Ten Underrated Gay Songs

Happy pride month, Polyvox readers.This is a very special month for many, including myself, because if you couldn’t tell from my column on this site that you definitely read religiously, I am a lesbian. Being gay is the greatest gift I’ve ever been given, and every brand new day I get to wake up and unwrap it all over again. If you’re a queer person or just someone who is interested in hearing a few new queer tracks, I have compiled a list of ten lesser-known songs that are either directly about being gay or alluding to it. 

One thing that’s different about this list is that not all of these songs are necessarily a celebration of queerness (ironic, I know, because I’m doing this in the name of pride). There are enough lists like that, and they’re just as important as this one, but this is a list of songs that portray queerness in everyday  life,which makes for a great listen regardless of how proud you might be feeling any day of the year. 

A lesser-heard track from his album Odd, Ordinary, and Otherwise, Nick and Joe is a bittersweet tale of two gay men breaking out of fear and growing old together, a privilege that so many queer elders have had unfairly taken from them. 

Patrick Haggerty, better known as Lavender Country, is a pioneering artist in the queer community whether you know it or not. Lavender Country’s 1973 self-titled album is widely considered to be the first openly gay recorded country music, and while it’s full of pride anthems like Come Out Singing, this song is a tongue and cheek anthem about how annoying cisgender straight men are. It comes right out of the gate swinging- I’m fighting for when there won’t be no straight men. This song is a big fuck-you to the heterosexual expectations and bad male behavior of the 1970s and beyond.

Local music alert… well, at least local for me, here in Pittsburgh. If you haven’t heard about Merce Lemon yet, it’s time to study up before you get left behind. Carol comes from the 2018 EP Girls Who Jump In, which is packed with songs that could be on this list. I like this one because of the sort of bridge towards the end- I won’t see another girl- you’re my forever more- I won’t see another girl. This song is not coy or allusive- it’s about a physical relationship with a woman. 

Ugh. This song is so fucking sad. A story about gay male discovery, two young men have a sexual encounter that is decidedly a little one-sided. Jason, the man the narrator is being intimate with, won’t take his clothes off- not even his boots. He’s scared and exploratory, just for it all to be cold and closed off in the morning. If you’ve also been experimented on like a lab rat on other people’s sexual journey, this song hits close to home. 

When I have a crush, this one’s a go-to. A voyeuristic song about yearning through an open window, asking rhetorical questions that someone is too busy reading Sappho to hear.  

Michelle Zauner of current Japanese Breakfast fame was in this awesome band called Little Big League. Tell me all the parts I conquered first, because I know your kind, you’re a bad, bad girl. My very own you. Mhm. 

The Magnetic Fields are one of my favorite bands. In fact, they might actually be my favorite band. Stephin Merritt writes songs that have queer undertones, but themes of queerness in his music are often non-linear, with songs sometimes appearing to be heterosexual or containing a bait and switch of sexuality. This song is pretty cut and dry, talking about the innocence of childhood and the sometimes brutal reality of queer adulthood, talking about getting beat up “just for holding hands”.

A lot of queer representation in music celebrates the magic of queer intimacy and relationships, which is something our culture is in dire need of. However, in day-to-day life, a lot of queer intimacy is just like heterosexual intimacy. That is, it’s careless or annoying or meaningless, it leaves you with hurt feelings and causes you to act out of boredom. That’s really just the human condition, which transcends sexuality. A loser girl or non-binary person can make you feel bad about yourself just like a loser boy. This song makes me think of those nasty feelings, brought to life by all-queer band Pillow Queens.

Adrianne Lenker is a master of her craft, plain and simple. Flower of Blood is a subtle, revelatory track about queer sexual intimacy that pulls the net in and catches every little feeling that comes along with it. It’s the perfect song for this list because it does what every college writing professor wants you to do- show, not tell. This song makes me sweat.