#but what do i know 💃🏻🪩✨

[lovejustforaday]

Gay Pride Anthems (According to Me) - Your Disco Needs You

Your Disco Needs You (Casino Radio and Clubs Remix) - Kylie Minogue

Genres: Euro-Disco, Nu-Disco, Dance Pop

IT'S PRIDE MONTH BABY!!!!!!!! 👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨🌈⚧️🌞🕊️🗣️🏳️‍🌈💃🏻🪩💪🏽🥵

Technically, where I'm from, "Pride Month" as a concept basically exists more between the second half of June and the first half of July (SO I'M NOT LATE THIS TIME, MMMKAY?). Our city's parade happens halfway through July every year, so I guess my definition of Pride Month is a little skewed.

Actually, we didn't get a parade last year. As is the case with a lot of other smaller cities, we're big enough to have an out and open, vibrant queer community, but small enough that seemingly everyone in it happens to have petty drama with each other. Hence, our local pride organization's executive board basically self-destructed and went kaput last year because of infighting.

But from the ashes of its implosion, a newer, hopefully better, and brilliantly flaming phoenix emerges and baby I am SO READY!!!! We also just got a new gay bar after basically having none in the city ever since 2020 *cough* happened.

But if I'm being honest, I feel like there's a lot of stress at this time of the year for a lot of gay/trans/bi/nb folks. Folks in the closet feel a greater pressure to come out. Rightwing nutjobs double down on their anti-Budlight campaigns or whatever the fuck they're on about this time around. Lonely gays gotta deal with watching all the happy gay couples being out and proud everywhere.

And of course, there's the """""discourse""""" every year, surrounding everything with the the same arguments over "kink at pride" to "straights frequenting gay bars" and basically every other beating-a-dead-horse topic that the social media algorithms push like crack to feed our brains' collective addictions to ragebait. Sometimes it can be as much of a headache as it is a good time for any of us, and the increasing corporatization and commodification of what was originally a very radical tradition in our community can be disheartening. It seems that we have been undergoing a reckoning with a fundamental shift in this community over the last decade, as our proximity to comfort through class, race, and perceived "queerness" has created two very different kinds of "pride".

But idk, this year I really wanna just focus on feeling those good pride vibes extra hard, and not worrying about all the drama for once (Don't get me wrong though - no cops at pride, just Florence and her sword). Things have been looking pretty up for me ever since I've fallen in love with the most wonderful boy in the world, and I want this year to be a gay ass celebration, dammit!!

And so, I've decided to focus on something that we can all agree on - the fact that gay pride anthems fucking slap!!! Every year, one of the main things I look forward to is going to venues that'll actually have a chance of playing some good fucking music!

So I thought, why the hell not? I've got a music blog I barely touch outside of the year-end list season. Let's do some funky little reviews about ✨ gay pride anthems ✨

Now, what you and I consider to be a ✨ gay pride anthem ✨ may be very different. In this informal and unranked list, I will obviously be including songs with explicitly LGBTQ+ themes and by LGBTQ+ artists, but I am also taking the liberty of covering songs that are either culturally or historically significant to the broader queer community, or personally significant to my own self-discovery journey as a gay man.

I'm also going to throw in a couple of songs that just kinda exude gayness, queerness, and transness as per my own "gay ass music" barometer. You are free to disagree with my selections on any of these reviews, but I should let you know in advance that if you do disagree then you are simply WRONG.

Okay, with that outta the way:

THE ARTIST

Kylie Minogue really needs no introduction. If you're gay, live in an English speaking country, and are older than like, 22(?) then it should go without saying that Kylie Minogue is one of the most beloved and celebrated of the many, many queer-ally pop divas of the last five or six decades.

Ms. Minogue really kind of is the platonic ideal of her archetype. Her music is bouncy, playful, sleek, passionate, and unafraid to go camp. The Australian queen of pop just seems to get us, in a way that never feels pandering or cynical.

Perhaps what is so particularly affective about her appeal is her ability to adapt and change her sound without ever really appearing as if she's trend-hopping. Every change in her career (at least, post-self-titled) feels organic, and she always seems to enjoy whatever it is that she's doing.

Compared and contrasted (and I apologize for doing this in advance) with the career arc of her most obvious (and much more famous) counterpart Madonna, I've never once gotten the feeling that Kylie phoned it in, or just did a new sound because other popstars were doing it.

She's managed to stay relatively down to earth and focused on making fun and memorable pop music, while Madonna frankly continues to dilute her artistry with weird takes, cynical career moves, and whatever this is.

I'll admit that, while I'm familiar with many of her singles, I've really only listened to Impossible Princess, Light Years, Fever, and DISCO as far as her LPs go. But what I have heard in full, I've always enjoyed, especially her punchy yet highly introspective Impossible Princess, which is one of the most underrated and totally left-field records to have ever dropped from an established name in the pop mainstream.

Today's cut is a more well-known remix of a song off of her 2000 LP Light Years, perhaps her funnest record, which I just listened to in full last week in preparation for writing this review. And by the way, I'm covering the remix because it's bigger, better, and gayer, so don't @ me if you prefer the album version mmmkay?

THE SONG AND WHY IT SLAPS

"Your Disco Needs You" is an unabashed, unashamed celebration of all things glorious and free. And no, I don't mean whatever crappy country you live in, F patriotism - I'm talking about the dancefloor at your local gay bar.

"Camp" is an understatement, and probably too obvious to describe it. No, this song is BRAZEN and FLAMING. It has no interest in being subtle; it is a fervent call-to-action. Your goddamn motherfucking disco needs you dammit! You have been officially conscripted to get off your ass and serve your dancefloor. Make haste, you gays!

Flashy euro-disco with triumphant marching band trumpets, horny big man military chants, gratuitously french-spoken bridges, and insanely well-executed key changes are always gonna get my stamp of approval.

But it is perhaps the nasally way she sings "YOUR DIS-KOH" as she chants along during the chorus that really just seals the deal. Forgive me, but she sounds so vaguely somewhere from mainland Europe - It immediately makes me think of one of the crossover successes during the golden age of disco, like "Yes Sir I Can Boogie" by Baccara or "Dancing Queen" by ABBA which is a gay disco BEHEMOTH in its own right.

Everything about this song is everything it needed to be, and it all comes together exactly the way it should. Credit goes to Kylie's larger than life presence, as well as kudos to the backing vocalist for their thundering command, and huge HUGE kudos to the producers for getting it to sound exactly like an updated version of what it pays homage to, down to the last beat.

And have you seen the music video?!? An army of Kylie Minogue clones marching in tights towards disco glory is the only military campaign I will ever gladly endorse.

According to Kylie herself, the song was apparently "too gay" and "too camp" for the label to release it as a single in the United Kingdom. I mean, come on, how fucking punk rock is that? "TOO GAY FOR ENGLAND" is a badge of honour that I'd readily have permanently tattooed on my forehead if I were ever the recipient of such a prestigious title.

Oh, and anyone who thinks this is wholly ironic needs to GTFO now. We are now several light years ahead of when broader Straight™ society suddenly and viciously turned on the great big, glossy old-school disco in the early 80s. We should all be able to understand by now that this is a love letter to everything that was dramatic and overly-extravagant about that era. And it's all the better for it.

WHY IT'S GAY

This is the first on the list, but definitely will not be the last, of a set of songs that are really just blunt and in-your-face with its production and manner of delivery. There is something among LGBTQ+ folks, particularly among drag queens, femme gay men, and men-attracted transfemmes, where being unapologetically bold with your personality and image is widely common and celebrated.

And it makes sense; spending so many years hiding who you are because of society's prejudice means that there is a whole stock-pile of self-expression that hasn't been given its proper outlet until one's coming out eventually happens. There's also the exhilarating thrill of recent liberation that makes you just want to flaunt your colours everywhere.

There is an especially potent emphasis in most cultures on performing masculinity "the correct way" and a strong disdain for those perceived to be "sissies". To be an out and proud feminine man or woman with XY chromosomes, one must be very bold. Or as black and queer NYC ballroom pioneer Junior Labeija once put it "it do take nerve" to be who you are when you are gay/bi/trans/etc.

That amount of nerve is often doubled when faced with the extra added challenges of being poor or belonging to a racial minority, which is why a lot of the boldest and most ground-breaking underground dance music (such as the origins of House music, or the aforementioned NYC ballroom scene) originates from predominately black and brown, lower-class queer communities.

Likewise, music that feels gay is not just dance music, but dance music that often feels bold and fearless. We celebrate and laugh in the face of prejudice and adversity. Dance music that plays to this striking, defiant confidence immediately sets off our "gay barometers" because it reflects how many of us feel inside when we are partying amongst ourselves.

Kylie just gets it. She may not be one of us per se, but she understands that radical, defiant confidence and boldness that is what really makes a legendary dancefloor banger for gay bars everywhere. And okay, something also has to be said for the chants. I dare you to listen to those burly, jovial voices and tell me you don't immediately conjur up the image of a rippling 80s leather daddy muscle stud with the handle bar mustache and bikers cap. They knew exactly what they were doing when they made this.

And so I rest my case. Tis gay, your honour.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go serve my country dancefloor.