Divas know what we want, and give us something different…
By Paul Gallant
Kylie is hot again. Katy bombed. No matter if Gaga now cares more about Hollywood than Billboard, her fans will never abandon her. Nor will Madonna’s, Shakira’s, Barbra’s. Rihanna is a big tease. Was Gwen, who has a new album out, ever a diva? Has Cardi B become one?
What does it even take to be a diva – to create an obsessive base of queer fans who will buy anything you release, crowd into your concerts no matter the ticket price, defend you against detractors and admit to your defects only among the most trusted fanatics (“Okay, sure, Hard Candy might have been a miss, but anyone who says anything about how Madge looks is a misguided troll.”)
When Katy Perry’s summer single “Women’s World” and its album 143 hit the charts dead on arrival earlier this year, many critics blamed it on politics and changing musical tastes. Katy had worked with Dr. Luke, whom Kesha had accused of abuse, and the video for “Women’s World” seemed more like a celebration of female objectification than a critique of it. The whole project reminded people of how cringy the lyrics were that had made her famous with the queers back in 2008: “I kissed a girl just to try it / I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it.”
That might have hurt her with women, straights and non-binary people. But gay male fans rarely demand that their divas be politically astute. It’s nice if the singers they worship love them back, and have the right opinions, but it’s not a job requirement. Doja Cat has built up a strong queer following despite teenaged homophobic comments about Earl Sweatshirt and Tyler the Creator, which she followed with a halfhearted apology: “I don’t think I hate gay people. Gay is okay.” Allyship is optional, though active homophobia is a no-no. The reputation of the late Donna Summer remains tarnished because of comments she may or may not have made at a concert in 1983.
One of my favourite anecdotes in all of pop music history is when, back in the 1970s, the guys behind the band Chic, Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, got an idea for a song after hanging out with a group of Diana Ross impersonators in the washroom of the New York trans club GG’s Barnum Room. Based on that night, the two straight guys wrote “I’m Coming Out” for Diana Ross, who was trying to reboot her career. Ross loved the song, but initially had no idea that it was queer content. “She didn’t understand that that was a gay thing, that that was a person saying, ‘I’m coming out of the closet,’” Rodgers has said in interviews. When told about the meaning of the song, Ross got nervous. She worried that it would sound like she herself was coming out – which would likely have been career suicide in 1980. But she recorded “I’m Coming Out” and released it as the second single of her new album, and it went to number five on the Billboard Hot 100. Ross remains an icon and a gay diva, if not in the contemporary top 10.
No, Katy Perry’s failure – for the gays, anyway – was not politics. It was two other flagrant violations of divahood.
The first infraction is trying too hard. Gay fans don’t expect divas to always be on the cutting edge (with one exception I’ll mention in a moment). But you can’t just run around the gay cliché candy shop gathering everything that you think will seduce us. “Women’s World” borrows melodically from Gaga’s “Stupid Love,” takes its chord progression from Madonna’s “Express Yourself” and echoes the lyrics of Shania Twain’s “She’s Not Just a Pretty Face.” You can’t take other divas’ greatest hits and make a hit out of it – and Gaga had already stolen “Express Yourself” for “Born This Way.”
Sure, the gays still shriek when the 1991 Crystal Waters club hit, “Gypsy Woman (She’s Homeless)” comes on, just like we’ll love anything that sounds like Robin S.’s 1993 “Show Me Love.” But don’t marry these sounds, as Perry does in “I’m His, He’s Mine,” to desperate and possessive straightness: “I’m every woman he knows exists / I’m his main, I’m his side / I’m every woman that’s in his mind.” And the whole point of using classic house beats is to put something completely fresh over them, as Kiesza did in 2014’s “Hideaway.”
Our favourite divas always hold something back. Madonna’s “I’m not sorry – take it or leave it” attitude may alienate her from some potential fans, but it makes gay men want to be her. We envy the power to be aloof. We all want the power to be Barbra, hiding away from public view until we are ready to give to the world exactly what we want to give to the world – and not what the world wants from us. What do we know about Beyoncé? Only what Beyoncé wants us to know about Beyoncé. She gives us glimpses of her thoughts and feelings exclusively through art, and even then she doesn’t overexplain what her art is doing and where it’s going next (except maybe in all the credits she gives to those who contribute to and influence her music). If Beyoncé’s next album was a mashup of Czech polka music and Mexican huapango, the gays would say they love the new direction – declare that it proves her genius – even before they googled “huapango.”
Divas know what we want, and give us something different. They teach us something new to want and then, next time out, give us another new thing. Rihanna is probably more of a diva now – nine years into punishing us by withholding a new album – than she was in 2016 when Anti came out. Her silence elevated her diva quality. Whenever R9 comes out, and whatever it sounds like, gay men will be the first to stream it on repeat.
This takes us to the second infraction. Reinvention is a necessity. If Madonna is the favourite diva of so many gay men of a certain age, it’s mostly because reinvention is built into her brand. Until things started to smear in her later career, every album, every concert had some twist, a layer added or removed, a genre embraced or at least dabbled with. While sexuality has been at the core of Madonna legend, her take on sex has ranged from coquettish to whorish to sentimental to vampish to queer. Cher went from variety-show host to rocker chick to club-music queen to movie star to self-satirist over her 50-year career. Any day now, she’ll start doing installation art.
The demand for reinvention has been tricky for an artist like Kylie, who established herself as a pixie-like dancefloor diva and stayed in that lane for most of her career. Kylie’s country-ish Golden, released in 2018, was one of her weakest-selling albums, though 2020’s Disco, which was a supersized version of her disco pixie brand, didn’t do well either. It’s a weird balance. Zigging in an uncommitted trend-following way can hurt you, but leaning too hard into the established brand can leave fans bored. Why we love an artist should be understood – calling attention to it seems crass. “Padam Padam,” released in 2023, was a brilliant and subtle restatement of purpose for Kylie. Ideally, her image and genre should remain somewhat constant – it’s the musical production, the sonic texture that she’s an expert at reinventing. The woozy whispers of “Padam Padam” seemed subversive and just the right kind of silly.
Silliness is the opposite of trying too hard. But then again, trying too hard can also be silly. While Gaga’s 2013 album, Artpop, seemed pretentious and indulgent when it was first released, the passage of time has made it seem pleasantly ludicrous. Artpop might be trying too hard (infraction number one) but in a way that’s unhinged, and so endearing. (See also: The #FreeBritney movement.)
What we’re looking for in a diva isn’t someone who’s our best friend, someone who gives us validation. A true diva is someone who shows us how to follow a singular path without apology – and then, when the straight people aren’t looking, gives us a knowing wink.
PAUL GALLANT is a Toronto-based writer and editor who writes about travel, innovation, city building, social issues (particularly LGBT issues) and business for a variety of national and international publications. He’s done time as lead editor at the loop magazine in Vancouver as well as Xtra and fab in Toronto. His debut novel, Still More Stubborn Stars, published by Acorn Press, is out now.
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