Queer pop dominated 2023. At a time of escalating attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, including a wave of anti-trans laws and book bans, trans and queer artists continued to define and shape trends in music and culture.
Some songwriters reflected the sorrow of the year with stirring protest songs and reflections on grief and loss. Others released club tracks that called for escapism on the dancefloor, and anthems that celebrated queer joy and sex. Fearmongering campaigns meant to dehumanize drag performers and non-binary people did not stop LGBTQ+ artists from dominating charts in pop, R&B and hip-hop, rock and even Christian music.
While Kylie Minogue’s Padam Padam was 2023’s unofficial Pride song and an instant entry into the gay pop canon, here are some of the other defining anthems of queer culture this year.
Anohni and the Johnsons – It Must Change
Anohni, the British-born singer-songwriter who moved to New York in 1990, put on the cover of her new album a glowing portrait of Marsha P Johnson, the trans rights icon. Anohni has long idolized the activist, who fought back against police in the 1969 Stonewall uprising, and Johnson is a fitting muse for My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross, the 52-year-old artist’s first album since 2016; the title, Anohni said, is about how queer trailblazers who have done the “most heroic work for the culture have done it at great cost for their own wellness”.
It Must Change is the soulful, raw album opener that resembles a protest anthem with its steady repetition. The song can be heard as a demand for progress toward trans and queer liberation and a sorrowful lament about the persistence of bigotry, with Anohni expressing compassion for those projecting hate on to her: “I always thought you were beautiful … That’s why this is so sad.” Anohni recorded the haunting vocals in one take the first time she sang it through.
The writer and model Munroe Bergdorf, who stars in the music video, told the Guardian she wanted to convey a serenity and confidence: “The conversation around transgender rights is chaotic. But the community is calm, resilient and strong.”
Kelela – Contact
Kelela, the R&B and electronic artist, returned this year from a six-year hiatus with the release of her new album Raven. In the time since her celebrated debut album, she has been doing some deep thinking, she said in an interview, telling a New York Times reporter to read the essay Decolonizing Love in a World Rigged for Black Women’s Loneliness, watch an Afrofuturist film and visit the website Make Techno Black Again before they met.
The sonic universe that resulted from that research is absorbing. The album, she said, takes listeners from summer to winter in the first half, and then to the song Contact, which is the moment “you run off the cliff” before diving into the ocean. The rave track embodies the experience of “floating away” on the dance floor: “The bass in my body, I’m sinking, it’s so wide”. The song repeats: “You’re stressing / that’s not allowed”, a mantra for letting go and finding moments of connection, intimacy and joy in dark and anxious times.
Yaeji – Done (Let’s Get It)
In the music video for Done (Let’s Get It) from the Korean American producer, DJ, rapper and singer Yaeji her album With a Hammer, she and her grandfather put on bunny costumes and bop around Seoul while she sings: “Let’s get it done / I want it done … Isn’t it our mission this life to / Break the cycles, make it make you mend the cycles?”
A darling of the underground scene and queer Asian nightlife in New York, Yaeji told the Guardian the song was inspired by an epiphany that she was raising her dog, Jiji, with strict habits around eating that mirrored the way her parents and grandparents had raised her: “When I started writing Done I wasn’t upset or anything. My attitude was like, let’s get it done. You recognized this behavior, this is our chance to nip it in the bud. The onus is on us – that we can do something about it is a powerful sentiment.”
Serpentwithfeet – Damn Gloves
Serpentwithfeet, the Baltimore-born experimental musician and singer-songwriter, had a banner year with Heart of Brick, his theatrical production exploring Black queer nightlife, which toured across the US and in Germany. “The dancefloor has been a medium for Black queer people to decompress and build community. Going out has given me incentive to go inward and I am a better person because of it,” he said when announcing the project. The show featured songs from his highly anticipated album GRIP, which is releasing in February.
Damn Gloves, a single from GRIP featuring Ty Dolla $ign and Yanga YaYa, is a makeout jam that captures the spirit of his show with its pulsating club beat as he sings: “Kiss you longer, longer than a opera”. Upon its release, he said: “I didn’t wanna waste this chance to celebrate my waist in his hands.” He fulfills that mission with his dancey, sensual music video set in an intimate, dimly lit club.
Renée Rapp – Pretty Girls
It was a big year for the pop career of Renée Rapp, the 23-year-old singer and actor who got her start on Broadway and on the TV show the Sex Lives of College Girls. Following the release of her new album Snow Angel, which showcases her vocal range and emotional depth, the singer has built a mighty queer fandom, boosted by her candor in interviews about her struggles with mental health and coming out. Her song Pretty Girls is an ode to the straight-presenting girls who only make out with her after a couple drinks: “You think that I’d be flattered / It’s pathetic cause you’re right.”
Rapp will continue to make waves at the start of the new year with the release of the Mean Girls reboot, in which she plays Regina George, who she has declared is a lesbian.
Omar Apollo – 3 Boys
Omar Apollo, the breakout Mexican American singer-songwriter, did not slow down this year following his 2022 debut album, Ivory. His first single this year, 3 Boys, is a meditation on non-monogamy, a ballad that captures the particular agony of a confusing situationship: “I know there’s some things you can’t speak / But thoughts of a third make me weak.” He followed 3 Boys with Live for Me, an EP with four tender, dark and introspective ballads, including Ice Slippin about the cold response from his family when he came out.
Shamir – Oversized Sweater
Shamir, the 29-year-old Las Vegas-born singer-songwriter, released his ninth studio album this year, Homo Anxietatem, which was his first since signing to Kill Rock Stars, the riot grrrl label. The opening song of the indie rock album is Oversized Sweater, which he said was inspired by a huge blue sweater he knit in 2020 – “basically a wearable security blanket that I used to channel all my anxiety into”. He was open with the vulnerability of that process, saying he made the sweater when he was “fresh out the psych ward and had quit smoking weed and cigarettes cold turkey”.
The song is soothing and nostalgic, with its simple, but memorable chorus on heartbreak: “I cuddle in the space / Of my oversized sweater / And sing until I believe in love again.”
Christine and the Queens – Tears Can Be So Soft
Christine and the Queens, the French artist who also goes by Chris, continued his evolution and reinvention this year with Paranoïa, Angels, True Love, an album that Rolling Stone said has placed him at the “vanguard of pop’s next great wave”. The singer said he was grieving the death of his mother when writing and recording the album, and was also inspired by the play Angels in America and its celestial characters. The result, as the Guardian review said, is a “howl of despair sublimated into astonishingly beautiful experimental pop, drenched in warm celestial light, punctured by spikes of confused pain”.
His single, Tears Can Be So Soft, is a rhythmic meditation on grief and a salve for anyone experiencing loss. He exalts the virtues of crying with melancholy, but uplifting lyrics and a swaggy performance: “Tears can be so good for you, baby / Dive in it.”
