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A History of LGBTQ Music, 1969-2000
by Barry Walters
The definitive history of LGBTQ music, from Stonewall to RuPaul, and its impact on culture and American life.
From the underground dancefloors of the Seventies to the global charts of the Nineties, LGBTQ artists and audiences shaped music's sound, style, and spirit. In Mighty Real, veteran journalist Barry Walters chronicles its LGBTQ history from the Velvet Underground to the 21st century's dawn as he honors the artists who redefined gender, defied tradition, and dared to challenge sexual norms with the help of a record business that wasn't as straight as commonly believed.
Drawing on his decades as a New York- and San Francisco-based music critic, Walters examines how LGBTQ musicians, music industry executives, and fans reshaped the mainstream. He connects the dots between David Bowie's dazzling reinventions, Grace Jones's androgynous glamor, Prince's boundary-shattering sexuality, and the radical candor of the Indigo Girls to prove they're all doing the same thing: fighting oppression.
With exuberance, insight, and encyclopedic knowledge, Walters brings to life the songs and society that filled dancefloors, bedrooms, and streets as he uncovers yesteryear's coded LGBTQ messages that paved the way for today's unabashedly queer hits. Mighty Real is a masterful love letter to the music that liberated generations, and it's written in a page-turning, personal way that blurs distinctions between chronicle and memoir. This is the rare and revolutionary music history told to help you laugh, cry, and then rally against lingering inequality.
"An ebullient love letter to LGBTQ+ and 'gay friendly' musicians... . Walters evocatively draws out how LGBTQ+ musicians battled oppression in their work even as they navigated a record industry that sought to silence sexual nonconformity while profiting off styles gay musicians made fashionable. It adds up to an impressive and expansive celebration of a rich chapter of music history." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Fascinating and revelatory ... Uplifting, endlessly entertaining, and informative, [Mighty Real] honors decades of influential music-makers, their craft, and 'the community these nurturing songs give us—especially when we think we're most alone.' A knowledgeable, high-spirited tribute to queer music through the ages." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A kaleidoscopic journey through the myriad intersections of music, pop culture, and LGBTQIA+ life, showing how queer creativity has shaped the soundtracks of many lives ... Timely and necessary, this book is an encyclopedic manifesto of the radical joy and defiance that LGBTQIA+ artists continue to bring." —Library Journal (starred review)
"[A] wondrous journey ... [Walters] writes thoughtfully and insightfully about the artists and what it is about their material that taps into gay themes and culture ... A bodacious, playfully addictive history for music lovers one and all, no matter their gender or orientation." —Booklist (starred review)
"Mighty Real is an incredibly real reminder that the people who changed music were often the ones told they didn't belong." —Tig Notaro, comic and New York Times bestselling author of I'm Just a Person
This information about Mighty Real was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Barry Walters has spent 40 years documenting the intersection of mainstream and LGBTQ culture. He began his career at The Village Voice — where he came out publicly in a 1986 Pet Shop Boys review — before becoming a fixture at Spin and Rolling Stone. In 1992, Walters' work at the San Francisco Examiner made him the first critic to receive an award from The National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association. Throughout the Nineties, he was The Advocate's music columnist before a decade's worth of writing at Out. Along the way, he's regularly appeared in Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Pitchfork, and other media mainstays. Love Me Like You Should: The Brave and Bold Sylvester, a 2020 mini-documentary he wrote and co-produced for Amazon Music, won a Clio Award.
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