Table Of ContentQueerness in Pop Music
This book investigates the phenomenon of queering in popular music and
video, interpreting the music of numerous pop artists, styles, and idioms.
The focus falls on artists, such as Lady Gaga, Madonna, Boy George,
Diana Ross, Rufus Wainwright, David Bowie, Azealia Banks, Zebra Katz,
Freddie Mercury, the Pet Shop Boys, George Michael, and many others.
Hawkins builds his concept of queerness upon existing theories of opacity
and temporality, which involves a creative interdisciplinary approach to
musical interpretation. He advocates a model of analysis that involves both
temporal-specific listening and biographic-oriented viewing. Music analysis
is woven into this, illuminating aspects of parody, nostalgia, camp, naïveté,
masquerade, irony, and mimesis in pop music. One of the principal aims is
to uncover the subversive strategies of pop artists through a wide range of
audiovisual texts that situate the debates on gender and sexuality within
an aesthetic context that is highly stylized and ritualized. Queerness in Pop
Music also addresses the playfulness of much pop music, offering insights
into how discourses of resistance are mediated through pleasure. Given that
pop artists, songwriters, producers, directors, choreographers, and engineers
all contribute to the final composite of the pop recording, it is argued that
the staging of any pop act is a collective project. The implications of this are
addressed through structures of gender, ethnicity, nationality, class, and sex-
uality. Ultimately, Hawkins contends that queerness is a performative force
that connotes futurity and utopian promise.
Stan Hawkins is Professor of Musicology at the University of Oslo and
Adjunct Professor at the University of Agder. His research fields involve music
analysis, popular musicology, gender studies, and audiovisual theory. From
2010 to 2014 he led a Norwegian state-funded project, Popular Music and
Gender in a Transcultural Context. He is also author of Settling the Pop Score:
Pop Texts and Identity Politics (2002), The British Pop Dandy: M asculinity,
Popular Music and Culture (2009) and co-author of Prince: The Making of
a Pop Music Phenomenon (with Sarah Niblock, 2011). His edited volumes
include Music, Space and Place: Popular Music and Cultural Identity (2004),
Essays on Sound and Vision (with John Richardson, 2007), Pop Music and
Easy Listening (2011), and C ritical M usicological Reflections:Essays in
Honour of Derek B. Scott (2012).
Routledge Studies in Popular Music
1 Popular Music Fandom 6 David Bowie
Identities, Roles and Practices Critical Perspectives
Edited by Mark Duffett Edited by Eoin Devereux,
Aileen Dillane, and Martin
2 Britishness, Popular Music, and J. Power
National Identity
The Making of Modern 7 Globalization and Popular
Britain Music in South Korea
Irene Morra Sounding Out K-Pop
Michael Fuhr
3 Lady Gaga and Popular Music
Performing Gender, Fashion, 8 Popular Music Industries and
and Culture the State
Edited by Martin Iddon and Policy Notes
Melanie L. Marshall Shane Homan, Martin Cloonan,
and Jen Cattermole
4 Sites of Popular Music Heritage
Memories, Histories, Places 9 Goth Music
Edited by Sara Cohen, Robert From Sound to Subculture
Knifton, Marion Leonard, and Isabella van Elferen and Jeffrey
Les Roberts Andrew Weinstock
5 Queerness in Heavy 10 Queerness in Pop Music
Metal Music Aesthetics, Gender Norms, and
Metal Bent Temporality
Amber R. Clifford-Napoleone Stan Hawkins
Queerness in Pop Music
Aesthetics, Gender Norms,
and Temporality
Stan Hawkins
First published 2016
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Taylor & Francis
The right of Stan Hawkins to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hawkins, Stan.
Queerness in pop music: aesthetics, gender norms, and temporality / by Stan Hawkins.
pages cm. — (Routledge studies in popular music; 10)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Popular music—Social aspects. 2. Homosexuality and popular music.
3. Gender identity in music. 4. Popular music—Performances. I. Title.
ML3470.H39 2015
781.64086’64—dc23 2015029588
ISBN: 978-1-138-82087-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-74363-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
Contents
List of Figures, Tables, and Examples vii
Acknowledgments ix
1 Setting the Stage: Aesthetics, Gender Norms, and Temporality 1
2 Love: A Very Queer Construct 34
3 ‘In and Out’: Games of Truth and the Confessional 62
4 Applause, Applause: Art into Pop 94
5 ‘Talking Blah Blah’: Camp into Queer 133
6 To Be a Boy? Masculinity and Queer Aesthetics 164
7 Futurity and Passion’s Compulsion 196
Bibliography 223
Names Index 233
Index of Recordings 241
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List of Figures, Tables, and Examples
Figures
1.1 Model of analysis 1
2.1 Boy George in the video ‘Do You Really Want to Hurt Me’ 46
3.1 Mick Ronson and David Bowie in the video ‘Jean Genie’ 69
3.2 Madonna in the video ‘Hung Up’ 77
3.3 Annie Lennox in the video ‘I Need a Man’ 83
3.4 Shirley Manson in the video ‘Androgyny’ 87
4.1 Lady Gaga in the video ‘Applause’ 98
4.2 Ysan Roche getting ready for the kill in the video ‘Bass Gun’ 105
4.3 Nicki Minaj in the video ‘Anaconda’ 116
4.4 Drake and Minaj in the video ‘Anaconda’ 119
5.1 Le1f in the video ‘Wut’ 134
5.2 Rufus Wainwright in three personae in the video ‘Out of
the Game’ 138
5.3 From washroom to disco in the video ‘Outside’ 141
5.4 Jay Kay in the video ‘Space Cowboy’ 148
5.5 Justin Timberlake cloned in the video ‘Rock Your Body’ 153
5.6 Azealia Banks in the video ‘Atlantis’ 155
5.7 Audio Waveform and Spectrogram in ‘Atlantis’ 156
6.1 Antony Hegarty in the video ‘Epilepsy Is Dancing’ 174
6.2 Janelle Monáe jamming in the video ‘Tightrope’ 180
6.3 Kurt Cobain in the video ‘In Bloom’ 190
7.1 Conchita Wurst in the video ‘Rise Like A Phoenix’ 197
7.2 The Supreme Fabulettes in the video ‘A Drag Queen is a
Cowboy’s Best Friend’ 203
7.3 Mykki Blanco and boyfriend in the video ‘She Gutta’ 208
7.4 Zebra Katz in the video ‘Tear The House Up’ 211
7.5 Le1f in the video ‘Soda’ 217
Tables
4.1 Production devices in ‘Skin Tight’ 107
4.2 Music, visuals and narrative in ‘High School’ 114
6.1 Song structure and harmonic layout in ‘Tightrope’ 178
7.1 Le1f’s vocal costuming in ‘Soda’ 216
viii List of Figures, Tables, and Examples
Examples
2.1 Main guitar riff in ‘Free’ 35
2.2 Vocal hook – Do you really want to make me cry 44
2.3 Vocal hook – I want the whole world to celebrate 50
2.4 Groove pattern in ‘Celebrate’ 50
2.5 Vocal phrase – I wanna come home 52
2.6 Bass riff in ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ 54
3.1 The ‘Jean Genie’ riff 68
3.2 Melodic riff in ‘I’m Coming Out’ 80
4.1 Vocal embellishing in C Section – ‘Yoü and I’ 101
4.2 Melodic menace in chorus of ‘Bass Gun’ 104
4.3 Bass line in ‘Anaconda’ 117
4.4 Three-note backing vocal motif in ‘The Past is a
Grotesque Animal’ 125
5.1 Rapped line with counter-melody in ‘Atlantis’ 158
6.1 Verse – ‘In Bloom’ 188
6.2 Chorus – ‘In Bloom’ 188
7.1 Bass line in ‘Tear the House Up’ 212
7.2 Bass line and rap vocals in ‘Soda’ 215
Acknowledgments
This book has been a most pleasurable experience and great fun to write.
Crucial to the writing process has been the generous support and encour-
agement from the Department of Musicology, University of Oslo, without
which the project would not have been possible. This has been an amazing
place to carry out my work. Also, I have benefited greatly from a gener-
ous research grant I received from the Norwegian Research Council from
2010 to 2014 to lead a research project entitled Popular Music and Gender
in a Transcultural Context. In particular, my appreciation goes to mem-
bers of my team who continuously sparked intellectual excitement: Mats
Johansson, Birgitte Sandve, Jon Mikkel Broch Ålvik, as well as the proj-
ect’s two research assistants, Craig Jennex and Mari Paus. During the past
years I have been fortunate enough to supervise a very special group of
doctoral students engaged in many of the ideas presented in this study, who
deserve specific mention: Kyrre Tromm Lindvig, Marita Buanes Djupvik,
Eirik Askerøi, Cláudia Azevedo, Per Elias Drabløs, Erlend Hegdal, Agnete
Eilertsen, Tormod Anundsen, Lars K. Norberg, and Kai Arne Hansen. Their
enthusiasm and critical scholarship has been an invaluable resource for the
pursuit of many of my ideas. My gratitude also extends to all my under-
graduate and postgraduate students, who, over the years, have significantly
enriched my work.
Parts of this material were presented in various versions at events, includ-
ing keynote addresses at the Nordic conference for the International Asso-
ciation for the Study of Popular Music at Roskilde University, Denmark in
2012 and the ‘Queer Sounds and Spaces’ Symposium at the University of
Turku, Finland in 2013. In addition I am grateful for various invitations to
hold lectures at Laval University in Quebec, Canada, Goldsmiths C ollege in
London, and Humboldt University in Berlin, which had a direct impact on
the formulation of many of my concepts. An invitation by Allan F. Moore
to attend a special session on popular music analysis at the E uroMac
conference, University of Leuven, Belgium, in 2014, provided me with a
necessary platform to air my approaches to music analysis in the company
of distinguished scholars. During the writing of this book my contribution
to two groundbreaking volumes of interdisciplinary music research had a
strong bearing on my work: The Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual
