My proposal has been accepted by the Experience Music Project: I'll be presenting it at the 2005 Pop Conference, being held in Seattle April 14 - 17. Thrilling news, but this means I've got a lot of work do to in the coming months researching and polishing this mother.
As a reminder, here's what I pitched to them. My ears are always open if you have any suggestions on how I can make this an interesting and educative and contemplation-inducing piece. Thanks, everyone, for your encouragement!
MUSIC AS MASQUERADE: Poseurs, Playas, and Beyond
2005 Experience Music Project Pop Conference
Abstract: “Whoops, I Mean Girl: Toying With Sexual Identity in Song”
by Joseph McCombs
December 29, 2004
In early 2004, the Scottish rock quartet Franz Ferdinand burst into the American consciousness with their self-titled debut album. Although “Take Me Out” was the hit single from the disc, it was “Michael,” a paean to a same-sex hookup on a sweaty dance floor, that grabbed the most attention. “Michael”’s lustiness posed endless are-they-or-aren’t-they questioning in online chat forums discussing the straight band. Which FF deftly handled: as Rob Sheffield aptly pointed out in a piece for the Village Voice, “It's usually hard for straight bands to identify gay without getting self-conscious or even self-congratulatory, acting gayer than thou, but Franz Ferdinand breeze through ‘Michael’ as if it's no sweat.”
A few months later, Eminem returned from what by his standards was a hiatus with “Just Lose It,” a sneering tossaway that was unremarkable save for his toying with his sexual identity: “Yeah, boy, shake that ass / Whoops, I mean girl / Girl girl girl.” Such a coyness was not entirely unexpected from a man who’d acknowledged in a skit on a prior album that he was “rappin’ about homosexuals and Vicodin” -- but never had he, nor had any other rapper of note, ever called his own orientation to question, especially not on a Top 10 hit. Many in the public wondered: was Eminem mastering the art of public deconstruction of a caricatural identity, or was he just a big ol’ ’mo with an incredible shrinking closet?
Meanwhile, the increasingly influential website Plugged In Online spent 2004 continuing its archly reactionary Christian reviews of popular CDs and movies. Its assessments of queer identity and themes were hardly surprising: albums from the Indigo Girls and t.A.T.u. were sharply criticized for their “lesbian leanings.” Most tellingly, though, was this comment made about Elton John’s 1995 album Made in England (the site, strangely, does not review Sir Elton’s more recent material): “Even the positive love songs are hard to enjoy knowing Elton John's own sexual preference.” Where Eminem and Franz Ferdinand had both had fun with their own identities by taking on others in song, Plugged In Online suggests that an individual’s personal identity cannot be submerged in the context of an album. What you are in life is what you are on record, they implictly argue.
My intent with this paper is to look at what happens when a musician’s sexual identity doesn’t match the sexual identity on the record. Why is this kind of “role-playing” so much different from other instances of singing a song “in character”? Does it still matter whether Franz Ferdinand, Eminem, or Elton John are gay or straight when they sing about love and sex?
About the presenter:
Joseph McCombs is a freelance music journalist, critic and trivioso based in New York City. His work appeared this year in the Village Voice, the All Music Guide, and StarPolish.com.
