BURSTFrom John Lennon’s takedown of Paul McCartney to the Libertines’ Can’t Stand Me Now, songs by straight men about falling out with their friends were strangely romantic to me
When I was a teenager, in the late 00s in central Scotland, being gay was something I experienced as painful made me feel overwrought. This didn’t match the depiction of gayness I encountered in mainstream culture at the time, which was mostly very cheerful. Almost all of the gay men on my radar were comedians – figures such as Graham Norton and Alan Carr, both of whom I found funny and still admire today, but who were too easy-going and unpretentious to satisfy my desire to see myself as a tortured poet.
When I got to university, I found the representation I was looking for – solemn and beautiful – in writers such as Edmund White and James Baldwin, but earlier in my teenage years I had to make do with what was available: romanticising being gay through songs about straight men falling out with their platonic friends.
Continue reading...