Through the last long twelve months of chaos, music has kept us going. The musical moments have been kind of wild, whether it was Gaga’s Chromatica Ball going full chaos mode, Taylor breaking Ticketmaster (possibly for good?), or K-pop hitting Broadway.
And who can talk music in 2022 without mentioning Beyoncé carefully curating her LGBTQ+ devotional Renaissance with folks like Honey Dijon, Ts Madison, and Kevin Aviance throughout?
But enough about Queen Ally of the Year™. This year followed in the grand history of most great art being made by LGBTQ+ people, and we have some very shoutout-worthy artists and albums in mind.
As a note, a few excellent pieces didn’t quite qualify for this list. Left At London’s Transgender Street Legend Vol. 3 and Sevdaliza’s Raving Dahlia are both EPs, and Jazmine Sullivan’s Mo’ Tales tracks are attached to last year’s acclaimed Heaux Tales, but each is impeccable.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
Now without further ado, here are ten of our favorite albums of the year by proud LGBTQ+ artists:
Blackberry Rose by Lavender Country
It’s hard to believe how lucky we as an audience are to have received this sophomore project when we did: 49 years after Lavender Country dropped its historic debut album, and just months before the band’s beating heart, Patrick Haggerty, took his final bow. The band has been selling indie copies of Blackberry Rose at their live shows since 2019, but the updated tracklist and alternate versions of the 2022 release feel like a complete project ready to stand alongside their debut. The way that these two works of queer Americana history sound in places like sister albums while being made nearly five decades apart speaks to the enduring nature of the LGBTQ+ spirit. We were, we are, and we will be.
Suggested listens: “I Can’t Shake the Stranger Out of You”, “Stand on Your Man”, “Blackberry Rose”.
blue water road by Kehlani
Resident she/they crush Kehlani peeled back the conflict and complexity from 2020 release It Was Good Until It Wasn’t and found a bit of magic at its heart. blue water road, made in part with drafts intended as deluxe tracks on the last album, takes on a life of its own with clarity and ease. In an accompanying blue water road trip docuseries, the singer leads the audience on a trip through scenes representing different forms of love: for the self, for others, for the spirit. That same high-vibrational focus leads the album. It’s serenity, it’s indulgence, and in Kehlani fashion, it’s top-tier smoking music.
Suggested listens: “everything”, “tangerine”, “get me started”.
Crybaby by Tegan and Sara
All due respect to Midnights, but we’re loving a different “TS10” album this year. Twindie pop pair Tegan and Sara somehow found time between shoots for their acclaimed autobiographical TV show High School to put together one of the greatest high energy-high introspection mixes of the year. All the usual quirk and effervescence of a T&S project are present, but underscored with a sentimentality and reminiscence that just might have been informed by watching their teenage selves be played out in front of them.
Suggested listens: “Yellow”, “Faded Like A Feeling”, “This Ain’t Going Well”.
Dirt Femme by Tove Lo
Tove Lo’s appearance on Drag Race this summer gave the gays just enough time to learn to say her name so we’d be ready to scream it when Dirt Femme hit. This one is for dancing, for loving, and for getting through it all while showing a little cheek. It’s for the Blue Lips stans with emotional issues (honorific, of course). It’s for the girls who wished that Charli XCX “Crash” Himalayas fancam was a motion picture. The enchanting, raw, stripped down ballad “True Romance” in particular would be a Song of the Year contender in the good timeline.
Suggested listens: “True Romance”, “Attention Whore”, “Cute & Cruel”.
Gemini Rights by Steve Lacy
TikTok sounds may have decimated the Billboard charts for a couple years now, but it turns out sometimes they like things because they’re good? Shocking, we know. 24-year-old Steve Lacy has been killing it for years as a guitarist, songwriter, and collaborator to folks like Tyler, the Creator and Vampire Weekend, but the clock app’s listening habits shot the song “Bad Habit” from this sophomore album straight into the stratosphere. The track’s laidback relatability and ear-catching vocal style that helped it take off are the same elements that keep the listener coming back to the project as a whole.
Suggested listens: “Static”, “Amber”, “Give You the World”.
Ivory by Omar Apollo
Omar Apollo‘s mixtapes and EPs to date have been well-received, but none of it prepared fans for the way this debut album would take off. Its mixture of singer-songwriter confessionality and post-Blonde contemporary R&B makes it a great vibing listen with enough intriguing production elements like those throughout “No Good Reason” to keep the listener keyed in. The show-stopping “Evergreen” bridge moment of “You didn’t deserve me at all, at all, at all…” is one of the most memorable musical lines of the year. It certainly helps that Apollo has heartthrob good looks and a personality online audiences find all too relatable, but the songwriting and artistry is there to back up the charm.
Suggested listens: “Petrified”, “En El Olvido”, “Killing Me”.
MUNA by MUNA
MUNA were right to save their eponymous title for this album; it’s hard not to see it as their most defining work upon first listen. On tracks like “Silk Chiffon” and “Runner’s High”, you can hear a version of the band that’s truly arrived in their sound. These sapphic favorites were dropped by RCA back in 2020 and promptly picked up by Phoebe Bridgers’ imprint label under Dead Oceans where they’ve sonically flourished. The energy’s more electric, the emotions are more singular, and the line “You always say that I’m on a high horse, I think that my horse is regular-sized” is camp excellence.
Suggested listens: “Silk Chiffon”, “Runner’s High”, “Anything But Me”.
Night Call by Years & Years
British electropop king Olly Alexander has many things: an enviably queer catalogue, a butt that won’t quit, and a talent to make every song off an album sound like a single. Night Call is one of those crowdpleaser pop records where you can ask someone their favorite track and truly have there be no wrong answers. Their work with producers like Regard and Galantis keeps the sounds varied and interesting, and the Kylie Minogue-fest of a closing act makes the replay button too tempting.
Suggested listens: “A Second to Midnight”, “Crave”, “Hallucination”.
Preacher’s Daughter by Ethel Cain
It’s been nearly a decade since artists like Marina and Melanie Martinez last gave the Tumblr girls a melancholy, dramatic true concept album to make their whole personalities for a little while. While American Teenager isn’t trying to be a new Electra Heart — or to more constant comparisons, a new Lana — it takes some of their same elements of nuclear American tradition and brings them to an emotionally interrogatable forefront. More than anything, it’s an indulgent story of a piece, like a film with a wild runtime that you clear your schedule solely to sit and experience.
Suggested Listens: “Gibson Girl”, “Hard Times”, “A House in Nebraska”.
Technicolor by Madison Rose
While Madison Rose fans don’t have an official name yet — personally, “Rose Garden” feels correct — they stay winning. From “Sunshine” to “Pure Oxygen” to “Valentino”, this indie star brings out gleaming dance tracks that sound like the best parts of 2010s pop never died. We once described her as “engineered in a lab to headline LA Pride in the Park,” and while she did show out on the Pride circuit this summer, one error was written there that this independent album rollout has corrected: no one made Madison Rose but Madison Rose.
Suggested listens: “Better Off Alone”, “Moonlight”, “Thunder”.
Check out all our suggested listens in this handy-dandy playlist!:
thebaddestbabby
Oily Alexander
Terrycloth
Lavender Country is so out tune and off key singing..the music is good..they should have turned on the autotune to get the songs in pitch before recording there album.imo very hard to listen too.
Wheelerman
Bronco by out gay country singer Orville Peck is my hands-down favorite album.