LGBTQ mic history is so much more than a timele of who me out when and which songs beme gay anthems -- ’s also about the artists who weren’t aaid to be themselv eras when dog so often had real risks attached.
Contents:
- QUEEN ELIZABETH’S FAVORE SONG IS A FABULO GAY ANTHEM
- THE SURPRISG STORY OF HOW ABBA BEME BELOVED GAY INS
QUEEN ELIZABETH’S FAVORE SONG IS A FABULO GAY ANTHEM
Image: Time Out/D-Free/ShutterstockMove your hips wh the sential gay songs, om unfettable LGBTQ+ anthems to poignant ballads explorg queer lifeThirty days of summer is a pretty paltry amount of time to celebrate the LGBTQ+ muny. And while we’d never balk at an exce to celebrate everythg that Pri stands for, we also believe that any time is the perfect time to crank up the gay songs and let the rabow flag fly.
RECOMMENDED:? The bt party songs ever ma? The bt karaoke songs? The bt pop songs of all time? The bt classic rock songs? The bt happy songsBt gay songs, rankedImage: Polydor1. ‘I Will Survive’ by Gloria GaynorIt starts off slowly, shroud fear; then the beat kicks , the song builds nfince, and by the end, now backed by a strg sectn, ’s a full-bore dis anthem of self-assurance. On s betiful face, Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ is about a woman gettg over the guy who done her wrong; but 1978, as gay liberatn was gatherg steam heated nightclubs around the world, also played like a claratn of hard-won pri (‘I ed to cry / But now I hold my head up high’) and pennce om the hetero norm (‘I’m not that chaed-up ltle person still love wh you’).
Rerd at the height of Ameri's AIDS crisis and spired by New York’s unrground gay ball scene (famoly documented the 1991 film Paris Is Burng), Madonna’s ep-hoe–flected 1990 smash mands you to leave the heavy stuff asi—if only for a few mut—and fd salvatn on the dance floor. Nearly a quarter of a century later, this classic track om one of the most beloved gay ins of all time sounds no ls imperative. Chic’s Nile Rodgers was spired to wre this funky 1980 gem for Diana Ross after seeg multiple drag queens drsed as the inic sger at a gay dis New York.
THE SURPRISG STORY OF HOW ABBA BEME BELOVED GAY INS
Today, Ross still opens her shows wh ‘I'm Comg Out’, and the song remas a qutsential anthem of liberatn—gay or otherwise. ‘Over the Rabow’ by Judy GarlandFor generatns who grew up as ‘iends of Dorothy’, yearng to pe to a realm of Technilor urban fantasy, the tac gay natnal anthem was Garland’s wistful ballad om 1939’s The Wizard of Oz (wh a geo melody by Harold Arlen and touchg lyrics by social activist E.Y. But even now that so many closet doors have opened, ‘Over the Rabow’—and don’t you dare ll ‘Somewhere Over the Rabow’ lt someone threaten to revoke your gay rd—still spir pri and reverence.
‘A Ltle Rpect’ by Erasure‘What relign or reason uld drive a man to forsake his lover?’ sgs Andy Bell on this stirrg synth-pop classic — a h for Brish duo Erasure 1988, and a perfect, piquant rponse to the Brish ernment’s outrageoly homophobic Sectn 28 legislatn.