(un)ambiguously gay
Buried near the bottom of my Spotify playlists is a mix titled “(un)ambiguously gay.” It feels like an ancient relic even though I only created it four years ago. With a runtime of four and a half hours, the playlist is packed with openly queer artists like Hayley Kiyoko, Kevin Abstract, Halsey, and Sam Smith, as well as queer anthems like “Mr. Brightside” and “Born This Way.”
If you don’t delete your old playlists on Spotify, the app can function like a time capsule. Scrolling through this one, which I updated from October 2017 to March 2019, is like watching my younger self discover and come into my queerness. In December 2017 I added “Only A Girl” by Gia Woods. The following spring, I discovered Brockhampton and Kevin Abstract. Hayley Kiyoko’s album Expectations came out that March, followed by Janelle Monáe’s Dirty Computer in April, and I added songs from both. As the playlist progressed, I seemed to become more comfortable with the ideas and culture expressed in the music — and with queerness itself.
From a technical standpoint, the playlist isn’t that good. It’s a messy jumble of sounds and genres with very little unity, going from danceable to depressing from one track to the next, and many entries seem out of place. Muse’s “Undisclosed Desires” and Tei Shi’s “Bassically” are among the weirdest ones. “No tears left to cry” by Ariana Grande snuck in somehow. Three songs from Lady Gaga’s Joanne (arguably the least gay album in her discography) made the cut. “Turn It Around” by Lucius and “Radio” by Sylvan Esso aren’t overtly queer either.
Some of the outliers may have made it in because you can read queer messages into the lyrics — after all, a few of the artists weren’t out when I started the playlist, like Sylvan Esso’s vocalist, Amelia Meath — but I think I put them there because something inherent to the way the music made me feel resonated with me.
In 2017, I had never had a serious non-hetero crush and wasn’t really interested in anyone, regardless of their gender. I didn’t feel like I could lay claim to any labels, but I could listen to whatever I wanted; music wasn’t assigned to me based on my identity. And in each song on the playlist, regardless of who sang it or what it was about, I recognized a part of myself that I was just beginning to explore.
The first time I watched the music video for Hayley Kiyoko’s “Feelings” and saw her break into a solo dance right as the chorus struck, I felt a strange, unexpected rush of joy. That experience was oddly affirming. I felt that way about every song I put on the playlist, whether they sounded sad, upbeat, or somewhere in between. I couldn’t relate to the dreamy, synth-backed forbidden love story chronicled in Troye Sivan’s Blue Neighbourhood album, or to the heartsick tale of ex-lovers on Halsey’s and Lauren Jauregui’s duet “Strangers,” but they made me feel good for reasons I couldn’t explain. Eventually, I had to start asking myself why that was true.
Thus music provided a low-stakes entry point into the world of queerness. It was a way for me to explore what queerness meant to me without putting any pressure on myself to feel a certain way or like specific things. The “(un)ambiguously gay” playlist doesn’t rank among my best Spotify playlists, but I still love it because it reflects the breadth and diversity of what being LGBTQ can mean. Maybe I’m the only person ever to whom those out-of-place songs feel queer, but it just goes to show that being queer is a distinct experience for every single person — just like music.