My confession: On deadline, I selected the albums for my top 10 list in about five minutes, though I'd been mentally debating them for a month. Now, thanks to a little thing called journalistic integrity, I'm stuck with them forever -- and have to recapture the justifications for inclusion and/or your mocking. (At least I had two blurbs already contributed to the magazine version, so I was 80 percent done.) For more emotionally relevant commentary, you should totally read Noah's amazing list. My analytical brain apparently felt the need to consider these albums' importance in, like, the world. That said...
Shana's top 10 Greatest, Gayest Albums of All Time:
10. Melissa Etheridge, Brave and Crazy: I first heard Melissa Etheridge in this little indie movie about runaways in LA, 1992's Where the Day Takes You. I obsessed over the film credits, wondering who the hell this throaty, Janis Joplin-esque singer was and how I'd never heard her haunting voice before. She has a handful of cuts on the soundtrack, but it was "Royal Station 4/16" -- complete with actual trains howling in the distance -- and "You Can Sleep While I Drive," a heartbreaker of a hopeful getaway ballad, that sent me to the record store with nothing but her name and the pre-Google hope that they'd have a stack of her stuff hidden somewhere. This album, from 1989, is pre-Yes I Am (1993) but no less emotionally raw, and though I like a lot of what she's done since, it remains my favorite.
9. Frances Faye, Caught in the Act: Frances Faye may be the most forgotten nightclub singer in queer history, a brassy bisexual broad whose act was equal parts cabaret and comedy, the mischievous love child of Mae West and Cole Porter. Caught In the Act -- a live recording from 1959 featuring her wild versions of "Night and Day" and "The Man I Love" -- is rare, undeniable evidence that her audiences, which included Rock Hudson, Barbara Stanwyck and even Paul McCartney, were in on the all the dirty jokes. In "Frances and Her Friends" -- the best thing the L Word ever did for music was use this over the opening scene of an early episode -- anything goes: "I know a guy named Willie / Willie goes with Tilly / Tilly goes with Millie / What a ball!" And the crowd goes wild...
8. RENT, Original Broadway Cast Recording: Those of us who didn't grow up in New York City or within commuting distance of it have long had to make do with getting our sho-mo on by proxy. So I love movie musicals, and I love soundtracks -- both of which were able to bring me the power of Broadway no matter where I was marooned. Months before I was able to see a touring production of this show for the first time I borrowed the two-disc set from a friend. And once I started listening, I couldn't stop. I played "One Song Glory" on repeat for about three weeks straight. I missed half the jokes in "Light My Candle" because I couldn't see Mimi writhing around on the floor. I didn't care: it was a raucous, raunchy rock opera I hadn't known I needed.
7. Madonna, Like a Prayer: "Express Yourself" is one of the greatest, gayest songs ever -- both a clarion call for coming out and a promise to do so unapologetically. (Also I remember really vividly wanting to sleep with just about everyone in this video.) Plus "Like A Prayer" was the first corporate sponsor boycott I remember seeing unfold: If Pepsi was so sure an interracial love affair between a priest and a parishioner was too much, Madonna wasn't going to be the one who backed down.
6. Panic at the Disco, A Fever You Can't Sweat Out: If you have ever read Popnography, you had to know this would show up somewhere. The 2005 album is a ridiculously ambitious and confident debut, and Brendon Urie's soaring, dramatic voice demands your attention as the band references everything from The Sound of Music to Chuck Palahniuk novels. The songs are young and surprised at life's uglier truths, yet still full of braggadocio about sexual prowess and despair over dishonesty. (Two autobiographical exceptions are about lyricist/guitarist Ryan Ross' now-dead alcoholic father, which are rare among their peers' songs in that they are borne of legitimately emo circumstances.) Mostly, Panic pulls off one hell of a complicated techno-laden, punk cabaret, flamboyantly queer dance party. It's a party where if you wear the right pinstripe pants, everything goes according to plan, but where hookups in sad Las Vegas motels reveal there are "no raindrops on roses and girls in white dresses," only "sleeping with roaches and taking best guesses."
More, more, more, including Nirvana, Queen and my pick for the greatest, gayest album of all time...
5. Nirvana, Nevermind: Kurt Cobain snarled his way through dense (occasionally nonsense) lyrics, wore baby doll dresses, made out with his bandmate on Saturday Night Live and still somehow managed to disappear inside his ragged sweaters. I remember the first time I saw "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on MTV, the ultimate anti-anthem for every shitty moment that as a freshman in high school I'd already suffered. Kurt's huge, haunted eyes never let us off the hook, holding up a mirror to all the ways we as consumers of this trendy new music called grunge were both responsible for our own angst and for maintaining the status quo. "Come As You Are" (which sonically always evoked an underwater fumble, like the naked baby on the album cover chasing a dollar bill) to me was a hypnotic demand that we should all liberate ourselves -- from our own worst expectations, if nothing else.
4. Queen, Greatest Hits I & II: In 9th grade somebody gave this box set as a birthday present to an asshole in my science class. He said, "Thanks! For a bunch of faggots, they really rock." I hadn't really considered whether Queen was a bunch of faggots (though that explained a lot about Freddie Mercury), but I understood the lesson perfectly: If you're good enough at what you do, even dipshit 14-year-olds might think you're all right -- but they'll never let you forget you're a faggot. It took me 10 seconds to see that as the lose-lose proposition it was, and probably 10 months before I started answering such comments with a pointed use of the other f-word.
3. Rufus Wainwright, Rufus Wainwright: The grand experiment succeeds: An always-out artist is signed to a major label, and though he makes a genre-defying, odd collection of queer love songs, it's a critical success and sells relatively well. He's also named Rolling Stone's best new artist of the year. Rufus' albums have only gotten weirder, more obscure, more sophisticated, and his example changed the possibilities available to a generation of young queer artists.
2. Tracy Chapman, Tracy Chapman: This tape was a present from a family friend, a boy my age who read his parents' subscription to The Nation and even at 14 or 15 knew this was something I would like: A poor, black dyke from Ohio who wrote songs about sleeping in shelters with her girlfriend and dreaming about a better world, one where they could get in a "Fast Car" and somehow escape the bitter reality of their lives with nothing more than their love for each other (not so different, emotionally, than Melissa Etheridge's "You Can Sleep While I Drive"). Almost inexplicably, "Fast Car" was a top 10 Billboard pop chart hit, the album went to number 1, and somehow even "Talkin' Bout a Revolution" -- a song about exactly what it says it is -- was released to radio. Maybe it was just guilty liberal white folks fueling its ascendance, but it's hard to imagine a similarly outspoken young queer musician today getting such mainstream support.
1. George Michael, Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1: The 6 1/2-minute "Freedom '90" was not only the first great pop song of that decade, it was George Michael's condensed autobiography -- the true story of a boy who had painted himself into a corner but was dying to come out. So he recast himself with lip-syncing supermodels, stopped touring and began to quietly make good on his promise to "take these lies and make them true somehow." There are other songs on Listen Without Prejudice (most notably the viciously political "Praying for Time" and a guilt-ridden AIDS-tinged cover of Stevie Wonder's "They Won't Go When I Go"), but it is the gospel choir-worthy "Freedom" that will remain a queer anthem. I dare you not to sing along.
Previously > Noah's top 10 > Molly Siegel's top 10 > Junior Vasquez's top 10
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