Who Was Your First?
A survey of Sapphic pop touchstones, from Ani to Billie and back again.
I’ve been working on a project about the history of Sapphic pop for the better part of the last year, and part of my research has been asking queer women their musical touchstones — aka the artists they were listening to when they were first coming out or coming into their sexuality. It’s become my party trick of sorts because it’s a guaranteed way to get dykes talking.
The answers vary depending on where I am and who I am asking. Many white women of a certain age will point to the Indigo Girls, but for my younger Black friend in her 30s, it was her mother’s Meshell Ndegeocello records. A recent talk with Yale Students in a Pop Sapphicisms class revealed Hayley Kiyoko as their entry point. My first girlfriend was such an Ani DiFranco devotee that her entire high school bedroom was plastered in Righteous Babe.
I’ve been to several Sapphic shows lately, looking for crossover in the crowds. Billie Eilish’s show at the Kia Forum was overrun with Zilenials in oversized jerseys and tomboyish cargo shorts as the night’s theme called for: “Dress Like Billie.” A Team Dresch 30th anniversary in Portland reuniting The Need and The Third Sex was blissfully 40+ dykes and queers in typical Pacific Norwest gear: aging crust punks and Patagonia-wearing butches in boots. The sold-out CSS show in downtown L.A. this week had, strangely, a lot of straight people on the floor but cast members from The L Word in V.I.P. I’m anticipating the Ani show I’m going to on Friday will not be so different from the first and last time I saw her 20 years ago in Chicago — a melting pot of nostalgiac gay Gen Xers and Xennials like myself hoping to shout along to their favorite song among her extensive repertoire. (Some of us, in true Ani form, are bound to leave disappointed.)
I’ve been asking about Ani a lot, in particular, because I was a little late to her party. By the time I saw her live in 2003, some of the fandom was fading. Though she’d at some point been open about her bisexuality, queer women weren’t thrilled about her relationships with men and simultaneously less interested in her newer music. That had me wondering what had changed in the actual songwriting, if anything at all. I didn’t hear any explicit lesbian lyrics in Ani’s work. Was it simply a persona she embodied when she had bright green dreadlocks and a nose ring? Her shaved head? Was it innuendo in songs like “Both Hands” and “Little Plastic Castle” — a “me and you against the world” vibe that Tracy Chapman shared in “Fast Car”? The Indigo Girls didn’t use she/her pronouns or explicitly lesbian lyrics, and at the beginning of their career, they didn’t discuss their sexuality on the record. It seemed there was a kind of Sapphic knowing that pervaded these fandoms, and though they were clearly on display at shows and on Ani message boards like the one my ex frequented, there was still so much detective work required to figure out what could potentially apply to them or their lives. The same investigation happens today with Gaylors intent on finding the links between Taylor Swift and Sappho despite her clear interest in the typical white male archetype. Perhaps that’s part of the fun for queer fans, sussing out the Sapphic, even where they might be none.
To her credit, Meshell Ndegeocello had a clearly Sapphic song with Queen Pen called “Girlfriend” in 1999. Imagine Ani singing, “Now how you just gon' be playa hatin' on me/'Cause I got mad bitches just wanting me?”
Today’s Sapphics have much more to work with, but I’m not bitter or envious — I’m “Curious” like Hayley Kiyoko. Sapphic artists are sustained by their audiences, and I like to think about those relationships and how crucial they are to those Sapphic audience members sustaining themselves. I’d love to know from you, reader, who was your first? What was your Sapphic musical touchstone, and why? Was it a feeling? A knowing? A wink-wink or Melissa Ferrick telling you, fuck a fast car, she’ll hold you up and drive?
Feel free to borrow this line of questioning the next time you’re trying to chat someone up, and please report back.
I find it this so fascinating! Tegan and Sara were probably my entry point, the only lesbians I ‘knew‘ in high school (someone‘s older sister and her gf) were big fans and naturally I followed in their footsteps.