MUSICAL PRIDE
A generation of LGBTQ voices are reshaping music videos and influencing the social views of a generation of fans writes David Friend
Pop singer Ria Mae never considered herself an LGBTQ activist, but a recent music video shoot for the song Gold pushed the Halifax native to reflect on the boundaries of her own identity. It began when a director pitched Mae the idea of playing a fictionalized version of herself caught in a passionate but troubled romance with another woman.
She knew portraying a lesbian could potentially pigeonhole her music career, but Mae paused to question why she was so worried about putting her sexual orientation on the radar.
“I had this gut feeling, like, ‘Shut up. It’s good, and it’s important.’”
Gold director Alon Isocianu says this wasn’t the first time he’d proposed a same-sex relationship for one of his videos, but it was the only instance that he felt practically no resistance.
“It’s happened for years where I would pitch a video that had a same-sex couple and the record labels were like, ‘We love all these scenes, but can you make that scene between the two high school kids a boy and a girl?’” he says.
Isocianu, who has worked with Kelly Clarkson and Pentatonix, thinks executives sometimes don’t want to “open that can of worms” with an artist, or risk making a video where the song is overshadowed by the sexual orientation of its characters.
While music videos may seem like a minuscule concern in the bigger picture, they can play an important role for young LGBTQ people who — like many minority groups — are still searching for adequate representation in mainstream media.
“Pop music itself was, for many young people trapped at home in suburbia, all they had,” says Mark Simpson, a British author and critic of pop culture trends, reflecting on the era when MTV and Much Music ruled the airwaves.
“(It was), their only escape and their only connection.”
Rewind to the 1980s and most gay characters in music videos were either part of tragic stories, like Bronski Beat’s Smalltown Boy, or subjects of overt sexual repression like in the Pet Shop Boys’ Domino Dancing.
By the 1990s, some headway was being made as singers like k.d. lang and George Michael came out in their public lives.
Today, the portrayal of LGBTQ themes in videos is becoming more mainstream, but even with
so much progress, at least one artist has found many battles left to fight.
Last year, Nashville singer Who is Fancy, born Jake Hagood, became a guinea pig for the music industry’s tolerance of queer artists.The singer-songwriter was part of a marketing campaign that shrouded his identity in secrecy. His management believed Hagood would attract more listeners and radio programmers if his voice was the focus.
But in retrospect, the flamboyant performer says the reasons behind the approach were flawed.
“In the midst of being promised the world you’re excited and you want to go for it,” he says of going along with the strategy.
Plans were unconventional for Goodbye, his music video debut. Instead of showcasing the singer, three versions were filmed with actors portraying versions of his personality. A fourth version starring Hagood was never released, he says.
Hagood eventually stepped out of the industry closet and revealed his identity on Jimmy Fallon’s show. Goodbye almost immediately lost steam on radio and dropped off the Billboard Hot 100 chart.