| The 10 Essential Gay Male Songs
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 | By
Al Weisel
CDNOW Movies Editor
Popular music of the last century has shocked many
generations of parents with its sexual taboo smashing, but
when it comes to homosexuality, especially gay male sexuality,
it has always been oddly puritanical. Same-sex relationships
were a common subject in the blues, especially for lesbian
performers but pop and rock
have treated homosexuality as the love that dare not sing out.
Gay music consisted largely of lip-synced torch songs or
straight pop hits like Bing Crosby's "My Buddy" sung with a
wink.
Rock performers turned out to be as close-minded as their
parents, and it wasn't until the 1970s, with the advent of
gender-bending glam rock, that the closet doors began to crack
open. David Bowie and Elton John proclaimed their bisexuality
(though they later reneged). Disco, which was born in gay
clubs, soon became all the rage, but most people had no idea
what those Village People were really singing about.
Attitudes about gays began to change in the 1980s, but pop
music was slow to catch up. Such stars as Morrissey, Michael
Stipe, and George Michael dodged questions about their
sexuality for years. In rap, virulent homophobia became so
acceptable that even by 2000 critics shrugged off rants about
gays in Eminem's Marshall
Mathers LP (which ironically has more references to
gay sex than possibly any record ever made). But there have
been some bright spots. The songs below represent those rare
moments when performers were unafraid to sing about gay life
openly and without apology.
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| 1. Bronski Beat: "Smalltown Boy" |
 Jimmy Somerville's tale of a young gay man fleeing his
intolerant small-town parents for the big city movingly summed
up the life stories of a whole generation of gay men. Sung in
a defiant falsetto to a propulsive disco beat, "Smalltown
Boy," and the 1983 album it came from, Bronski Beat's Age
of Consent, became the soundtrack for a new wave of gay
activism spurred to action by the AIDS crisis.
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| 2. Tom Robinson: "Glad to Be Gay" |
 Most punk rockers look like poseurs next to Tom
Robinson, who truly didn't mind the bollocks when he composed
this angry, in-your-face gay anthem at a time when being gay
could easily get you beaten up or even killed. While this 1978
song may seem dated to some modern listeners who grew up in
more tolerant times, its horrifying accounts of gay bashings
punctuated by the triumphant/ironic chorus, "Sing if you're
glad to be gay," is still incredibly powerful.
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| 3. The Kinks: "Lola" |
 The surprising thing about the Kinks' greatest hit,
1970's "Lola," is not that the title character turns out to be
a man (which is hinted at throughout the song), but that the
male narrator doesn't seem to care one whit and, in fact,
seems perfectly happy with the gender of his new love. With
clever lyrics, a catchy melody, and a sing-along chorus, Ray
Davies managed to seduce millions of unsuspecting listeners
into embracing the most affirmative expression of gay love
ever to grace top 40 radio.
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| 4. David Bowie: "Lady Stardust" |
 Although David Bowie would don and doff many masks
throughout his career, it was his persona as the androgynous
alien rock star Ziggy Stardust that resulted in his
masterpiece. The songs on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy
Stardust, such as "Lady Stardust," remain classics of
gender-twisting pop music. That same year Bowie would produce
Lou Reed's Transformer,
whose left-field top 40 hit "Walk on the Wild Side" contained
an explicit reference to gay sex that famously went over the
head of many an AM-radio listener.
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| 5. Bruce Springsteen: "Streets of
Philadelphia" |
 Even as AIDS felled such pop stars as Queen's Freddie
Mercury, the B-52's Ricky Wilson, and Liberace, it was still a
subject that most performers were reluctant to broach until
Bruce Springsteen came along. Like the film whose soundtrack
this song was written for, Philadelphia,
starring everyman actor Tom Hanks, Springsteen helped Middle
America see the human side of a disease that had
disproportionately affected gays before becoming a scourge of
heterosexual populations in such places as
Africa.
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| 6. Magnetic Fields: "Papa Was a
Rodeo" |
 Not all gay men are urban hairdressers who swoon at
Judy Garland (not that there's anything wrong with that) as
this Magnetic Fields' song from Stephin Merritt's epic
gender-bashing exploration of varied forms of love, straight
and gay, reminds us. "Papa Was a Rodeo" is an after-hours
country saloon song about a gay man who "could rope a steer"
and for whom "home was anywhere with diesel gas, love was a
trucker's hand," who finds a kindred spirit without having to
run away to the big city.
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| 7. Rufus Wainwright: "Danny Boy" |
 Rufus Wainwright comes from a new generation of gay
men for whom being gay is no big deal. "Danny Boy" is one of
several songs from the eponymous debut of the openly gay son
of folk singers Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle that
talk about his life and loves in way that was unimaginable for
a gay songwriter even a decade ago, though it's hard to
believe this Gap ad model has ever suffered the unrequited
love he sings about here.
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| 8. Willie Colon: "El Gran Varón" |
 Many Latino radio stations refused to play "El Gran
Varón (The Great Man)," a wrenching song about a transvestite,
rejected by his family, dying alone of AIDS, when it was
released in 1989 on Altos Secretos (Top Secrets). But
it became one of Willie Colón's biggest hits anyway. To
understand just what the politically active salsa star was
going up against when he released this blistering critique of
Latin machismo, which was also covered by Rubén
Blades, one only has to look at how many in the Latino
community still deny that the death of Colon's longtime
collaborator, Hector Lavoe, in 1993 was caused by
AIDS.
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| 9. Rod Stewart: "The Killing of Georgie, Part 1
& 2" |
 Though Rod Stewart is known primarily for the sexual
frivolity of such songs as "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" and "Hot
Legs," this song from A Night on the Town was a
remarkable departure. It's a beautifully told and heartrending
tale of a man who finds freedom to be himself in New York only
to be savagely murdered by gay bashers.
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| 10. Pet Shop Boys: "Go West" |
 Virtually every Pet Shop Boys album has songs that
deal wittily and evocatively with gay life, from 1986's Please
to 2002's Release,
with its hilarious fantasy about a gay tryst with Eminem, "The
Night I Fell in Love." But Neal Tennant and Chris Lowe's 1993
cover of the Village People's "Go West" brings the history of
late 20th-century gay pop music full circle, deepening this
light-hearted, 1979, pre-AIDS tale of hope for the future with
the knowledge of the tragic losses and hard-fought triumphs
that occurred in the intervening years.
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