It used to be that queer kids had to imagine themselves into love songs. The ones with no pronouns were the easiest: No chance of daydreaming about the cute girl in English class only to hit a “he” like a speed bump.
Otherwise, the best bet was a cross-gender cover that did all the work for you (think Melissa Etheridge doing Springsteen’s “Thunder Road”).
Once, fiddling with the sound on a new computer, I discovered a setting that pitched audio down a few octaves, and I lived briefly, deliriously, in a world where Taylor Swift was a down-home country boy seeking the same.
But in the age of King Princess, Troye Sivan, and Hayley Kiyoko, there’s no longer much need for this. Gay teenagers, at last, have access to songs that tell their.
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