I Know A Place- MUNA
Music like this is so important – it creates what some people desperately need. It creates a space for people to escape to when life gets hard.
Standing in the Way of Control – Gossip
Bellowed out from the mighty diaphragm of singer Beth Ditto to the chugging riffs of gawky garage guitarist Nathan Howdeshell, Gossip’s Standing in the Way of Control was impossible to avoid in the UK in 2006 and 2007…
Glad to Be Gay – Tom Robinson Band
In the week of Valentine’s Day 1978, an anthemic and yet shocking protest song on a 4-track live EP sneaked under the radar to become a Top 20 hit in Britain. It was a song in which The Tom Robinson Band shamed a nation with a first-hand account of the abject indignity of being gay in 1970s Britain…
Pride – Grace Petrie
Grace Petrie’s bitter-sweet song of solidarity, Pride, movingly articulates the conflicting emotions of life as a gay person in the 21st Century – on the one hand the legacy of dignity earned by 50 years of liberal activism and on the other the rancour at a lifetime of being discriminated against simply for being who you are…
Hot Topic – Le Tigre – Every Name-Check Explained
This long-lost end-of-the-century dance track is nothing less than a reading list of feminist and LGBT cultural and counter-cultural icons. A chorus of female voices chants noteworthy names to a hypnotic beat and the message to those who were still living at that time was clear and unequivocal: “Don’t you stop / I can’t live if you stop”.
Smalltown Boy – Bronski Beat
Rejected by your family and community, your life becomes so unbearable that you would rather give up everything and run than spend another day amongst people who despise you for being who you are. That’s the story behind Smalltown Boy, a UK No.3 hit single in 1984, with an accompanying video that spelled out unflinchingly the emotional agony and physical danger of being one of society’s outcasts in an age of intolerance.
Which Side Are You On? – B. Dolan
Rhode Island rapper B. Dolan calls out the hip-hop haters in this song that samples a folk song written for striking American miners in the 1930s.