Melissa Etheridge released an album in 2021 when I wasn't paying attention. The album came out a year ago, yesterday. The video for today's song was released in August of last year. I have always liked her music. I own several CDs - which are apparently anachronisms in this age of digital music. I never managed to see her in concert.
I usually don't like videos, but this one is set in a lesbian bar (real or mythical? doesn't matter) that reminds me of a couple of bars I frequented in my youth. Well, minus the ever-present cloud of cigarette smoke. And none of them had live music. Lesbians are famous for having no money, and lesbian bars were famous for just holding on, or going out of business. Paying for live entertainment was out of the question.
It is also a bit comforting to see that I'm not the only person who gained weight during the COVID insanity. Or maybe it is age. We are both the same age, after all.
This is "As Cool As You Try" by Melissa Etheridge from her 2021 album One Way Out.
An interesting side-note to this album, is that the songs were written back in the dark ages, before Melissa came out as a lesbian. Melissa Etheridge says songs on new album were written before coming out.
Etheridge told The Desert Sun the songs were written before she publicly came out as a lesbian in 1993 at the Triangle Ball, which was an LGBTQ celebration of then-President Bill Clinton’s first inauguration.
The example she used is the song "Wild Wild Wild," which is about having an affair with a married woman. That wasn't ready for prime-time at the time.
She also recruited original band members to appear on the album, so it sounds a lot like her early stuff.
oh pffffffffffffffftttttttt everyone knew in the early 90's, except for me.
ReplyDeleteI liked her music, had (still do) her CD's including a bunch of singles and my buddy got us some tickets to a concert up in Century City (CA). we go (it's like 1991) and of the 5000 or so people there, there were maybe, MAYBE 4 men. (including us). it was like OMG, really????? (oldsters will understand). And all the "couples" were 1 very butch woman and 1 very feminine woman. Lots of flowers being put up on stage, etc.
it was quite the education for my early 20's in the early 90's.
i still like her music.
People knew, and they didn't know.
DeleteCelebrity sports stars were still bearding for each other in the 1990s. They had to if they wanted to get hired and get promotion contracts. That story line was included in the 1st season of The L-Word in 2004 or 5? (I forget when it came out - I never really liked that show.)
Even when Xena came along in 1995 it took a couple of years for the nature of the audience to make itself known, and the jokes work their way into the scripts.
The gay IKEA ad in the mid 1990s got a reaction of at least one bomb threat against an IKEA store.
Subaru didn't start their underground advertising to Lesbians until 96 or 97. And even then it was limited to in-jokes being used for the license plates on cars in the ad. ("Camp Out" and "Xena LVR") And Volkswagen's "gay friendly" ad from the coming out episode of Ellen was even more vague than Subaru.
It's even worse in country music. Chely Wright was basically dropped when she came out, and only made some of a resurgence 10 years later. Her music is still not accepted by the country crowd, by and large.
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