Rolling Stone
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Is there an LGBTQ sensibility? What was it 50 years ago, before much of today’s language for gender and sexual identities even existed? Or, much more simply: Which songs best evoke the sex, drama, heartache, struggle, liberation, and mindfucks of queer lives then and now? What follows is not a completely comprehensive (or ranked) list, but one that follows the story from post-Stonewall disco parties to the gender-queer rock, R&B, and pop of today. Here are 25 essential pride songs from the 1970s to today.
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The Kinks, ‘Lola’ (1970)
Image Credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images “Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls,” Ray Davies sings on his love song for a trans woman. “It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook-up world … except for Lola.” Homosexuality had been legal in England for only three years when Davies dreamt up a full story about falling for a trans woman at a Soho club, ostensibly based on stories he heard from others. Lola in the song had a “dark brown voice” and walked like a woman but talked like a man, and she could pick him up and placing him on her knee. In the most suggestive lyric, Davies confides, “I fell to the floor, I got down on my knees/Well, I looked at her, and she at me,” all leading to the revelation “I’m glad I’m a man, and so is Lola.” The song was an improbable mainstream hit, a Number One in the U.S., making it the first hit song with an LGBTQ theme, according to The New York Times. —Kory Grow
