LGBTQ+ artists are releasing tons of great music, now more than ever. To help you with this extremely good problem to have, them. is selecting the best songs released by queer artists. This month, we’ve highlighted tracks by Lady Gaga and Elton John, Dorian Electra, Kelsey Lu, Lotic, India Jordan, Shivum Sharma, Nappy Nina, Pantayo, and Tafari Anthony. Check them out below and listen along on our Spotify and Apple Music playlists.
Lady Gaga – “Sine From Above” [ft. Elton John]
Elton John guesting on an EDM banger doesn’t necessarily sound like the best fit on paper. But on “Sine From Above,” Lady Gaga recruits her longtime mentor and collaborator for a triumphant electro-pop anthem and one of the standout tracks on her new album Chromatica (out today). Part of what makes this song work is the excellent production — credited to BloodPop, Axwell, BURNS, LIOHN, Klahr, and Rami Yacoub — that ebbs from sorrowful piano chords and builds back up into an exultant chorus of synths and pounding four-on-the-floor drums. But when Gaga and Elton sing together, their respectively powerful voices seem to amplify each other and emphasize the song’s message: You can find healing in connection.
Dorian Electra – “Sorry Bro (I Love You)”
Dorian Electra loves subverting stereotypes about masculinity. The musician and performance artist did this on their 2019 debut album Flamboyant, by making songs about talking “Man to Man” or being a “Career Boy” and wearing “Guyliner.” Now, they’ve made a song called “Sorry Bro (I Love You),” poking fun at any straight dude who has ever said “no homo” to one of their guy friends anytime their fragile masculinity might be attacked. Co-written by Mood Killer and produced by 100 gecs’ Dylan Brady and Count Baldor, the track is bombastic and full of dubstep-esque drops and industrial sound effects — a perfect match for Dorian’s theatrical shtick.
Kelsey Lu – “Morning Dew”
Cellist and singer Kelsey Lu only needs a few words to distill the feeling of heartbreak on “Morning Dew,” her first new music since her 2019 album Blood. “Bring me home/Back to you/Wash off the old/Put on the new,” she sings, her husky voice wavering on top of a bed of finger-picked guitar. As she flips back and forth between the titular phrase “morning dew” into “mourning you,” the musician begins to blur the lines between renewal and grief. It’s a fitting juxtaposition for living through a pandemic, an apocalyptic time when mass death has become normalized, and only being able to hope that it gives way to rebirth.
Lotic – “Burn a Print”
Berlin-based producer Lotic first rose to prominence in the mid-2010s with experimental club tracks that toyed with the poles of chaos and order, issued on the now-defunct label Tri Angle. But with her last album, 2018’s Power, she emerged as a vocalist, playing with singing and whispering spoken word phrases over her own tracks. Now, on “Burn a Print,” she presents an unprecedented assuredness with her vocality, as she sings placidly in a tone that lands somewhere between classical and R&B, offsetting the thorny, abrasive production underneath.
India Jordan – “Dear Nan King”
So many LGBTQ+ people have something or someone that was a queer awakening — the first things that you’ve interacted with that help you realize that the feelings in your body might be actually be gay. For UK producer India Jordan, that thing was a 2002 BBC adaptation of Tipping the Velvet, a queer period novel by Sarah Water that follows the burgeoning romance between a girl named Nan and a male impersonator. On “Dear Nan King,” a track off Jordan’s new For You EP, Jordan pays homage to this formative and “life changing” piece of television by sampling pieces of whispery dialogue that hover phantasmically over hi-powered breakbeats. It’s a joyous piece of dance music that merges rave-happy energy with sapphic lust.
Shivum Sharma – “Diamond”
Irish Indian artist Shivum Sharma has said that he’s inspired by soul singer Minnie Riperton (legendary for her five-octave range), and on his latest single, “Diamond,” that influence shines through. Over the soothing, soul-inflected track, his falsetto soars and trembles with a noticeable sorrow, mimicking his lyrics as he tells someone in his life to “fly” as the “chains lift.” By layering more and more vocals, Sharma ends up building what seems like a blanket of heavenly voices to shield and comfort himself from grief.
Nappy Nina – “When Her” [ft. Stas THEE Boss]
Fresh off a recent appearance on Yaeji’s new mixtape WHAT WE DREW, Oakland-born, Brooklyn-based rapper Nappy Nina has dropped a new project called 30 Bag, a follow up to her December mixtape Dumb Doubt. On the standout track “When Her,” featuring fellow queer MC Stas THEE Boss, Nina raps lackadaisically over an Unjust-produced groovy funk beat: “They crowned me a winner last winter/The seasons are warm now and I am no sprinter,” she says, pulling from her poetry background to construct rhymes that seem to bounce with a cyclical rhythm.
Pantayo – “V V V (They Lie)”
Pantayo is a queer Toronto-based Filipina collective that bridges modern influences with kulintang, a instrumental form of music that has long been practiced by various indigenous peoples of southeast Asia, including the Maguindanoan and T’boli peoples. In their new self-titled album, the ensemble incorporates kulintang traditions while surveying a slew of modern genres, from R&B to indie rock and house music. But on standout track “V V V (They Lie),” Pantayo turns an anti-patriarchal screed into a dreamy synth-pop song akin to the stylings of CHVRCHES, whose march-like backbeat reads as resiliency.
Tafari Anthony – “Live In a Dream”
Tafari Anthony is a Toronto-based singer who flexed his vocal abilities on the gospel rock of his first two EPs, 2016’s Die For You and 2017’s Remember When. On his latest singles, however, Anthony has revealed a pivot to a new electro-pop sound. “Live In a Dream,” for instance, merges Afro-pop rhythms with synth-pop sounds, as Anthony asks: “When you gonna wake up/Wake up” — a call to action amid a celebratory beat. “This song… became the anthem for me to wake up and appreciate how far I’ve come and know that I did it honestly – even if by ‘industry standards’ it’s not enough,” he said of the song.
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