T utti Frutti became a hit for both Richard and the white pop singers who covered it soon after its release, Pat Boone and Elvis Presley. Richard’s sky- high ‘whoo!’ (an affectation he borrowed from gospel singer Marion Williams) communicated the euphoria of singing about gay sex in public, even after the explicit words had been erased. The label brought in songwriter Dorothy LaBostrie to tone down the ribald language (the then-shocking ‘good booty’ became ‘aw rootie’), but the energy of the song – the thrill of singing the taboo out loud – stuck. The song’s original lyrics were about topping – being the penetrative partner during anal sex with another man. After he signed a deal with Specialty Records in his early twenties, Richard cut the landmark single Tutti Frutti, then a staple of his chaotic live show.
His deep self-deprecation and abundant silliness continued to serve him once he started performing in Georgia, often in drag, with local and touring musicians throughout his teens. He acted up at school and at home, letting his grades slip, shitting into jars and then hiding them among his mother’s preserves in the pantry. Rather than recede inwards, Richard availed himself of another successful strategy among bullied kids: he became a troll.
He rushed her while she was loading her gear into a concert venue, sang one of her songs for her, and later received an invitation to join her onstage. Little Richard, the Georgia-born musician who arguably emerged as the first rock star, performed with Tharpe while he was still a teenager. A decade later, the charismatic gospel musician Sister Rosetta Tharpe began distorting the tone of her electric guitar while wailing away on the bright, wild chords that would become fundamental to rock music. In the Twenties, Bessie Smith and Gladys Bentley sang openly of lesbian desire in their blues songs the latter performed in Harlem dressed in tuxedos and top hats. And even when homosexuality was illegal in the United States, drag shows drew both gay and straight attendees for their taboo exuberance, their catharsis, and their humour.īefore Elvis and The Beatles calcified into cultural touchstones, queer black musicians laid the foundations for pop music’s defining sounds. ‘Is he musical?’ became a coded question among gays to ask if someone else was one of them. Ever since homosexuality emerged as a social category toward the end of the 19th century, it has maintained a strong association with music. The history of queer artists using music to flaunt gender norms predates the existence of the record industry. It’s an effervescently slight song, but X’s winking tone elevates it from novelty to enduring smash, with a record- obliterating run at the top of the US charts.
X’s performance deflates these tropes with a knowing smirk, setting redneck braggadocio to a trap beat. Its lyrics, about riding a horse until you ‘can’t no more’, touch on a long history of white male bravado in music, like Bob Seger’s drawling road ballad Turn the Page, covered hilariously in 1998 by Metallica. Old Town Road initially became popular on TikTok, the video- sharing platform where people communicate in micro-comedies set to easily digestible snippets of music. Lil Nas X reportedly had a six-figure Twitter following before he embarked on a music career, and his work soared to prominence on the back of the semi-ironic ‘yee-haw’ moment – a repackaging of American Western aesthetics for a youthful, plugged-in crowd. One of the first pop icons of Generation Z, the 20-year-old star (real name: Montero Lamar Hill) from Lithia Springs, Georgia, owes his ballooning success to a combination of razor- sharp social media savvy and excellent timing.