{"id":1061110,"date":"2022-04-11T20:07:17","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T17:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1061110"},"modified":"2022-04-11T20:07:17","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T17:07:17","slug":"queer-country-rewrites-the-narrative-of-a-complicated-genre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1061110","title":{"rendered":"*Queer Country* Rewrites the Narrative of a Complicated Genre"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Columns<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Queer Country<\/em> Rewrites the Narrative of a Complicated Genre<\/h1>\n
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We talk to Shana Goldin-Perschbacher, author of a new book on the rise of LGBTQ+ country musicians, about k.d. lang, Lil Nas X, and \u201cqueer sincerity.\u201d<\/div>\n
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By <\/span>Will Groff<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

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k.d. lang accepting a Juno Award in 1987 (Photo by David Cooper\/Toronto Star via Getty Images)<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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When gay Canadian singer k.d. lang began her career as a country musician in the \u201980s, she struggled to win over an industry that saw something dishonest and even mocking in her approach. You can see her delightfully skewed performance of country sincerity in the video for \u201cTurn Me Round,\u201d a raucous cut from lang\u2019s 1987 album Angel with a Lariat.<\/em> Dressed in a bargain-bin approximation of cowgirl glamor, with her hair shorn into an imprecise mullet, lang twirls and growls her way across a honky-tonk stage as her male bandmates egg her on. She is, as music and queer studies scholar Shana Goldin-Perschbacher puts it, \u201ctotally fucking with gender.\u201d<\/p>\n

lang\u2019s fight for acceptance in an industry bent on excluding her is one of many fascinating case studies in Queer Country<\/em>, a new book that examines the contributions of LGBTQ+ artists to country and Americana music. When Goldin-Perschbacher first started research for the book in 2004, most people she spoke to about the project reacted with bafflement: Did queer country artists even exist<\/em>? It had been over a decade since a newly-out lang left the genre to find greater acclaim and commercial success as a torchy pop singer, and the spectacular backlash against the Chicks (n\u00e9e Dixie Chicks) a year prior had cemented the country music industry\u2019s reputation as a bastion of conservative values.<\/p>\n

Now, what started as an underground scene appears to be reaching critical mass, with dedicated radio shows, zines, and even a gay country star in Brothers Osborne frontman T.J. Osborne (who isn\u2019t alone in Nashville\u2019s mainstream). Queer Country<\/em> sketches out a rough history of this movement, spotlighting the contributions of lang and Lavender Country pioneer Patrick Haggerty, along with lesser-known figures including non-binary and trans musicians Rae Spoon, Joe Stevens, and Mya Byrne. It also features close-reads of contemporary stars like Lil Nas X, Orville Peck, Brandi Carlile, and Trixie Mattel, drawing a vivid portrait of a movement at a point of breakthrough.<\/p>\n

Pitchfork: What is it about country music that keeps attracting queer artists, despite its perceived conservatism?<\/div>\n

Shana Goldin-Perschbacher: I\u2019d say these artists are drawn to its truthfulness and its sense of humor, its simplicity and its multiple layers of performance. The way that country music impacts listeners is really deep, on the level of family, community, regret, failure\u2014things that everybody cares about. And it\u2019s important for straight and cisgender listeners to hear queer and trans musicians sing about these topics. Sometimes queer and trans music is seen as something niche, and this is a way to shift that.<\/p>\n

The concept of authenticity or \u201ctruth\u201d frequently comes up in conversations about country music. Why can that be problematic for queer and trans people?<\/div>\n

For queer people, we have to come out and reveal ourselves over and over again, and some listeners may respond to that by feeling like what they thought they knew about these artists is a lie. They may ask, \u201cHow could you keep this from me? Or lie to me?\u201d There\u2019s an essentialism to the expectation that artists are expressing some sort of inner truth. It doesn\u2019t take into account an understanding of self as something that is unstable or a moving target.<\/p>\n

In that way, I thought about the opportunities that country music offers in terms of truth-telling. I knew that would get me into the authenticity conversation, which is both so important and so overwrought. The standards of authenticity are so high that hardly any country musician can actually meet them. Even the straight, cisgender ones: How many of them are coming down from the mountains to play a show? Or jumping off the back of a horse? It\u2019s absurd, what we expect of these artists.<\/p>\n

You use the term \u201cqueer sincerity\u201d to describe the way that queer artists are able to perform a certain kind of earnestness while maintaining an element of camp irony. Can you give an example of that?<\/div>\n

k.d. lang is a terrific person to talk about in this way, because she was basically accused of not being serious enough about her relationship to country music. People didn\u2019t know if it was a joke or performance art. She explained that she was embracing the humor of country music as well as its emotional depth of earnestness and love. That\u2019s an important part of camp\u2014it\u2019s humorous, but it\u2019s also about a love attachment. lang was very inspired by Patsy Cline, who wanted to be seen as full-on country, and yet this was the moment of the Nashville Sound. Her music was being broadcast to a much bigger audience, so it was more smoothed over.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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There\u2019s this relationship to honky-tonk that country has, where that type of humor is sometimes seen as embarrassing, and then other times it’s really appealing. lang was trying to embrace both of those elements of country music: the hillbilly humor and honky-tonk twang as well as the smoothness and glamor of the Nashville Sound. The element of queer sincerity there helps understand a lesbian relationship to those things, because she really mixes styles and toys with her audience. She\u2019s flirting with them and teasing them about coming out and her relationship to this music.<\/p>\n

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What does the success of figures like Lil Nas X, Orville Peck, and Trixie Mattel tell us about the current state of queer country?<\/div>\n

None of those three need country music\u2019s help to succeed. There was that whole debate about Lil Nas X and whether \u201cOld Town Road\u201d belonged on the country chart or not, but he\u2019s laughing all the way to the bank. Orville Peck went through the rock world and is picking and choosing what he wants from country music. It\u2019s probably pretty freeing to be able to take so much from country\u2014the iconic looks, gestures, and vocality, the twang of the guitar and the dramatic storylines, even the geographic locations of music videos\u2014without having to work your way up through Nashville and convince every single person that you belong even though you\u2019re gay. Trixie Mattel uses drag to draw attention to her music, and she\u2019s building an empire. She has a cosmetic line, a New York Times<\/em> best-selling book, and her own show.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Those three gay men are having enormous success on their own, but queer women musicians like Brandi Carlile, Allison Russell, and Amythyst Kiah are collaborating with one another and with straight women to get their foot in the door in the same way. Collaboration is really how some of these marginalized women musicians are able to have the moments of success that they have, which are often smaller than their male counterparts, unfortunately.<\/p>\n

Why do you think Americana has been so much more welcoming of queer artists than mainstream country?<\/div>\n

Americana is ambiguous in that it differentiates itself from country music while also picking particular country musicians to tell its coming-up story. The real difference has to do with its audience, which is assumed to have a more left-leaning political identification and higher socioeconomic status. Americana sees itself as a more progressive alternative to country, and it has certainly been able to market itself that way by welcoming a few performers of color and more women than mainstream country lets in. It also allows artists to be more explicit about their politics, because there isn\u2019t this fear of turning away listeners if you\u2019re too outspoken.<\/p>\n

Straight artists like Kacey Musgraves and Dolly Parton have played an important role in making queer and trans country listeners feel accepted. Why do you think these listeners feel such an attachment to Parton in particular?<\/div>\n

There\u2019s some really good work on Parton\u2014Leigh H. Edward\u2019s Dolly Parton, Gender, and Country Music<\/em> and Lydia Hamessly\u2019s Unlikely Angel: The Songs of Dolly Parton<\/em> came out recently\u2014and the way that she\u2019s able to very slyly capture the authenticity debates at the core of country music. With her tenacity and business acumen in the face of enormous sexism, she\u2019s figured out how to beat this setup where women over 30 can barely continue a country music career. In that way, her fight really resonates with queer listeners. Then there\u2019s her gender drag, as Brian Firkus [aka Trixie Mattel] talks about in the book. She entered into a Dolly Parton lookalike contest and lost, which was a riot. She\u2019ll sing \u201cdrag queen\u201d instead of \u201cJolene.\u201d I also imagine that her ability to continue attracting the love of the mainstream country music audience is reassuring to queer listeners. Like, maybe more people will come around if they like Dolly.<\/p>\n

Now that there are so many more visible queer and trans artists making country music, is there still a need for ally figures?<\/div>\n

Oh, absolutely. Musgraves\u2019 \u201cFollow Your Arrow\u201d was a big deal, and she was so explicit about thanking her co-writers [Shane McAnally and Brandy Clark, both of whom are gay] and explaining the politics of the song in terms of being inclusive. Jason Isbell featured a lot of different Black women country musicians, straight and queer, on tour last season, and that was a big deal. Kristen Chenoweth working with Ty Herndon and Chely Wright also comes to mind.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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These folks are modeling what it looks like to be an ally, to care for your neighbors and to care for your family members. More and more families from all different political and religious persuasions have gay kids and trans kids, and they have to figure out how to navigate that. These straight and cisgender role models can be useful in modeling acceptance. At the same time, I think these artists realize that their credibility as artists is at stake if they can\u2019t share that stage with a wide array of people. They cannot maintain this white-supremacist, patriarchal system in which only a certain group of people is allowed to succeed.<\/p>\n

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Queer Country<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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$98<\/span> at Amazon<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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$25<\/span> at Bookshop.org<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n

Source URL: https:\/\/pitchfork.com\/thepitch\/queer-country-book-interview\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Columns Queer Country Rewrites the Narrative of a Complicated Genre We talk to Shana Goldin-Perschbacher, author of a new book on the rise of LGBTQ+ country musicians, about k.d. lang, Lil Nas X, and \u201cqueer sincerity.\u201d By Will Groff April 11, 2022 k.d. lang accepting a Juno Award in 1987 (Photo by David Cooper\/Toronto Star […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1061111,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[54],"class_list":["post-1061110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-pitchfork-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1061110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061110\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1061111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1061110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1061110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1061110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}