A Brief History of Queer Women in Country Music

With the release of Kacey Musgraves’ album Golden Hour, queer folks have started to embrace country music. I look at the history of queer women specifically in the genre. Watch out! The gays are coming for your cowboy tunes!

Written by Kaci Pelias

Illustrated by Mark Yoder

A few years ago, the idea of listening to country music was, to me, the worst possible thing I could subject my ears to. When asked what type of music I listened to, I would respond, “ANYTHING but country,” knowing full well I wasn’t a huge fan of screamo either.

I wasn’t the only one in my high school to feel this way. My friends and I reveled in the solidarity of being country music haters in Texan suburbia. We were only familiar with bro-country: the sexism-laced, male-dominated sub-genre popularized by baseball players and Young Life boys — the only version of the genre that really received mainstream attention. As closeted theatre girls, we considered ourselves activists, rolling our eyes at the pickup trucks blasting Luke Bryan as they drove by.

Skip ahead a few summers, and the queer community has reclaimed “y’all,” cowboy hats, and even country music. The cause? Kacey Musgraves’ album Golden Hour. A country-pop collection of mostly sweet love songs written by a feminist, Golden Hour was quickly claimed by queer men everywhere. This wasn’t surprising. The gay male community has historically been a large percentage of Dolly Parton’s fanbase.

But does country make room for queer women?

YES.

Surprisingly, many well-known outspoken queer female musicians are country artists. k.d. lang paved the way in the 80s with her debut album Shadowland, which led to her Juno Award nominations, a Canadian music awards ceremony. lang, a lesbian, came out in the early 1990s and feared that her career would suffer, especially being in the country music industry, but she still saw success.

Around the same time as lang, another queer country girl was catching people’s attention: Melissa Etheridge. Coming out as a lesbian the year after lang (thanks k.d.), Etheridge’s clout in the queer community comes from her appearance on Ellen’s iconic Puppy Dog episode, where Ellen Degeneres came out to the nation on their televisions.

And, of course, this article would be lacking without the mention of The Indigo Girls. One of the most well-known and stereotypically lesbian music groups, The Indigo Girls took off in the 90s with their country-folk hit “Closer to Fine,” a gay anthem.

With Kacey Musgraves and the legacies of k.d. Lang, Melissa Etheridge, and The Indigo Girls (they aren’t dead, just inactive), maybe there is room for queer women and femmes in country music. Maybe we can let go of the internalized hatred of cowboys and open fields to embrace a genre that might actually be good. Maybe all country needs is more gay artists.