Mighty Real

A History of LGBTQ Music, 1969-2000

De: Barry Walters

Narrado por: Barry Walters

“An essential book for this moment.”
—Rob Sheffield

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.

Reseñas de la Crítica

Advance Praise for Mighty Real

“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

“Barry Walters has been writing about music from an American queer perspective for five decades. This is his testament: a musical, personal and political history that explores and celebrates the LGBTQ contribution to popular music.”
—Neil Tennant, Pet Shop Boys

“We’re now at a place in our culture where pop’s queerness is acknowledged and celebrated, where LGBTQ pioneers are given their due, when today’s young pop artists (gay, straight or otherwise) celebrate their queer audiences and queer influences. Barry’s writing did much to help this moment arrive. And Mighty Real is an essential book for this moment.”
—Rob Sheffield, New York Times bestselling author of Heartbreak Is the National Anthem

“Witty, incisive, and beautifully written—an illuminating queer reframing of popular music as lived history.”
—Rob Epstein, Oscar-winning director of The Times of Harvey Milk