Podcast Assignment- Set the Record Straight Episode One

The podcast episode discusses the experiences of queer artists and their audiences, with a focus on Girl in Red. Girl in Red is a 24-year-old singer-songwriter from Norway who gained popularity through platforms like SoundCloud and TikTok. She has a large fan base of queer women who connect and express their identities through her music. The TikTok trend surrounding the song "Girls" by Girl in Red has become a way for queer women to publicly identify themselves. The podcast also highlights the importance of having a community around shared identity and experiences. However, there is a concern that Girl in Red may be pigeonholed as just a lesbian artist and not taken seriously by mainstream media. Overall, the podcast is optimistic about the future of queer pop music and the potential for more artists to share their experiences and resonate with their fan base. Do you remember the first record where we didn't have to change the pronouns to sing along? We'd gone so many years without music that knew us, music that knew you, could arch your back And I'd have proof that the earth was round. Bless who we were then, bless who we still are. That excerpt you just heard was from a poem from Andrea Gibson titled First Love. It does a lot to encompass a lot of the topics that we are going to approach in this new episode of our podcast Set the Record Straight. I'll be your host, Grace Galligan. I'll be your host, Annabelle Reddick. And today we are here to discuss the myriad of experiences and what that says about, you know, musical audiences of queer artists. Specifically talking about Girl in Red. So a little bit about Girl in Red. She is a 24-year-old singer-songwriter from Norway with 17.4 million monthly listeners on Spotify. Her real name is Marie Olven and she is from Norway. She actually began her career on SoundCloud when she released a song called I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend in 2017. It got 5,000 plays and that is not a lot compared to the over 150 million streams that it has today. But it calls her to gain an audience on the social media platform TikTok. Yeah, I think that's a great point too because there's a lot of, you know, people who are queer out there who support artists on like these smaller internet accounts like SoundCloud or TikTok because, you know, lesbian artists aren't traditionally supported by big record labels and so their music has to come out into the world straight to the people who it's meant for. It also kind of speaks to the power of having a fan base that's kind of organized around identity and shared experience because they're going to give you meteoric success in your music and a dying support, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's definitely true. Yeah, that's definitely true. And something else that speaks to the influence that a social media platform like TikTok can have on the experience of an artist and the experience of their fan base is the TikTok trend surrounding girl in reds on girls. Yeah, for sure. I remember seeing that everywhere. Yeah, no, it was everywhere. In like 2019, everybody was posting videos to that sound. But Kelsey Curry writes in a journal article about girl in red's impact. She says, queer women on TikTok are actively and continually expressing their identities and connecting to each other, oftentimes without explicitly stating their sexuality. And I think that this is definitely true, especially in this case. The song Girls on TikTok now has over 119,000 videos between the single and the album versions. That's mind boggling. And the majority of those video creators are queer women, which that's a lot of queer women. Yeah, and just talk about, again, kind of building this community for music. Just the fact that women can come out and literally come out and also come out in terms of joining together in love of this song and also being able to be like, yeah, I do like women. And this is an aspect of my identity that is reflected in the media I see. It's really, really cool. Yeah, I agree. I mean, especially since the subject of most of these videos is a trend where queer women mouth the line, I'm not talking about boys, I'm talking about girls, which we'll play a clip of right now. But they do this as a way to publicly identify themselves as members of the queer female community. And aside from this trend, the sound is littered with videos of queer art, commentary on queer women in popular culture and video edits of people's favorite queer female TV and movie characters. Which I think at that point, having a space to... It was also, the line from the song is kind of indicative of this trend of people using specifically Girl in Red's music to not only come out, but also signal somewhat covertly. Because if you're in the zeitgeist, if you're in the canon of knowing what Girl in Red's music is about, it's easy to communicate, like, oh, I'm also a lesbian. A lot of people will be like, do you listen to Girl in Red? As kind of a, I don't know, more subtle signal than asking plainly, are you gay? And so it almost provides a sense of safety for its listeners because they can ask those questions that aren't always a safe thing to say out loud, especially in public places. And you can also, like, I've seen bumper stickers, too, of, like, I listen to Girl in Red. Or, like, honk if you listen to Girl in Red. And those are, it's like a queer coding of, I am a safe person, or I am also in this community. Yeah, which is really heartening to see. I've also seen people say things like, I don't listen to Girl in Red, but I support. I'm an ally of Girl in Red. I think that that way of expressing allyship for the LGBTQ plus community is very important as well. I agree. I do, my friend also brings this up when we talk about Girl in Red's music, though, that it's a little bit too obvious. Like, some of the lyrics, like, I'm not talking about girls, or I'm not talking about boys, or I'm not talking about girls. Like, that is a very queer, explicit lyric. But I've always made the argument that, like, when is pop music, especially in this genre, not, you know, when is it subtle? When is it, like, not explicitly obvious what the song is about? Like, most of the pop music songs are, like, dancing in the club. You gotta have a fun time. And for her just to be blatant about her orientation, about who she loves, is really liberating to see. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's so new for a female queer artist to be able to have such a large audience while being so blatant with her sexuality. And I also think that having a queer artist that's so heavily discussed as coming out in her sexuality is what drew so many listeners in in the first place. That's true. It's kind of like a double-edged sword, because, like, on one hand, because, like we said, this is an artist that has built a community around her of queer women, I also feel like there is a tendency in the industry to pigeonhole artists to be a certain kind of singer, like a lesbian singer, and not a singer who happens to be lesbian, for me. Because on one hand, that's a really great thing, that we can create community around something, but it's also limiting when it's used to invalidate Girl in Red, it's used to write her off as just a lesbian artist. I feel like that happens a lot, especially in the women's music movement, where these women who are writing for women were written off by mainstream media because their music wasn't taken seriously, their artistry wasn't taken seriously. And it's a trend that we see carrying on to this day. I think that her being there in that space, and being so popular, really will probably open doors for... Yeah, and there's a lot of progress to be made. There's a lot more singers out there to make music, to speak to their experience, because that's going to resonate with their fan base. Yeah. Yeah, and it's really exciting to see where the queer pop music will go from here. Yeah.