Hozier, Taylor Swift, and the Straight Gay Icon
It’s come to my attention that most people don’t know that Hozier is a lesbian icon. Obviously, this doesn’t mean that he identifies as one, simply that he is beloved by the community in the same way that gay men rally around Judy Garland and Madonna. Something in his lyrics feels intrinsically sapphic which has earned him a strong following. There have been countless memes suggesting that he’s been possessed by the spirit of an ancient lesbian witch (others suggest Florence Welch which is basically the same thing) and that is why his music makes the lesbians go feral. Possible possession aside, it does beg the question; how do straight artists become queer icons?
Hozier has been an avid supporter of LGBTQ+ issues even before his mainstream success. His 2013 debut cemented him as a champion of queer rights to an international audience and led to speculation about his sexuality. The video for Take Me to Church openly condemned Russia’s treatment of their queer population. But the video wasn’t the only gay thing about the song.
Despite clearly using she/her pronouns, the song feels incredibly gay. It’s about the way the church demonizes sexuality in general. In a 2004 interview with The Cut, Hozier said, “the song is about sexuality… And the religious organizations that would undermine a natural part of the human experience.” He’s writing from his own perspective growing up in Ireland, a country he describes as hungover on Catholicism. The Catholic guilt present in both Take Me to Church and much of Hozier’s first album carries the same guilt and self-loathing as internalized homophobia. His songs feel like he is singing about the broad queer experience of trying to find love and acceptance of your own identity in a society that suggests that identity is wrong. When Hozier sings, “I was born sick, I heard them say it,” a lot of queer people could relate.
I’m fortunate enough to have been mostly surrounded by supportive friends and family and to have grown up in a relatively liberal area. The people around me never said that homosexuality was wrong or a sin, but I also didn’t grow up with it represented to me much either. There were the gay guys on Sex in the City and on Queer Eye and there was Ellen. I spent my adolescence assuming I was straight because I didn’t have any blueprints for anything else. That’s why I connect so strongly with Hozier’s lyrics that feel like they are about compulsory heterosexuality.
Didn’t realize I wasn’t straight until I was 23 and take comfort knowing that most queer women don’t realize until later in life. This happens for several reasons. One, everyone is default heterosexual at birth and is treated as such until proven otherwise. Between everyone assuming you’re straight and the lack of visible lesbians, it was hard to see the signs. Everyone thinks their experience is the default, so when I met a boy I could hold a conversation with and didn’t immediately hate, I figured that must be what everyone feels when they have a crush and all the TV shows and books that made it seem like something more were just romanticizing an otherwise boring emotion.
Looking back, I realize that I experienced the kinds of crushes you see on TV -not being able to talk when I was around them and I just wanted to spend all my time basking in their presence — I just never realized what I was feeling counted as a crush because it was aimed at a girl. It didn’t occur to me that that was a possibility so I assumed it was one of two things. Either it was one of those really intense female friendships that border on obsessive or it was jealousy.
Another shared experience of many women who came out later in life is having your past relationships with men forever being held against you. This can be proof that you’re not really a lesbian, that you can never really stop dating men. I’ve had a friend who asserted such. This is why Like Real People Do is one of Hozier’s most quietly Sapphic songs.
In the song, Hozier sings the story dug up by his lover as she buried her own past. He sings, “I will not ask you where you came from, I will not ask and neither should you.” The song is about the desire to live in a vacuum without the past defining a relationship. This may be a part of all adult relationships, but there is something about it that feels unique for the lesbian experience.
The song also introduces the queerest line of his whole repertoire, “ we should just kiss like real people do.” Writing website copy for wedding venues, I spent a lot of time quietly erasing every mention of “alternative weddings.” These weddings weren’t for fans of Alt-Rock or the kind of people who want Nightmare Before Christmas-themed nuptials. The tag was often reserved for gay weddings. Often othering happens in the little details like this and it strengthens the desire to be seen as real and legitimate.
Similarly, in Foreigner’s God, Hozier expresses the sensation of compulsory heterosexuality in the line, “all that I’ve been taught, every word of got is foreign to me.” I was taught that love looked and felt a certain way, but it wasn’t natural to me. While other kids had crushes and first loves and figured out what their feelings meant, mine stayed muddy. I still struggle to determine if I feel platonic or romantic attraction. Foreigner’s God perfectly illustrates the struggle of communicating love and a language that wasn’t designed for you.
All of this explains why Hozier with a clear audience in general, but to understand his appeal to lesbians in particular, we have to look at how he talks about women. Surprising as it seems, lesbians often like love songs with she/her pronouns usually mean listening to male singers. With many male artists, there’s a disconnect though. Women in their songs are often objects and the songs can have a predatory feel.
Many lesbians already struggle with the “predatory lesbian” trope. In the media, lesbians are shown going after Straight girls in an attempt to “turn them.” There’s also the problem of the internalized male gaze. As women, we have been on the receiving end of that gaze, which can feel predatory and objectifying. When coming to terms with our attraction to women, it can be difficult to disentangle attraction from objectifying.
Hozier doesn’t just respect the women he sings about, he reveres them. Even his overtly sexual songs don’t feel predatory. He feels lucky to love them and sees them as powerful agents in their own lives. In Would That I, he likens to a wildfire that he would gladly let burn the forest of his past relationships. In Nothing Fucks With My Baby, he is both terrified of her ability to overcome the brutality of the end of the world. He doesn’t feel the need to protect her, but to support her. He says, “if I were born as a Blackthorn tree, I’d want to be felled by you, held by you, fuel the pyre of your enemies.” With Hozier’s music, I want to be both singer and subject.
While Hozier’s praised and welcomed into the community, Taylor Swift is often disparaged outside of her own fan base. She also commands a large following of queer fans, known to Swifties as “Gaylors.” Her music is rife with queer themes, yet she’s often depicted as manipulative and queerbaity.
Taylor has gone on the record to say that she doesn’t consider herself a part of the queer community but that hasn’t stopped fans from speculating especially after 2013. Taylor is known for lacing her songs, Instagram posts, and interviews with bread crumbs for her fans. She hints at future releases, surprise collaborators, and clues to who her songs are about. Thanks for these breadcrumbs and a surprisingly intense but short-lived friendship with Karlie Kloss, some fans believe Karlie and Taylor were more than just friends. While the rumor has never been confirmed, there are entire websites dedicated to pointing out all of the evidence.
Taylor’s music has featured queer tropes since her first album. From Teardrops on My Guitar to You Belong With Me, a common subject in her songs is having a crush on your best friend and having them not even see you as a possible romantic partner. Most LGBTQ+ people can think of at least one straight friend that they’ve wasted time pining over.
In her later albums, there is also a running theme of relationships that need to be kept hidden, not because they are affairs but for fear of what the public will think. Like Hozier writing about the Catholic guilt that comes built-in when growing up in Ireland, Taylor Swift is also writing from a deeply personal experience. She spent most of her twenties being demonized for dating. Her exes became a running joke and one of the main reasons it became cool to hate her. Taylor internalized these messages as a warning to hide her future relationships for fear of scorn. Her songs like I Know a Place were written from her personal experience but resonates with a larger queer audience who have also felt the need at one point or another to hide their relationships for fear of judgment and persecution.
So why does Hozier get to be a lesbian icon, but Taylor Swift doesn’t? Who decides? It might have something to do with the very cringy and performative way that Taylor acknowledges her queer fans. The entire mess of You Need to Calm Down — from her donning the bisexual flag to the “shade never made anyone less gay” line — drew a lot of deserved criticism. It was over the top and lacked a real understanding of the meaning behind the things she was saying or doing. What a lot of people don’t see is that she often changes the pronouns in her songs during live performances because she knows how important it is to a large portion of her audience to feel seen and understood.
The real question is why queer icons are so often straight. Lesbians tend to flock to straight actresses who have played gay roles. Think of Natasha Lyonne for But I’m a Cheerleader and Orange Is the New Black. Or think of Charlize Theron in Monster, Atomic Blonde, and The Old Guard. Or think of Cate Blanchett in Carol, clad in leather for Thor Ragnarok, and for making Oceans 8 significantly gayer by dressing like Bette and Shane had a fabulous rock and roll power suit-clad baby.
I tend to forget — or in the case of Natasha Lyonne learned in the process of writing this — that these women are straight. Even when not playing lesbian characters, they tend to carry themselves with a kind of androgynous energy that just speaks to lesbians. It’s an androgyny we tend to aspire to, a way of dressing and carrying yourself that is sexy but doesn’t cater to the male gaze.
That’s where gay icons have historically come from, the need for someone to aspire to. Icons have almost always been straight because there weren’t many gays in the public eye. Gay men turned to funny, campy, over-the-top divas for inspiration on how to be glamourous one minute and stoic in the face of adversity the next. There’s a reason why Judy Garland and Dolly Parton are so beloved and it’s not just for their unique singing styles.
We are so used to having to look for ourselves in subtext that it’s been hard to stop. We live in a time where there are queer actors, popstars, youtube sensations, athletes, and world leaders we can aspire to. We don’t have to find our icons through subtext anymore. Just because the music of Hozier and Taylor Swift can tell relatable stories, is that enough to make them as important as openly queer artists like Mitski, Girl in Red, and King Princess? At the end of the day, what’s more important; the identity of the artist or the message of their work?
