The 80s put the gay man ont and centre of pop. Then me the Aids crisis – and three s of monisatn, disrd and displacement. Now, wh Troye Sivan leadg a new wave of gay stars, has change tly arrived?
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POP MIC COULD USE ANOTHER DE AS 'GAY' AS THE '80S
Rex and The Sweet as well as solo superstar David Bowie, spe his claratn of gayns Melody Maker Duran, Depeche Mo, Spand Ballet and their new-wave peers were an entirely different story. They were teen idols (unlike the glam rockers) and, Ant's se, a bona fi sex symbol, settg fashn trends while challengg the strict fn of masculy and what "gay" and "straight" were supposed to look like. It was, a sense, the first metrosexual didn't take one look at the members of Spand Ballet the vio for "To Cut a Long Story Short, " their 1980 but sgle, and jt assume that they were gay?
Didn't those so-lled "New Romantics" tick all the gay stereotyp? Among the possibly rrect assumptns: 1) There was Band Aid/Live Aid-style mararie among the pop acts; 2) one big h set them up for life; and 3) a lot of them were boys who liked 's not to say that '80s new wave didn't have s gay ntgent.
I hadn't cid if I was 100 percent gay, and wasn't an issue. "I wasn't embarrassed about beg gay, but my role as Limahl, my pop star role, had to be more enigmatic, " he says.