Critiques of today’s pop music are easy to come by. You don’t have to look terribly far to find writers lamenting contemporary artists’ reliance on auto-tune, banal lyricism and gimmicky performances. But there is another recent trend on the top-40 airwaves so ubiquitous that even the casual listener can’t help but notice: the straight ally-penned LGBTQ empowerment anthem.
In the post-It Gets Better world in which we live, everyone from Katy Perry and P!nk to Lily Allen and even Taylor Swift has joined in on the fun, releasing catchy singles and edgy music videos specifically targeting LGBTQ young people. Being an LGBTQ young person myself, I’ve been told by various pop stars that I’m a firework, that I’m perfect, that I was born this way and so on.
While these allied celebrities have their hearts in a well-intentioned place, I nevertheless plead: Straight people, stop trying to empower me.
It’s not that these artists mean badly, but their attempts at LGBTQ affirmation are inherently condescending and myopic. In her Grammy-nominated song “Brave,” singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles uses the second-person voice to urge her LGBTQ listeners to “be brave” and come out, saying that “nothing’s gonna hurt” more than staying closeted. The astronomically high rates of violence, abuse and familial rejection faced by LGBTQ people beg to differ, but Sara doesn’t mention any of that.
In his misguided marriage equality anthem “Same Love” (also Grammy-nominated), rapper Macklemore describes the plight of being an LGBTQ young person “plagued by a pain in their heart,” all the while taking every precaution to clarify that he’s straight. He mentions the high suicide rate for LGBTQ youth in one line, and then in the next declares that marriage equality is “a damn good place to start.” Really? Are the suicidal LGBTQ youth not a better place to start? The ones he just talked about?
Of course, I couldn’t be so cynical as to think these songs aren’t without their merits. If any member of the LGBTQ community finds solace or joy in “Brave” or “Same Love,” then the songwriters have done a wonderful thing. And yes, there is a valid argument to be made in favor of LGBTQ identity becoming normalized in mainstream media.
But I would urge LGBTQ people to look further than the top of the Billboard charts for affirmation. Personally, I prefer to look to the work of LGBTQ artists themselves, artists like Angel Haze, Jay Brannan, Le1f and Mary Lambert (whose “She Keeps Me Warm” provided the hook for “Same Love”), among many others. These artists provide first-person accounts of living as an LGBTQ person, which are, at their core, necessary, engaging and, yes, empowering.
Noah Cannon is a junior majoring in telecommunication and film. His column runs biweekly on Tuesdays.
