Outward | From Hit Parade: The Hidden History of Queer Pop Icons

Slate Culture

Slate Podcasts

Arts, Tv & Film, Music

4.4 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 23 July 2025

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Outward is going on a little summer break, in the meantime we’re leaving you with a delightfully queer episode of Slate’s Hit Parade with Chris Molanphy: Little Richard was rock ‘n’ roll’s flamboyant architect. Lesley Gore sang that no one owned her. Sylvester was a gender-fluid icon who helped define disco. Freddie Mercury made rock operatic, and George Michael demanded freedom. What all of these LGBTQ artists had in common was bold hitmaking—and fear of being fully out of the closet. For decades, queer acts topped the charts while cloaking their true identities and paving the way for today’s more openly queer stars. For Pride Month, join Chris Molanphy as he traces the hidden history of queer hitmakers on the charts—including those that managed to be both out and No. 1, right up through our modern age of Lil Nas X and Chappell Roan. It’s a celebration of these artists’ quest to feel… mighty real. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:53.8	Hey listeners, Outward is going on a little summer break. Brian Jules and I are taking some time to touch grass, so we're pressing pause on the podcast for the rest of the season. But before we go, we're dropping something very special in your feed. A queer pop Pop Deep Dive from Hit Parade with Chris Melanthe.
1:14.0	Slate's show about the music and moments that climbed the charts and shaped the culture.
1:18.9	This episode explores the big-name queer icons who left their mark on pop music,
1:24.1	from Little Richard to Lil Nas X.
1:26.4	Host Chris Malanfi traces how LGBT artists made history, often while hiding in plain sight,
1:32.8	and how their legacy echoes in today's proudly out stars.
1:36.6	So stay gay, stay hydrated, and we'll see you in the fall. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine about the hits from
2:10.8	coast to coast. I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's
2:16.5	Why Is This Song Number One series?
2:18.6	On today's show, 45 years ago, in November of 1980, Motown Queen Diana Ross was peaking on the charts with the second single from her hit-packed best-selling Diana album, produced by Sheeks, Nile Rogers, and Bernard
2:37.5	Edwards. Ross had already topped Billboard's Hot 100 with the album's lead single, Upside Down.
2:45.4	For the follow-up, she went with a song that Nile Rogers had written specifically to honor Diana's legions of drag
2:54.6	impersonators and her larger gay following. In a move that was very bold for 1980, Rogers and his partner
	...

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