MIGHTY REAL

A comprehensive journey through the annals of LGBTQ+ music from the past four decades.

As a veteran music industry journalist and critic, Walters has dedicated the past four decades to documenting and preserving the history of the queer music scene. Here, he turns his vast expertise into an expansive retrospective of musical performers and the mark they made not only on their respective genres, but the impact and influence they continue to have on global queer communities. Despite industry decision-makers who, 57 years after Stonewall, “still find reasons to nix or marginalize undisguised queer content in most pop music,” Walters writes, there is certainly room for celebration, and he begins with a commemorative nod to the 1960s, when free-thinking artists like Lou Reed, Laura Nyro, Janis Joplin, Queen, Elton John, and David Bowie defined a decade particularly appealing to queer audiences for their wildly alternative artistry and defiant lyricism. Walters writes fondly about the bawdy songs of Bette Midler, who once entertained gay bathhouse crowds in the 1970s, the Motown era unifying racial and sexual minorities with soulful rhythms, and onward into the birth of the electrifying disco era that ignited queer nightlife dance floors across the globe to the sounds of Sylvester, ABBA, and a controversial Donna Summer. Walters also draws on interviews he has personally conducted with artists such as Luther Vandross, Dolly Parton, and K.D. Lang, and the results are consistently fascinating and revelatory. Though most artists are queer-identified or “adjacent,” there are several Walters mentions who are culturally allied with the LGBTQ+ movement and have made artistic contributions to the unity and equality of the queer community, among them Madonna, Whitney Houston, and Nirvana. Uplifting, endlessly entertaining, and informative, the anthology honors decades of influential music-makers, their craft, and “the community these nurturing songs give us—especially when we think we’re most alone.”

A knowledgeable, high-spirited tribute to queer music through the ages.