ABSTRACT

Queer is a complex and multidimensional term that has long had a place in the fashion and celebrity world of popular music.1 Playing with sexual mores and norms has been one way of signaling rebellion in rock and pop from Little Richard and David Bowie to Annie Lennox. Although many “queer” rock stars turn out to be conventionally heterosexual in their personal lives, a queer aesthetic or sensibility has often been a hallmark of an artistic and transgressive identity in rock. Thus a queer/artistic nexus has existed in rock that has not necessarily been associated with the personal sexual practice of the subject, but rather has been about challenging the normal common sense understanding of gender-aligned, unproblematically, with a biological and anatomically defined sex. This is done by invoking a different way of listening, a queer sensibility, which does and can exist alongside a heterosexual reading.