‘It’s a really exciting time to be a gay woman’
There’s no longer any denying it: the “lesbian renaissance” is here.
The world is bopping to Chappell Roan’s tales of lesbian situationships packaged in campy pop, Billie Eilish is crooning about cunnilingus in “Lunch” and flirting with Charli XCX in “Guess”, while Reneé Rapp is the queer-coded Regina George of our dreams.
On TV, meanwhile, dating shows such as I Kissed a Girl and The Ultimatum: Queer Love offer long overdue alternatives to Love Island, and the big screen has been blessed with Love Lies Bleeding, Bottoms and Drive-Away Dolls which put queer women front and centre.
All that has led singer-songwriter Minke – real name Leah Mason – to declare that sapphic artists getting the attention they deserve makes her emotional, if she thinks about it too deeply.
Speaking exclusively to PinkNews, she says: “It feels like a really exciting time to be a woman, to be gay. It feels like there [are] so many different voices now being added to the mix and being accepted and being unapologetic about it, which is just so exciting for me.”
“It really is extraordinary. People have fought for so long to be accepted and it was just these old dinosaurs in the industry who just would be like: ‘You can’t do that or you’ll ruin your career’,” she continues.
“You’d have really brave people doing it and no one would get behind it, it’s so depressing because the music was still amazing. I love that times have changed, there’s room for everyone and it makes little kids be like: ‘Oh, I can do that’, and that’s the coolest thing. It’s the most important thing. Me as a little kid, would absolutely love living in this era.”
And thanks to her new track, “Favorite Part“, Minke is right in the middle of it all.
The emotionally-charged song is all about finding the courage to break down barriers in the hope of finding vulnerability. It’s Minke “talking for the first time about that initial excitement and fear and everything about being in love as a young gay person and not really understanding what’s going on and how to navigate those dynamics”.
As the first track “close to her heart” to touch on the topic, Minke hopes it resonates with members of the LGBTQ+ community and says it has been “really exciting” to see “really sweet messages from people being like: ‘Oh, I’ve been there’, or just relating to it in some way”.
She goes on: “It always makes you feel less alone. It’s a crazy situation sometimes when you’re in it and you feel like you’re the only person who’s ever felt like that… it’s pretty healing for my inner child.”
The track is the first of a collection of songs the artist has written in the past couple of years, following on from her 2019 album The Tearoom, with the next song being one that’s “a funny look” at when a gay woman falls in love with a straight woman.
“I’ve been away for a few years for so many different reasons, personal reasons, which I’ve spoken a bit about. So, the story is filling in those blanks. Each song will give you an idea of what I’ve been thinking about, where I’ve been, and some are more relevant to my present day.
“I lost a parent, for example, and that makes you really evaluate life and think about things differently and think about childhood. I guess that’s the through line, sort of the story of where I’ve been over the [past] couple of years, and generally they’re more gay.”
Being more vulnerable in her music means choosing what to share with listeners and what to kept close to her chest, something with which Minke has always struggled.
“I think that might have held me back [in] earlier points in my career but nowadays I am fighting against that more than ever. When I go in the studio, I want to put something down that’s completely truthful. After that, if it’s too much, I can always edit and tinker with it but I really don’t tend to. I think through music, so that there’s no such thing as too much honesty.
“I’ll never name names. I’ll never be so specific that [it] would cause anyone else feel uncomfortable but I’ll say the most through my music.”
She notes that the way her life is right now – her partner is actress and model Cara Delevingne, which has increased attention on her lyrics and their meanings – she will be “a little more careful about what I share in interviews but music, that’s the place I get to be fully free”.
The singer continues: “It’s all right if they want to go comb through the lyrics and see if they can find any juicy bits, they’re not going to really. They might just have more of an idea of my weird inner psyche.”
“Growing up, there [was] a lot of old rock-and-roll music in my household. Aretha Franklin blew my tiny mind at six years old, and I’d play electric guitar – that was my real first love, an instrument, when I was about 13 – learning the blues and Jimi Hendrix, hearing the way that he could make a guitar sound like a voice, in the phrasing and the expression.
“Writing-wise, Fleetwood Mac really blew my mind the way [they] merged blues and pop, and Christine McVie [was] a personal hero of mine for a lot of my late teens/early twenties. Then discovering a whole world of music in London as a younger woman, going to raves, listening to dance music, jazz clubs.”
That makes picking a favourite artist she’d like to work with difficult. “That’s such a tricky question,” she says. “There [are] so many people I admire and love.”
However, Chappell Roan is “right up there” and she saw The Last Dinner Party at Glastonbury and was “blown away by, their musicianship and how tight they were on stage, how killer they were, so bad*ss”.
Despite the absolute joy that is in music at the moment, Minke admits the “world feels a little terrifying right now, but also especially hopeful”.
She adds: “There is this real duality going on. Some days I feel so excited about the way the world is going – maybe we’re on an upswing – then maybe we’re all going to be pushed back to the 1700s, it’s a scary time.
“It’s really important to stick together, and something like making music, for example [is], for me, therapy through all these hard times. It brings people together and it’s a really fun thing.
“Let’s be hopeful and still dance and come together. The gay community especially needs to stick together the most we ever have to fight against this.”
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