In 2019, Billie Eilish was still in her “I love dick” era, which is why “wish you were gay,” initially written when she was fourteen, appeared on her debut, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? Placed on the record as track six, between “all the good girls go to hell” and “when the party’s over,” “wish you were gay” is, in many ways, one of the most sonically divergent tracks on the record, perhaps precisely because it was among the first to be written, back in 2015, when bandying the word “gay” around in certain ways was still decidedly safer (in terms of avoiding “being canceled”) in a world where Gen Z hadn’t yet come of age.
By 2019, using it in such a casual manner as a means to invoke Eilish’s feelings of rejection and inadequacy was not exactly “kosher.” Worse still (and more than somewhat ironic, considering Eilish’s presently unveiled queerness), Eilish was accused by some in the LGBTQIA+ community of queerbaiting. Even though the message of the song itself isn’t at all about positioning herself as gay (even if the title might belie that). In fact, she’s about as “straight woman” as they come on this track in terms of wanting the male object of her affection to be a homo so as to spare her pride from being wounded. In this sense, too, the queer community took offense over the supposed trivialization of gay men as a “joke” song. And yes, Eilish did inform PopBuzz during a 2019 interview, “The whole idea of the song is, it’s kind of a joke.” One that only resonated with the straight girls she was appealing to at that time. Back when she was still convinced that she was one. Though, later, in a 2024 interview with Rolling Stone, she would discuss how most people assumed she was at least a little bit gay, commenting, “I know everybody’s been thinking this about me for years and years, but I’m only figuring out myself now.” And yes, the clues were there, like, for a start, Eilish’s sartorial style…or the pajama party in the video for “Lost Cause” that comes across as much more lesbianic than Ariana Grande’s similarly-premised “34+35 Remix” video.
In another part of the interview, Eilish addresses how Variety essentially outed her in two ways back in late 2023. First, in the article that accompanied her “Power of Women” cover. Apparently taking that title to heart, Eilish mused, “I’ve never really felt like I could relate to girls very well. I love them so much. I love them as people. I’m attracted to them as people. I’m attracted to them for real,” adding, for good measure, “I have deep connections with women in my life, the friends in my life, the family in my life. I’m physically attracted to them. But I’m also so intimidated by them and their beauty and their presence.”
When Eilish subsequently attended the Variety Hitmakers event in December, she was asked if she “intended” to come out in such an overt way in the article. Eilish replied, “No I didn’t. But I kind of thought, ‘Wasn’t it obvious?’ I didn’t realize people didn’t know. I just don’t really believe in it. I’m just like, ‘Why can’t we just exist?’ I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I just didn’t talk about it. Whoops.” Later, in the abovementioned Rolling Stone article, Eilish would reflect of that moment, “I went into Billie Eilish interview mode, [like], ‘Oh, I don’t care. Yeah, I’ll say whatever. Wasn’t it obvious?’ And then afterwards I was like, ‘Wait. It wasn’t obvious to me.’” She also mentioned, “I was never planning on talking about my sexuality ever, in a million years. It’s really frustrating to me that it came up.” Perhaps, in part, because it totally negates the sentiment behind “wish you were gay.” Which, on another ironic side note, turned out to be accurate in that the boy she was yearning for actually did turn out to be gay. All of which is to say that the song is a hotbed of unwitting mockery on so many levels.
As for the millennial progenitor of the song, Katy Perry’s 2007 single, “Ur So Gay” (the Gen X one is probably Josie Cotton’s “Johnny Are You Queer?”), it would also fail at avoiding being offensive. Not that Perry, especially at that moment in the culture, seemed too concerned about whether it was homophobic or “gay-baiting” (again, because of the title that misleads one into believing the content isn’t all about “straight girl problems”). Funnily enough, Perry would provide another “Eilish connection” in 2023, when confirming that her label, Unsub Records, sent her an email proposing a potential collaboration with Eilish on her first single, “Ocean Eyes.” Perry’s response, “…it was just a blonde girl and I was like, ‘Meh, boring.’ Big mistake. Huge mistake.” And yet, it might have ultimately spared Eilish the stain of working with someone so pop that would have altered the entire sound of the track, ergo, potentially the entire trajectory of her career (and maybe even her hair color, which could have remained blonde all along). Though it wouldn’t spare her making the same mistake as Perry with a song like “wish you were gay.” Granted, there is far more vitriol in the Perry lyrics, “You’re so gay and you don’t even like boys.”
Despite channeling a Gen Z version of Perry’s venom on “Ur So Gay,” the song would end up becoming a joke itself once Eilish came to terms with her identity. Even so, at the height of its release, she would do her best to mitigate accusations of the song being offensive by saying, “It’s kind of like, ‘I’m an ass and you don’t love me. And you don’t love me because you don’t love me and that’s the only reason and I wish you didn’t love me because you didn’t love girls.’ It could be a girl interested in a girl and maybe that girl likes girls also but she doesn’t like her back. And then it’s like ‘Well damn. I wish you were straight!’ You know what I’m saying? It could be exactly the other way.” Perhaps, with Eilish’s newfound sense of identity, a re-recording called “wish you were straight” is, in fact, in order. As for the aforementioned Josie Cotton song, it, too, sparked some venomous reactions, though mostly from religious straights who were fearful that she was trying to turn men gay (oh the 80s and “homo panic” as an offshoot of satanic panic).
And yet, Cotton is doing the same thing Eilish does on her now ironic song. As Stewart Mason of AllMusic summed up “Johnny Are You Queer?” (and, effectively, “wish you were gay”), “…throughout, the joke is on the petulant girl, not Johnny: ‘he’s not interested in her that way, so clearly he must not like girls’ is (deliberately) a laughably arrogant premise.” And maybe enough to turn a girl queer herself.
[…] Genna Rivieccio Source link […]