My theory is these songs help us all play out the adult situations and feelings we’re discovering.
And course, the timeless classic: ‘I love a boy, but – waaa – he doesn’t know I’m alive’ song (the worst, and obviously best). The ‘Oh God, you don’t love me anymore and now my world has ended’ song. There’s the ‘OMG I’ve fallen in love and it’s the best thing ever’ song. And it just so happens that the vast majority of pop songs are a perfect reflection of our emerging teenage emotions. Most of us first develop an interest in music during adolescence. The first hinges on the common themes we hear in pop songs. Pop music was, and remains, part of our brotherhood.īut why pop and not some other kind of music? Well, I have a couple of theories about this. The songs and music videos which had been a secret sanctuary during my early teens became a shared history with the gay men that would become my friends. Stuart Edmonds (Photo: Hazlett-Beard) ‘Pop music was, and remains, part of our brotherhood’ But there – flailing around in the deep-end of gay culture – I found a place where it was more than OK to have an hour long debate about which remix of Confide In Me is the best, or whether or not Nicki French had improved on Total Eclipse Of The Heart (she hadn’t). It was a bit like joining the mafia just because you fancy trying ravioli.įrankly, I was terrified. When I was 19 I decided I needed to meet some gays, so I got a job behind the bar in Club X, Glasgow’s premiere, gay nightclub. Even after I had escaped the bullies I couldn’t shake the shame. When I went off to university I carefully cultivated a collection of indie and brit-pop CDs to casually put on when friends visited, keeping my beloved Celine and Mariah albums for alone time. But Kylie, Sonia, Bananarama? Definitely NOT OK. Fleetwood Mac, Black Box, Michael Jackson were OK. I started assessing every record with an eye on acceptability.
A dirty, femmy secret that might give away my sexuality. So my love of pop music became yet another thing on my list of stuff to hide from the world. I can still hear her spitting at me ‘Oh my God, you’re sooo gay.’ ‘Even after I had escaped the bullies I couldn’t shake the shame’ When my classmate Jennifer Skinner found out that my favorite song (that month, at any rate) was Cherish by Madonna she told everyone and it became another arrow in the quiver of the bullies. From sissy and pansy in primary school to poof, bender, and bum-boy in secondary, the name-calling was relentless.Įventually someone just gave me a girl’s name and the whole school, including some of the teachers, started calling me that. Like millions of other gay kids, school wasn’t an easy time for me. It was a bright, multicolored world where I could go to escape the monotony of my grey, rainy life on the east coast of Scotland. When I was a 11 years old, I discovered pop music.