Celebrating LGBTQ Artists During Pride Month

by Julian Spivey
June is LGBTQ Pride Month. The month was chosen to commemorate the Stonewall riots in New York City at the end of June 1969 and the impact that event had on the LGBTQ community. The month has since become a time to celebrate the LGBTQ community and all its glories – including the fantastic artistic contribution to the world of music.

The world of music has been bettered by so many LGBTQ artists, 12 of which are celebrated here for their contributions – basically 12 of my favorites, if you will. Some of these artists have been around for many decades, some are newer. Some are household names and others should be. Many different genres are featured from rock to pop to country and I believe this proves just how important LGBTQ artists have been for music as a whole. 

---

Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day)

​Billie Joe Armstrong has been the leader of the most popular punk rock/pop punk band of the last 25 years in Green Day. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees have won numerous awards over their career, including five Grammys, and has played a major role in getting punk sounds into the mainstream. Armstrong is one of the more popular members of the LGBTQ community in the music community, but I’m not sure how many people realize he identifies as bisexual. Armstrong first identified himself as bisexual in 1995 in an interview with The Advocate saying, “I think I’ve always been bisexual. I mean, it’s something that I’ve always been interested in. I think people are born bisexual, and it’s just that our parents and society kind of veer us off into this feeling of, ‘Oh, I can’t.’ They say it’s taboo. It’s ingrained in our heads that it’s bad, when it’s not bad at all. It’s a very beautiful thing.” Armstrong told Rolling Stone in 2014 that Green Day’s album Dookie, released in 1994, touched on his bisexuality a lot. 

Brandi Carlile 

​It’s great to see that Brandi Carlile is becoming more and more of a household name after the acclaim of her most recent album By the Way, I Forgive You, released last year. The album was nominated for six Grammy Awards, including the biggest of the year – Album of the Year – and won three trophies. Carlile identified herself as a lesbian in a 2002 interview with the Los Angeles Times saying, “I don’t have to have a lot of formality around it … there were people before me who paved the way.” She’s married her wife Catherine Shepherd in 2012 and they have two daughters together. Her recently Grammy-nominated song “The Joke” is about people feeling misrepresented she told NPR, “So many people feeling unloved. Boys feeling marginalized and forced into these kind of awkward shapes of masculinity that they do or don’t belong in … so many men and boys are trans or disabled or shy … the song is just for people that feel under-represented, unloved or illegal.” 

Tracy Chapman

​Tracy Chapman burst upon the popular music scene in 1988 with her self-titled debut album that featured the top-10 hit “Fast Car,” that would be nominated for Song of the Year and Record of the Year at the Grammy Awards. Chapman has won four Grammys in her career, including Best New Artist when she broke out. Chapman has never publicly disclosed her sexual orientation but was in relationship in the ‘90s with The Color Purple author Alice Walker. She often helps out the LGBTQ community by performing at charity events for AIDS awareness. 

Brandy Clark 

​Brandy Clark has been one of Nashville’s best songwriters for years penning tracks for big time artists like Miranda Lambert, Reba McEntire and Kenny Rogers, but she’s also one of country music’s most underrated singer-songwriters, in general. Clark should be a huge star, but the type of country music she writes and records (*read real country music*) isn’t what hits the radio airwaves these days. She is critically loved having been nominated in 2015 for Best New Artist at the Grammy Awards despite no radio airplay. Her two albums 12 Stories and Big Day in a Small Town are among the best country has to offer of the past decade and fans are eagerly awaited a third release. Clark is openly gay, but says her sexuality has no bearing on her work. She told The Washington Post in 2014, “I don’t write songs for straight people or gay people or black people or white people. I write songs for people. I want them to put themselves in these songs. I would feel that way if I was straight.” 

Melissa Etheridge 

​Like Tracy Chapman, roots rocker Melissa Etheridge broke out big time in 1988 with her self-titled debut album that earned her a Grammy Award nomination for her track “Bring Me Some Water.” Her 1993 album Yes I Am, which has generally been assumed to be confirmation of coming out, was a huge success featuring the jams “Come to My Window” and “I’m the Only One,” both of which were nominated for Best Rock Song at the Grammys. Among the most important lyrics of “Come to My Window” are: “I don’t care what they think/I don’t care what they say/What do they know about this love, anyway?” 

Mary Gauthier 

​Mary Gauthier has been one of folk music’s most acclaimed singer-songwriters for many years and has even had some songs cut by famous country music stars like Tim McGraw and Blake Shelton. Gauthier is a multiple time Grammy Award nominee, including a nomination this year in the Best Folk Album category for her latest release Rifles and Rosary Beads, which she co-wrote with actual military members to tell their stories. Gauthier is a multiple time Gay and Lesbian American Music Award nominee. 

Alynda Segarra (Hurray for the Riff Raff)

​Hurray for the Riff Raff has been one of the most acclaimed groups in the Americana genre over the last decade and are led by Bronx-bred, of Puerto Rican descent frontwoman Alynda Segarra, who identifies as queer. Her group’s most recent album The Navigator, from 2017, was Segarra harkening back to her roots as a Puerto Rican growing up in the Bronx and saw both her and the group bring activism more into their music. In an interview earlier this year with DNO when asked about her activism she said: “I enjoy bringing people together. I have organized two events called Nosotros. A gathering of latinx artists, musicians and poets, an event where we can embrace who we are as latinx queers, activists and weirdos. In a country that has become more violent towards latinx people and culture, I believe celebrating together is a radical act of joy.” 

Elton John 

​There is perhaps no bigger and more acclaimed LGBTQ musician than Elton John, who has been recording fantastic music for half a century now and over the last 25-plus years has done a lot to help fight AIDS with his Elton John AIDS Foundation, which has raised over $200 million for prevention, education and direct care to people living with HIV. Elton John first addressed his sexuality in 1976 when he came out as bisexual in a Rolling Stone interview. In 1992 he would tell the same magazine “I’m quite comfortable being gay.” He married his husband David Furnish in 2014 after being together for more than 20 years. The couple have two sons together. 

Freddie Mercury (Queen)

​Freddie Mercury is regularly regarded as one of the greatest vocalists in the history of rock music as the frontman of the hugely popular British band Queen and has been heralded as one of the most important LGBTQ performers of all-time. Mercury’s flamboyant performance style would have some journalists alluding to his sexuality and even asking him about it, but it wasn’t something Mercury ever put forth verbally in public, though many believed him to be out when in public life. Mercury was the first big music star to die as a result of AIDS in 1991 at the age of 45. In 1993 after Mercury’s death Gay Times writer John Marshall wrote: “Mercury was a “scene-queen,” not afraid to analyse or justify his ‘lifestyle.’ It was as if Freddie Mercury was saying to the world, ‘I am what I am. So what?’” 

George Michael 

​George Michael was one of pop music’s biggest representatives of the LGBTQ community. He rose to fame in the early ‘80s as a member of the pop duo Wham! before embarking later in the decade as a very successful solo artists that would see him sell over 115 million records worldwide, chart eight Billboard No. 1 hits and win two Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year for Faith in 1989. Michael came out as gay in 1998 and was an active LGBTQ rights activist and AIDS charity fundraiser. One of his career highlights was a duet with fellow LGBTQ star Elton John in 1991 on Elton’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me.” Michael died at age 53 in 2016. 

Sarah Shook

​Sarah Shook with her backing band the Disarmers has been one of the best up-and-coming groups in the Americana and alt-country genres over the last few years with a couple of stellar releases in Sidelong (2015) and Years (2018) to begin her career. She is a complete badass who’s taken a punk attitude and combined it with honky-tonk music to form a special kind of sound. Shook identifies as bisexual and received the 2016 Indy Arts Award with collaborator Erika Libero for their work in promoting inclusion for women and LBGTQ in her hometown of Chapel Hill, N.C. with a Safe Space initiative, according to She Shreds Magazine. In a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone Shook said: “This genre of music attracts a certain kind of person sometimes who is very close-minded, and I want to tell those people, ‘Look, you’re welcome to be a fan. But full disclosure, I’m a fucking civil rights activist, and I’m a bisexual, and I’m an atheist, and I’m a vegan,’ you know what I mean? That’s a whole lot of non-redneck shit right there.” 

Michael Stipe (R.E.M.)

​R.E.M. was one of the most important rock groups in the ‘80s because they took an alternative rock sound that was popular across colleges campuses in the country and exploded it into the mainstream. The group has had numerous Billboard Top 40 hits like “The One I Love,” “Stand,” “Losing My Religion” and “Everybody Hurts.” The Rock Hall inductees are led by frontman Michael Stipe, who has described himself as a queer artist in a TIME magazine article in 2001. When Stipe has been asked if he ever declares himself as gay he has said, “I don’t. I think there’s a line drawn between gay and queer, and for me, queer describes something that’s more inclusive in grey areas.”