Gay Pride Day. It’s like Mardi Grass, Fourth of July, and Halloween all in one. Decked-up drag queens in floats, shirtless chicks with pasties, ass-flossing dudes in thongs, streets excessively crowded with people wearing every color visible to the eye, opportunities to get laid available, and –BREATH– fireworks! Every major city in the U.S. celebrates it, and in New York City, Gay Pride is this Sunday so all neighborhoods have been prepping up all month for the day.
Yeah, sure the weekend is gonna be wild and all, but with all its commotion for Gay month, it got me thinking about what a childhood friend who I had not spoken to in a while recently told me. “How does it feel to be out of the closet?” Whaaa? As stunned as I was to hear that, I just told her, it’s like they say, “blondes have more fun than brunettes, well think of it like that but with sexual preference” (NOT!!!).
I was never a big fan of ‘categories’ when it came to me especially. And even though I’ve had my share of casually dating both sexes (not bi, pansexual), I just want to shed light on the discrimination and lack of awareness of pansexuality, I mean does it even fall anywhere under the LGBTQ acronyms? Haha, no, kidding… Here at RE, we love everyone! And because we especially love YOU readers, Juan Data and I will give ya our ten music picks that feature LGBT stuff and Gay Pride for this very gay month!
This is also dedicated to my novia, who doesn’t even know she’s my girlfriend yet. Hehe
by Los Sultanes
[Argentina]
This is a controversial one and when it came out in the mid ’90s it caused quite a turmoil. “I’m going out with a dude” is the opening line (and the title it’s popularly known for) of this confusing, contradicting story about a guy in a gay relationship where one of the partners betrayed the other one by forcing him to undergo (sex change?) surgery… or something like that. It doesn’t make any sense, and it shouldn’t, it’s just a silly cumbia by a bunch of guys who are not really gay but thanks to this stereotype-ridden hit they adopted that public persona and became known as cumbia’s response to the Village People. Many got offended, obviously, but in the end, the song still remains to this date, the ultimate anthem of tropi-gay pride. -JD
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by Panda
[Mexico]
These guys from Monterrey make up pretty cheesy rock tracks, and I’ve ran into a few of Panda‘s themes that are actually quite funny in a good way. I’m not really sure why they’ve had kind of a bad rep as musicians, but I won’t get into it.
Instead, I want to point out this song, because I’m sure that this theme has been the case to many of you out there. Ladies, have you ever fallen in love with a gay man, or straight guys with a lesbian? Well then this is your song. Pura mala suerte -IR
by Kumbia Queers
[Argentina/Mexico]
Kumbia Queers started as a grrrl band of bastard cumbia covers of pop/rock songs. “La Isla Con Chicas,” their lesbian fantasy-island cover of Madonna‘s “La Isla Bonita,” was their first video in 2007 (when very few people were talking about ñu-cumbia) and it set the tone for many ridiculously funny more to come. It was also the only cover they had on their first album of an universal icon of gay pride, Madonna, alongside others of Black Sabbath, The Cure, The Ramones.. -JD
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by Café Tacvba
[Mexico]
Not many people know that Café Tacvba‘s “El Baile Y El Salón” is about homosexual love at first sight. The band is not really associated with gay culture and what not, but more like how versatile they are with mixing genres and reincarnating in image and style in like every album they released. So sure, why not tap into a little gay love here.
I’ve always known that Rubén Albarrán is a care free-free-spirited-open-minded dude. My platonic love. And in this track, he sings about a tender moment in the dancefloor experience singing the lyrics “Y asi bailando quiero que me hagas el amor, de hombre a hombre, voleuz-vous coucher avec moi?” Dang, I don’t know why I think this is super sexy. -IR
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by Willie Colón
[New York]
This is basically a sad song about a father who had trouble accepting the sexual preferences of his only boy. Simón’s gayness pushed him away from the strict, conservative father and he ended up dying alone, in a hospital, of a “strange disease.”
Colón‘s wise advice to fathers out there is to accept their kids the way they are, because “you can’t correct nature and what’s born curved can’t be straighten out.” Well said. -JD
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by Dënver
[Chile]
A while ago, I went to this church in rural South Mexico. In this one, only indigenous people attend and it’s in a community that’s segregated from the “non-indigenous.” These native areas usually prohibit any type of non-patriarchal activities, making woman basically voiceless.
Not that I think Chilean duo Dënver‘s video below is like this church. But the connection I’m making here is that only woman go to this church to “confess their sins,” not the men. But what happens in this church instead is that they’ve found other ways to explore happiness and pleasure, if you know what I mean. Like Dënver’s video, they explore homoerotic and other counterculture realities. -IR
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by Dani Umpi
[Uruguay]
For Dani Umpi the new generation is the one that has no issues accepting his or his friend’s lifestyle.
He talks about breaking up with his past and embracing the future, cutting off some of his old friends, and facing this sudden spring of his new life in a positive way, surrounding himself with kids from this new generation who don’t care about his sexual preferences and just wanna have a good time. ¡Viva la nueva generación! -JD
by Cut Your Hair
[Spain]
I don’t really know if Spain’s electro rock trio Cut Your Hair are gay or not, but they’re def friendly. But hey, things are different in Europe. It’s more liberating, like the ladies can go bikini-less/bra-less at beaches and be totally fine without having pervy 40 y/0’s staring at our boobs.
It’s not the lyrical content that make the list. It’s the video for “Utah In Pictures” is what makes it appropriate. Es un té para tres, or a love triangle if you will is between two boys and one gal. There’s obvious tensions between these bisexual (or pansexual?) friends that makes us think of classics as Y Tu Mama También and of course The Dreamers. -IR
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by Leo García
[Argentina]
In the early 2000s former Gustavo Cerati‘s keyboard player, Leo García, scored an unexpected massive hit with his song “Morrisey.” Like the invoked Morrisey, it was pretty obvious that García was gay, but he wasn’t officially out and the song was more about bisexual bizarre love triangle, in a subtle way, and dropping cool names (Bjork, Bowie, Beck).
By the end of that decade, after the transnational success of Miranda‘s pseudo-homo pop, claiming gayness on a pop song wasn’t reason for scandal anymore so Leo took it to the next level invoking this time another British singer, and an international icon of out-of-the-closet pride: Boy George. “I came out on the newspapers saying I’m gay” is the opening verse of this hilarious pop-culture-references-packed song (including a shout-out to his friends Miranda) and it climaxes with “I traded Morrisey for Boy George (…) and I deleted many rockers from my list.” The message this time is explicit: come out of the closet, and to hell with your rock cred. -JD
by Banda UÓ
[Brazil]
Tecno brega just how it sounds like: cheesy bedroom recorded, bootleg underground beauty. Banda UÓ is a queer collective of sexy geek-gays and their centerfold tranny. The best combo evah!
The trio has a pretty fashionable and flamboyant sense of style, and do apt-appropriation of mainstream hits right, like this one for example by Willow Smith’s “Whip My Hair.” Although I don’t really understand what they’re saying because I don’t speak Portuguese, this is our number one for all pushing their homo-love in the right directions. All I can say is these guys ‘n gal are make life a lot easier, knowing that there’s happy and successful rainbow-glittered artists continually pushing the envelope.. -IR
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Tell us which Gay Pride-themed song is your favorite, if or if not on this list.