Lavender Sound: Why Are the Pop Girlies’ Co-Writers and Co-Producers So Rarely LGBTQ+? (Excerpt)
Hi all!
Beauty in The Breakdown, my series breaking down music with LGBTQ+ producers, is finally properly returning, and the next few issues will be syndicated on Max Freedman's great Lavender Sound website. I also wrote a review for Mal Blum's excellent new record The Villain, with more to come.
I'm very excited to be working with them as I embark on a new era for this newsletter, and encourage everyone to follow their work/subscribe to their newsletter.
Below, I'm posting an excerpt from a great piece Max Freedman just wrote about the lack of LGBTQ producers in contemporary music. I strongly recommend subscribing to the paid tier so you can read their full piece. Click here to read that!
Why Are the Pop Girlies’ Co-Writers and Co-Producers So Rarely LGBTQ+?
From, say, the late ‘90s onward, recurring names in the Hit Factory (to borrow language from the writer and journalist John Seabrook) have included but certainly haven’t been limited to everyone in the following paragraph:
Max Martin, The Neptunes, Tricky Stewart, Cirkut, A.G. Cook, SG Lewis, Danny L. Harle, Calvin Harris, Take a Daytrip, Andrew Watt, Andrew Wyatt (yes, these are two different people), Bloodshy & Avant, The-Dream, Jack Antonoff, Dan Nigro, Tobias Jesso Jr., Kevin Parker, Thomas Bangalter, Gesaffelstein, and the cursed, actually-should-be-cancelled Dr. Luke.
These men or teams of men are either confirmed to be straight people, or they conduct themselves in ways that don’t evoke queerness to queer people. And although there’s no one way, or no correct way, to be LGBTQ+, we do have this innate ability, borne somewhat out of a need to constantly be vigilant, to tell whether someone is One Of Us. Of course, many women have co-written and co-produced megahits in this era: Bonnie McKee, Lauren Christy as one third of The Matrix, Cathy Dennis, Amy Allen, Sia (though due to the movie Music alone I wish she weren’t on this list), and Ariana Grande’s inner circle of Tayla Parx, Njomza Vitia, Kimberly Krysiuk, and the icon herself, Victoria Monét.
The list goes on and also, to my infinite delight, includes the one time Caroline Polachek got to co-write and co-produce a Beyoncé song (“No Angel”). And, of course, Carole King was everyone’s go-to songwriter before Madonna so much as said the word “holiday.” It’s less clear to me whether these women are straight or queer. In any case, though, I bet that if you asked women songwriters such as those I’ve just named, they’d say that the Hit Factory is still a man’s world; sorry, Katy Perry, but it’s not a woman’s world and we’re not living in it.
I bet if you asked performers who are mainstream queer men and/or non-binary but more masc-adjacent people within the LGBTQ+ community, such as Lil Nas X and Sam Smith, what luck they had finding co-producers and co-writers who aren’t straight men, they’d be stumped for a bit.
So, then, why is this?
The music industry is as structurally sexist and homophobic as any other, and perhaps less obviously, queer men are especially drawn to women given our shared history of repression under patriarchy — but in a way that just doesn’t occur for many of us when we look at other queer men despite our shared experience and identity.
And that, right there, is what compelled me to write this piece. Why do we not react as strongly when someone from within our own demographic does the same things as the women pop stars we elevate to idol status?
Are internalized homophobia, jealousy, and resentment a factor as to why queer men don’t get the same opportunities, even if ones that happen behind the scenes instead of on the main stage? Are we only interested in seeing queer men around pop music if they’re toned, scantily clad dancers near Beyoncé, FKA twigs, or even RuPaul on a stage?
For the answer to that question and more, read the rest here. Stay tuned for interviews with "Glimpse of Us" songwriter Idarose, Partygirl, and more. So excited to be doing this again :)
