A Not-At-All Exhaustive LGBTQIA+ Country Playlist
Artists who deliberately and publicly claim LGBTQIA+ identities and country or roots affiliations exist across a rich spectrum. Some performers, like autoharp-strumming drag queen Trixie Mattel and piano bar expat James Wilson of Paisley Fields, build their flamboyant identities just as much around the exaggerated cowpoke campiness of their stage wear and the winking humor in their demeanors as their stylistic sensibilities.
Others, like the duo Tina & Her Pony and the vocally trained singer-songwriter Eli Conley, sketch characters whose identities have long spun stories of southern queer lives, and a new one, "Country Radio," written and sung by the duo's Emily Saliers, paints a portrait of a smalltown, gay fan for whom mainstream country songs are a source of both fantasy and exclusion.
