Gay pop stars and their music videos
I was thinking about writing this as soon as Adam Lambert’s video for ‘Whataya Want From Me’ first appeared but as the main person I will be talking about, in relation Adam, has not travelled to America I decided against it. However, as ‘Leave Right Now’ is now the exit song for Season 9 of American Idol I thought why the hell not. Oh, and I apologise in advance because there's a lot of embeded media here so this is not good for slow dial up!
There are not many ‘out’ mainstream pop/rock/dance singers but those that are apparently come across a problem that other singers do not; how to make a music video about a love story and still make it acceptable to the masses? Now that sounds ridiculous but think about it, you want the song to sell as many copies as possible and a good way of doing that is making sure the video gets as much airplay as possible. However music television is, in all likelihood, going to be wary of alienating its audience by showing a video heavily featuring a same sex romance. One hell of a lot of music videos show relationships, either building them or watching them fall apart, and we see straight couples arguing, kissing, falling in love, fighting, even killing each other all the time but when was the last time you saw a gay ones?
Turn on the television any day of the week and you’ll come across a storyline in a soap, at least in the UK, that features a gay couple or someone struggling with coming out. In America you have Brothers and Sister, As The World Turns, Six Feet Under, True Blood, and many other shows which also feature homosexual relationships. What you do not see are homosexual music videos. So how do these openly gay musicians get around this?
I’m not going to be talking about how straight musicians have placed gay relationships in some of their videos because while that is great, it still falls under category of ‘safe’ for the majority of the viewers as they know that it’s false. Lady Gaga (who may or may not be bisexual depending on how much you believe her) may be pushing the boat a little with her ‘Teeth’ video but anyone who thinks that’s going to get any airing before 11 o’clock at night is probably mistaken so therefore also doesn’t really count. We’re talking about the music videos that are supposed to play throughout the day and be watched by anyone and everyone. You should note that I’m not going to get into the videos by indie groups, where ‘out’ singers are far more prominent because for the most part they are neither as popular nor do their songs revolve so openly about love. So Vampire Weekend haven’t really had a reason to put a romance in their videos. Tegan and Sara may be great but I’ve never seen a song of theirs play on music television. No, what I’ll be writing about here are the openly gay artists striving for, or already there, mainstream radio and MTV (or one of its offspring that actually plays music) friendly pop/rock.
The reason behind this lack of visual sexual relationships would be an entire essay on its own but I think it’s probably safe to say that LGBT relationships squick and scare far more people than they should. Women kissing can be seen as for the entertainment of the heterosexual male - something Tatu did nothing to help (no matter how enjoyable their songs are). For some reason no one, and the feminist in me wants to scream “the men, all the men who run these companies”, seems to think that women get turned on by men kissing. Not only is this a fallacy but it’s also wrong to assume that people get turned on by music videos. Most people are not using music videos as porn! But even though Enrique Iglasias is allowed to play out sex scenes on daytime television, rappers are allowed to be surrounded by booty shaking woman, and Taylor Swift is allowed to win the heart of any boy she comes across, gay singers are not allowed to show their love stories.
There are several ways in which different musicians have, either by choice or by pressure, gotten around showing their sexuality while still being about to sing love songs. Below is a list of the ones I can think of.
Not actually showing the partner:
Adam Lambert, or at least his ‘people’, has taken a route that Will Young used before him. He has created a really good video, and an artistic one, for a love song that has managed to give the hero - the singer - a relationship of their own yet never actually showed the other participant. Yes, with Adam’s you could say that’s because the song is now about much more than a simple relationship and that the reason we don’t see the other person is because we’re the other person. And that’s all well and good and were I writing an essay for class that’s exactly the route I would take. However, it’s also true that they’ve managed to create a relationship for a very openly gay singer without actually showing ‘the gay’. There’s one shot of a, pretty obviously, male hand but that’s it. There’s no loving gaze from a face of the same sex. There’s no touching someone of the same sex. It is a relationship video with only one participant.
For his 'Leave Right Now' video Will Young employed exactly the same tactic, again to good use.
I’m not trying to diminish from the artistic merit of either of them, especially Will’s one take, very well choreographed/directed, emotional punch of a video (even with the rather prominent nipples). I am just pointing out how they got around actually showing a same sex relationship for a love song.
In Will’s video for ‘You and I’ we see him surrounded by a group of friends and on his own morning the end of a relationship but again we never see the partner. He could be one of the group but we are never told which one.
Make it artistic:
Will Young is a big believer in the artistic music videos. I think this has very little to do with trying to masquerade his sexuality and more to do with the kind of person he is. He’s got a degree in politics and was at drama school when he first auditioned for Pop Idol. He’s performed in a Noel Coward play in the London theatre to good reviews, and he is commonly accepted to be a little bit eccentric. So the artistic videos fit that perfectly. There’s a character he’s playing in nearly every video, whether it’s a wannabe superhero, someone in war time, or (in the video for a song I can’t remember) a little too in love with his horse.
The black and white, or sometimes sepia, tones let us know instantly that this is going to be an arty video. They’re almost short film like, they tell a story often far more than his music does. The video I really wanted to use as an example I can’t find a version to embed so please go here to youtube to see the brilliant and perfectly fitting video for ‘All Time Love’ which is almost as close as it comes to him hinting at a male lover....and they’re in court possibly because of it.
Here is the video for ‘Let You Go’ in which he wears a cape and dances with a male mannequin.
Elton John decided to go this route when making the video for his song ‘I Want Love’ by, again with a one take video, casting Robert Downey Jr. to mime to his voice.
Make it a party with so many people involved the singer doesn’t hook up because they can carry on singing while everyone around them does:
Umm...that subheading pretty much said everything about this type of video so I’ll just show you Adam’s video for ‘For Your Entertainment’ - yes he’s sexual but he’s still not touching anyone, they touch him but not the other way round. So therefore even with the S&M undertones of the video Adam is still 'safe'.
Completely ignore the love story at the base of the lyrics:
The video for Will’s ‘Your Game’ is played out as a stage show, with him as the lead singer and the dancers and scenery backing him up. It’s a great video and the first to hint at the more artistic direction Will would choose to take for most of his videos but it again manages to completely ignore the meaning of the song.
Westlife are one of the only boybands still going with an openly gay member and they have pretty much got the market cornered on videos that have nothing to do with the song at all. It’s all staring into the distance or occasionally the camera. My main thought when watching this video - apart from “huh, so I guess Daughtry really isn’t rock” - is “lots of snow!”
Make it quirky:
Another of Will’s favourite methods, and the one that fits his art student eccentric style probably more than the others is the quirky route. There’s only so much that can said about videos that are deliberately amusing and slightly odd so instead I’ll just give you pregnant Will. Of course, again you could probably go into a whole essay on the gender divide and the role of gender specifics and breaking them in the video but hell, I just found myself giggling at his taste in sandwiches.
On the lesbian front Gossip - a group that is admittedly probably more in the indie subcategory than any other I have or will mention - has this video for their song ‘Love Long Distance’ that is just odd.
One more for the ‘of course it’s weird’ video club is this offering from The Pet Shop Boys (who I honestly don’t know if they were out at the time or not) for their cover of ‘Always On My Mind’.
Two times an artist has shunned the popular thought and included, or at least heavily alluded to, their sexuality:
Okay, so Top Gun doesn’t actually include a gay love story but it is one of the most homoerotic films of all time. Iceman and Maveric do want to screw each other. And so by replicating a few of the scenes from the film Young was pretty firmly aligning himself with the idea of the male lover. He was also just having a laugh.
Whatever else you want to say about Boyzone you have to give them props for deciding to show a tender and emotional gay relationship in the video. I honestly believe that were it a solo video for Stephen Gately we wouldn't be seeing this but I think that the record company probably saw it as 4 straight relationships in one video being enough to cancel out 1 gay one. A 'something for everyone' point of view if you will. Boyzone had a history, as did N Sync and Backstreet Boys, of picking as wide a range of women as possible (to appeal to as many different girls as possible?) so it could be seen as an exstension of that. So the late, lovely, and deeply missed Stephen Gately was the first member of a boyband to be allowed a male lover in a music video. Just enjoy the rarity of this sight.
For those of you in the States here is a link provided by the wonderful amproof for a non-embedable version of the video which I honestly recommend you check out to see the difference between it and the other videos.
I promise, this will be back to our regular Idol programming shortly.
There are not many ‘out’ mainstream pop/rock/dance singers but those that are apparently come across a problem that other singers do not; how to make a music video about a love story and still make it acceptable to the masses? Now that sounds ridiculous but think about it, you want the song to sell as many copies as possible and a good way of doing that is making sure the video gets as much airplay as possible. However music television is, in all likelihood, going to be wary of alienating its audience by showing a video heavily featuring a same sex romance. One hell of a lot of music videos show relationships, either building them or watching them fall apart, and we see straight couples arguing, kissing, falling in love, fighting, even killing each other all the time but when was the last time you saw a gay ones?
Turn on the television any day of the week and you’ll come across a storyline in a soap, at least in the UK, that features a gay couple or someone struggling with coming out. In America you have Brothers and Sister, As The World Turns, Six Feet Under, True Blood, and many other shows which also feature homosexual relationships. What you do not see are homosexual music videos. So how do these openly gay musicians get around this?
I’m not going to be talking about how straight musicians have placed gay relationships in some of their videos because while that is great, it still falls under category of ‘safe’ for the majority of the viewers as they know that it’s false. Lady Gaga (who may or may not be bisexual depending on how much you believe her) may be pushing the boat a little with her ‘Teeth’ video but anyone who thinks that’s going to get any airing before 11 o’clock at night is probably mistaken so therefore also doesn’t really count. We’re talking about the music videos that are supposed to play throughout the day and be watched by anyone and everyone. You should note that I’m not going to get into the videos by indie groups, where ‘out’ singers are far more prominent because for the most part they are neither as popular nor do their songs revolve so openly about love. So Vampire Weekend haven’t really had a reason to put a romance in their videos. Tegan and Sara may be great but I’ve never seen a song of theirs play on music television. No, what I’ll be writing about here are the openly gay artists striving for, or already there, mainstream radio and MTV (or one of its offspring that actually plays music) friendly pop/rock.
The reason behind this lack of visual sexual relationships would be an entire essay on its own but I think it’s probably safe to say that LGBT relationships squick and scare far more people than they should. Women kissing can be seen as for the entertainment of the heterosexual male - something Tatu did nothing to help (no matter how enjoyable their songs are). For some reason no one, and the feminist in me wants to scream “the men, all the men who run these companies”, seems to think that women get turned on by men kissing. Not only is this a fallacy but it’s also wrong to assume that people get turned on by music videos. Most people are not using music videos as porn! But even though Enrique Iglasias is allowed to play out sex scenes on daytime television, rappers are allowed to be surrounded by booty shaking woman, and Taylor Swift is allowed to win the heart of any boy she comes across, gay singers are not allowed to show their love stories.
There are several ways in which different musicians have, either by choice or by pressure, gotten around showing their sexuality while still being about to sing love songs. Below is a list of the ones I can think of.
Not actually showing the partner:
Adam Lambert, or at least his ‘people’, has taken a route that Will Young used before him. He has created a really good video, and an artistic one, for a love song that has managed to give the hero - the singer - a relationship of their own yet never actually showed the other participant. Yes, with Adam’s you could say that’s because the song is now about much more than a simple relationship and that the reason we don’t see the other person is because we’re the other person. And that’s all well and good and were I writing an essay for class that’s exactly the route I would take. However, it’s also true that they’ve managed to create a relationship for a very openly gay singer without actually showing ‘the gay’. There’s one shot of a, pretty obviously, male hand but that’s it. There’s no loving gaze from a face of the same sex. There’s no touching someone of the same sex. It is a relationship video with only one participant.
Click to viewFor his 'Leave Right Now' video Will Young employed exactly the same tactic, again to good use.
I’m not trying to diminish from the artistic merit of either of them, especially Will’s one take, very well choreographed/directed, emotional punch of a video (even with the rather prominent nipples). I am just pointing out how they got around actually showing a same sex relationship for a love song.
In Will’s video for ‘You and I’ we see him surrounded by a group of friends and on his own morning the end of a relationship but again we never see the partner. He could be one of the group but we are never told which one.
Make it artistic:
Will Young is a big believer in the artistic music videos. I think this has very little to do with trying to masquerade his sexuality and more to do with the kind of person he is. He’s got a degree in politics and was at drama school when he first auditioned for Pop Idol. He’s performed in a Noel Coward play in the London theatre to good reviews, and he is commonly accepted to be a little bit eccentric. So the artistic videos fit that perfectly. There’s a character he’s playing in nearly every video, whether it’s a wannabe superhero, someone in war time, or (in the video for a song I can’t remember) a little too in love with his horse.
The black and white, or sometimes sepia, tones let us know instantly that this is going to be an arty video. They’re almost short film like, they tell a story often far more than his music does. The video I really wanted to use as an example I can’t find a version to embed so please go here to youtube to see the brilliant and perfectly fitting video for ‘All Time Love’ which is almost as close as it comes to him hinting at a male lover....and they’re in court possibly because of it.
Here is the video for ‘Let You Go’ in which he wears a cape and dances with a male mannequin.
Elton John decided to go this route when making the video for his song ‘I Want Love’ by, again with a one take video, casting Robert Downey Jr. to mime to his voice.
Make it a party with so many people involved the singer doesn’t hook up because they can carry on singing while everyone around them does:
Umm...that subheading pretty much said everything about this type of video so I’ll just show you Adam’s video for ‘For Your Entertainment’ - yes he’s sexual but he’s still not touching anyone, they touch him but not the other way round. So therefore even with the S&M undertones of the video Adam is still 'safe'.
Completely ignore the love story at the base of the lyrics:
The video for Will’s ‘Your Game’ is played out as a stage show, with him as the lead singer and the dancers and scenery backing him up. It’s a great video and the first to hint at the more artistic direction Will would choose to take for most of his videos but it again manages to completely ignore the meaning of the song.
Westlife are one of the only boybands still going with an openly gay member and they have pretty much got the market cornered on videos that have nothing to do with the song at all. It’s all staring into the distance or occasionally the camera. My main thought when watching this video - apart from “huh, so I guess Daughtry really isn’t rock” - is “lots of snow!”
Make it quirky:
Another of Will’s favourite methods, and the one that fits his art student eccentric style probably more than the others is the quirky route. There’s only so much that can said about videos that are deliberately amusing and slightly odd so instead I’ll just give you pregnant Will. Of course, again you could probably go into a whole essay on the gender divide and the role of gender specifics and breaking them in the video but hell, I just found myself giggling at his taste in sandwiches.
On the lesbian front Gossip - a group that is admittedly probably more in the indie subcategory than any other I have or will mention - has this video for their song ‘Love Long Distance’ that is just odd.
One more for the ‘of course it’s weird’ video club is this offering from The Pet Shop Boys (who I honestly don’t know if they were out at the time or not) for their cover of ‘Always On My Mind’.
Two times an artist has shunned the popular thought and included, or at least heavily alluded to, their sexuality:
Okay, so Top Gun doesn’t actually include a gay love story but it is one of the most homoerotic films of all time. Iceman and Maveric do want to screw each other. And so by replicating a few of the scenes from the film Young was pretty firmly aligning himself with the idea of the male lover. He was also just having a laugh.
Whatever else you want to say about Boyzone you have to give them props for deciding to show a tender and emotional gay relationship in the video. I honestly believe that were it a solo video for Stephen Gately we wouldn't be seeing this but I think that the record company probably saw it as 4 straight relationships in one video being enough to cancel out 1 gay one. A 'something for everyone' point of view if you will. Boyzone had a history, as did N Sync and Backstreet Boys, of picking as wide a range of women as possible (to appeal to as many different girls as possible?) so it could be seen as an exstension of that. So the late, lovely, and deeply missed Stephen Gately was the first member of a boyband to be allowed a male lover in a music video. Just enjoy the rarity of this sight.
For those of you in the States here is a link provided by the wonderful amproof for a non-embedable version of the video which I honestly recommend you check out to see the difference between it and the other videos.
I promise, this will be back to our regular Idol programming shortly.