Though frequently ignored by the music mainstream, queer and transgender country and Americana artists have made essential contributions as musicians, performers, songwriters, and producers. Queer Country blends ethnographic research with analysis and history to provide the first in-depth study of these artists and their work. Shana Goldin-Perschbacher delves into the careers of well-known lesbian artists like k.d. lang and Amy Ray and examines the unlikely success of singer-songwriter Patrick Haggerty, who found fame forty years after releasing the first out gay country album. She also focuses on later figures like nonbinary transgender musician Rae Spoon and renowned drag queen country artist Trixie Mattel; and on recent breakthrough artists like Orville Peck, Amythyst Kiah, and chart-topping Grammy-winning phenomenon Lil Nas X. Many of these musicians place gender and sexuality front and center even as it complicates their careers. But their ongoing efforts have widened the circle of country/Americana by cultivating new audiences eager to connect with the artists' expansive music and personal identities.
Detailed and one-of-a-kind, Queer Country reinterprets country and Americana music through the lives and work of artists forced to the margins of the genre's history.
|Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
CHAPTER ONE: Queer Country and Sincerity 25
CHAPTER TWO: Genre Trouble 70
CHAPTER THREE: Rurality and Journey as Queer and Trans Musical Narratives 125
CHAPTER FOUR: (Mis)representation, Ownership, and Appropriation 153
CHAPTER FIVE: Masks, Sincerity, and (Re)claiming Country Music 172
Notes 201
Discography 229
Bibliography 235
Index 251
|"A dynamic, much-needed read." —Variety"Essential Reading." —No Depression
"Dazzling." —Country Queer
"An important work." —Washington Blade
"Shana Goldin-Perschbacher's examination of the history of the artists that proudly declared their sexuality displays how the fearlessness of earlier generations made things possible for today's artists that previously weren't." —The Boot
|Shana Goldin-Perschbacher is an assistant professor of music studies in the Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University.
