Requisite gay pride entry
Last week, Towleroad linked to a bevy of MP3s by gay musicians offered up by Hypeful. The list contains the usual indie-ish suspects: Rufus Wainwright, Anthony & the Johnsons, Sleater-Kinney, Pansy Division, the Magnetic Fields.
They’re not the usual mainstream gay pop figures — Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, Boy George — but they’re not exactly … undiscovered either. I was hoping to make some new discoveries, but no one in the Hypeful entry was unknown to me.
So I’m going to extend Hypeful’s offerings with a few artists previously mentioned on this site. It’s not as extensive a list as Hypeful’s, and a number of these files were offered before.
Garrin Benfield, "Don’t Panic"
The Butchies, "Make Yr Life"
Ex-Boyfriends, "Him for Me"
The Gossip, "Standing in the Way of Control"
Ari Gold, "Wave of You"
James William Hindle, "Silence"
Levi Kreis, "I Should Go"
Ivri Lider, "Af Echad Mishnaynu" (Neither of Us)
Jonathan Mendelsohn, "Forgiveness"
Dylan Rice, "March of the Misunderstood"
Sacha Sacket, "I Just Can’t"
Some comments:
- The Jonathan Mendelsohn track is the kind of music I would only listen to if it were sung by a Japanese pop star. But I’m really drawn to Mendelsohn’s voice, and the retro-80s feel of the track doesn’t sound forced. And, yes, he’s kind of hot.
- Not enough women on this list.
- Levi Kreis is the gay male Onitsuka Chihiro. I don’t think I would have given his piano album a fighting chance otherwise.
- The Garrin Benfield track is wholly unrepresentative of the album from which it comes. He’s something of a folkie.
- Listen to the Ivri Lider track on headphones. I love those Yiddish consonants.
- The Butchies are defunct. But Make Yr Life deserves to be remembered.
- These files are set to self-destruct after two weeks.