades have been scaled down or disappeared altogether in the US and UK, and companies like Disney have cut transgender stories and been accused of censoring gay characters.

“The tipping point has happened in homosexuality, homosexuality and transgenderism, and now we’re in decline,” says a music publicist who wishes to remain anonymous. “I sit in meetings where executives are very dismissive and disrespectful towards gay artists. The music industry doesn’t want to invest in gay male pop stars because they can’t see them having mainstream commercial success.”

Clearly, gay male musicians have not completely disappeared: Many gay men (and those who avoid labels) have “created alternative worlds that allow them to express themselves without having to strive for No. 1 hits,” says King. Frank Ocean broke out when he released his culturally transformative album “Channel Orange,” and his refusal to embrace the spotlight has made him one of pop’s most enigmatic figures. His Odd Future bandmate Tyler, the Creator, used 213 homophobic slurs in the 2011 film Goblin, but later criticized his relationships with men in the 2017 film Flower Boy. Texas singer-songwriter Conan Gray has built his career on TikTok and YouTube, appealing to a younger generation that increasingly eschews traditional labels of gender and sexuality. He now plays arena shows across North America. They may not have No. 1 songs, but each one of them is reshaping the boundaries of success in pop music for gay men.

But the great irony here is that gay men have shaped a great deal of mainstream pop history, a history from which many of them are now excluded. Gay cultures like drag and dancehall have rarely been very popular – though they have been sanitized and co-opted by a mainstream more interested in catchphrases than the life experiences they created. This exclusion affects not only musicians, but also queer fans seeking reflection of their lives in music, and straight listeners whose worldviews may be broadened by hearing a counterpoint to the rise of right-wing “family values” bigotry. Old Town Road’s success eliminated perceptions that it was just a hit song on TikTok. Seven years after its release, it represents a new, much more frustrating genre.