The “Song of the Summer” Is a Myth
But the point is that every year hundreds of songs won’t become hits, and it will have very little to do with the fact that they weren’t “catchy enough.”
Derek Thompson • Hit Makers
How did an oddball pop song versed in queer theory get on the Billboard Hot 100? Specifically, how did Chappell Roan, a rising lesbian pop star, get on the Hot 100 for the first time and break the “gay famous” ceiling (as SNL puts it) seemingly preventing likeminded acts MUNA and Girl in Red from crossing over to the main chart?
Not Just ‘Luck’: Why Queer Pop Star Chappell Roan Broke Through to the Hot 100, And Why It Matters
It’s not just a culmination for Roan, but a mainstream moment for a concept mostly known to queer theorists and Tumblr addicts up to this point. Compulsory heterosexuality, coined in 1980 by Adrienne Rich, is a term describing the societal imposition of heterosexuality on women. Online sapphics of a certain age might know the concept because a Goog... See more
Not Just ‘Luck’: Why Queer Pop Star Chappell Roan Broke Through to the Hot 100, And Why It Matters
an aspect of pop appreciation that latently informs everything else about it: the tyranny of the new.