Midwest Princess Chappell Roan, outfitted in her signature drag-inspired style, just drew the largest crowd in Lollapalooza history, cementing her reign as 2024’s top pop royalty. Her rise was a meteoric one—since she dropped her debut album last fall, her Spotify streams have jumped 9,000 percent (literally), your mum is now calling to ask how to pronounce Roan (no, Ma, it’s not “Ro-ANN”), and your 8-year-old cousin is singing her heart out to “Good Luck, Babe!,” a song about battling compulsory heterosexuality in a lesbian situationship.
The deeply queer content of Roan’s music—from slumber party kisses to gay awakenings via boring first dates—is not only relatable, it’s also a major part of her draw. And its impact has been a big topic of conversation in a moment that social media and the actual media have dubbed a pop culture lesbian renaissance. More supporting evidence: Also this year, Reneé Rapp played now-queer Mean Girls antagonist Regina George and dropped music about her real-life gay experiences to a dedicated following of 6 million listeners on Spotify; Victoria Monét earned the most Grammy nominations in a single year for an openly queer Black woman; Billie Eilish wrote a chart-topping banger about giving a girl head; and Julia Fox casually came out on TikTok.
Listen, it’s not wrong to uplift Roan and her sapphic coconspirators—I’m doing the “HOT TO GO!” choreo at my desk right now—but as a queer woman and music obsessive who forecasts trends for fun, I must report that y’all are missing the bigger—and even gayer—picture.
"As a queer music obsessive, I must report that y’all are missing the bigger–and even gayer–picture"
Throughout the past, oh, 30 years or so, this exact cultural phenomenon has happened so many times, I could see it coming from the back row of a Brandi Carlile concert. The cycle is always the same: A big lesbian-coded artist and a few other minor sapphic cultural moments hit the mainstream, and articles and posts proclaiming a lesbian cultural takeover make a splash. We plaster these new-gen queer icons onto Instagram Stories that quickly expire. And then we forget…only to do it all over again, usually in honoujr of Pride Month, the next time around.
Let’s check the receipts: In 1993, a close-up portrait of country crooner k.d. lang graced the cover of New York magazine under the headline “Lesbian Chic” and the magazine dubbed them the first lesbian superstar. On the cover of Vanity Fair that same year, lang posed in a barber’s chair, face slathered in shaving cream, head resting on Cindy Crawford’s cleavage, under the caption, “Crossing Over, Catching Fire.” (The parallels between the story’s description of a lang concert and a 2024 Chappell Roan concert are uncanny: “She leaves them begging for more. It doesn’t seem to matter whether they’re lesbians, gay men, or straight couples; the middle-aged husband next to me is screaming, ‘k.d.—you’re beautiful!’ His wife is just screaming.”)
A decade later, the L Word characters were heralded as “Not Your Mother’s Lesbians” in New York magazine and The Advocate called the moment “lesbian chic, part deux.” By the 2010s, cheers for various lesbian surges picked up in frequency. In 2015, 2018, 2021, 2022 and 2023, we saw breakouts heralded as watershed moments for queer women. Yet here we are again with Roan, like it’s new, in 2024.
The thing is, these “lesbian renaissances” aren’t isolated events that suddenly emerge out of nowhere. It’s frustrating to experience a much-lauded resurgence every 18 months. Frankly, at least in my mind, it dismisses every other time queer folks have contributed to our colourful cultural landscape.
"We need to celebrate the latest sapphic stars and the rich tradition of queer art"
I’m not saying these one-off moments don’t help us look within and feel proud of our own queerness. They do and they should, especially by allowing baby gays to bask in their full glory and experience their own personal renaissances. I would know—as a late bloomer who’s spent the last few years lezzing out to make up for lost time, I can now see that my closeted teenage passion for Tegan and Sara’s Heartthrob, my much more open obsession with Lady Gaga’s entire existence, and my joy over Kate McKinnon joining the cast of SNL, all in 2013, was all part of yet another lesbians-are-redefining-culture moment (this one hailed by some as the “Best. Lesbian. Year. Ever.”).
A few years later, Halsey and Lauren Jauregui’s casually unapologetic queerness on their 2017 track “Strangers” was one of the first times I fully felt represented in real-time as a listener. And to me, that did kind of feel brand-new—because, for me, it was. Now an out and proud queer woman, I still feel the same way when I hear tracks like “Red Wine Supernova” blast through my speakers.
So I’ll be the first to say summer 2024 is no doubt a powerhouse moment for lesbians. But is it really a renaissance when queer folks have always made consistent and powerful contributions to art and music? No. As much as certain artists argue that “Gay Pop” should now be a new genre, we’ve been dominating pop culture and spreading queer joy for longer than Reneé Rapp has been alive.
Want more proof that this incredible non-renaissance “femininomenon” is standing on the shoulders of giants? My favourite example of a queer musician captivating mainstream audiences this year came not from a Gen Z artist but from legendary lesbian folk singer Tracy Chapman’s Grammy’s performance of her 1988 hit “Fast Car.” The track, which made it to number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts when it was released, found a new audience after Luke Combs covered it. It has always been an objectively stunning anthem that people from all walks of life connect with, and now, thanks to this boom in queer music, everyone—the gays, the straights, the moms, and the 8-year-old cousins—is streaming Chapman alongside Chappell.
"We’ve been dominating pop culture and spreading queer joy for longer than Reneé Rapp has been alive"
And for the first time, I can imagine a day when everyone has the opportunity to see themselves in pop culture and we no longer need these specifically labeled lesbian moments at all. We’ll celebrate the latest sapphic stars and the rich tradition of queer art. All at once…for decades to come.
