A Quote by Owen Pallett

Regarding gay and music, I don't actually think my music is particularly gay at all, because my music doesn't have sex with men. My music does not have a gender, I don't see it as being gay.
I just want to be clear before we decide to do this together: I'm gay. My music is gay. My show is gay. And I love that it's gay. And I love my gay fans, and they're all going to be coming to our show. And it's going to remain gay.
I make pop music. I make music that is pretty commercial. But, at the same time, I'm a minority within a minority and it can be challenging. I feel validated about what I'm doing when I meet fellow black gay men or black gay women.
I was a weird kid. I shouldve been gay because I listened to a lot of Broadway musicals. I dont know why Im not gay. I listen to a lot of jazz and world music, like African or Cuban music. Something that has vitality to it. A lot of the American stuff just feeds on itself.
I think that there is a lot of power in a gay guy having a really (hopefully) successful music career while just being completely openly gay and honest and happy.
I don't feel like I'm writing music for gay people. I'm a gay man who is writing music about one tiny little experience of what it's like to be a human on this planet.
I've actually performed at Gay Pride in Atlanta three times in my career. I've always had a large gay following, particularly in the lesbian community. I am grateful for that. To me, it means my music transcends categories. It also means that I'm a cute girl singing a rock song in an alto voice!
I think that the fact of the matter is that metal isn't really part of the big picture of the gay, lesbian, transgender music scene. But it's certainly there. There's gay metalheads all over the world.
Very effective way to do this with a bunch of second graders, is take a picture of The Lion King for instance, and a teacher might say, 'Do you know that the music for this movie was written by a gay man?' The message is: I'm better at what I do, because I'm gay.
I've once gotten in trouble with certain gay activists because I'm not gay enough! I am a morose homosexual. I'm melancholy. Gay is the last adjective I would use to describe myself. The idea of being gay, like a little sparkler, never occurs to me. So if you ask me if I'm gay, I say no.
Gay people are nice people. Just like any other people. And gay people love reggae music. Yeah. And gay people love Jamaica.
You don't pigeonhole yourself, people pigeonhole you. If the world is not at a place yet where it can just be like, "This music is gay and it's music," then it's not my fault that it gets pigeonholed, it's not the people in the band's fault, it's because people won't just let music be music, people who need to put a name on something or to critique something.
Being in country music is what I love. It's who I am. Being able to be a gay man in country music and continue to break down walls and change hearts and minds has been really important to me.
You think you're in a place where you're all 'I'm thrilled to be gay, I have no issues about being gay anymore, I don't feel shame about being gay,' but you actually do. You're just not fully aware of it. I think I still felt scared about people knowing. I felt awkward around gay people; I felt guilty for not being myself.
People from pre-sexual revolution and even from the 60s and the birth of the gay movement still define gay as two men or two women having sex. Our generation defines it from a more emotional standpoint. To be gay means you are drawn to the same sex. But it's a part of who you are, an identity, not an act.
People don't like what I represent, and they think I'm trying to represent the whole gay community just because I'm a gay person and I make music. By default I'm supposed to represent a whole community? I think that's ridiculous.
It would be so helpful for the straight community to see men in powerful positions coming out and saying "I'm gay" so they don't have these preconceived notions that all gay men are smarmy idiots living on the street or whatever it is people think of gay men. I think it would be really helpful and productive.
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