Heteromasculinity and queer reappropriation in music streaming practices: exploring homonegative curation by ordinary Spotify users

ABSTRACT

This article critically examines user-curated, public playlists on Spotify tagged with homonegative terminology. We consider these playlists discursive texts that reflect and co-construct discourses about the relations between music, music streaming, gender, and sexual identity. Applying theories from masculinity and queer studies and conducting a critical textual analysis of 21 playlists, this article unpacks how these playlists relate to homophobia, heteromasculinity, and queer reappropriation. The analysis shows that the discursive connections between certain musics and homonegativity are not as straightforward as they might seem at first sight. The tagging practices suggest a network of ambiguities that cannot be interpreted as unilaterally and integrally homophobic, while overly optimistic claims also cannot account for this meticulous discursive identity work. A variety of logics underlies these playlists, including queer reappropriation, heteromasculine homonegativity, and more ambiguous negotiations. The findings support earlier queer and masculinity studies’ claims that homophobic practices are as much a matter of gender as sexuality. Rather than instances of active hatred toward certain sexual identities, the playlists and their discursive tags are attempts to negotiate identities amidst music’s multidimensional gendered connotations. Circulating in the digital space that is Spotify, the playlists articulate a complex variety of heteromasculine and/or queer identities.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual identity
• masculinity
• homophobia
• popular music
• music streaming

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For this paper, we chose to use the term LGBTQ, as we interpret “queer” as representing those identities and practices that do not meet heteronormative and gender-normative conventions. It is precisely this social and cultural nonconformity that is under scrutiny here.

2. We use asterisks when talking about these derogatory terms (except in academic citations) because we want to avoid supporting the use of homonegative language even if these words have many different uses. Moreover, since these terms will appear frequently in this article, they might start to appear as hollow phrases, which they are not.

3. Take this excerpt from his lyrics to “Sunday” (together with Earl Sweatshirt).

“They called me soft in high school, thank God I’m jagged

Forgot you don’t like it rough, I mean, he called me a f*ggot

I was just calling his bluff

I mean, how anal am I gon’ be when I’m aiming my gun?”

4. This is mirrored in the mix of both collective grief and disdain in the social media comments section of news articles reporting the deaths of young SoundCloud rappers, such as XXX, Lil Peep, and Juice WRLD. In a way, the differing reactions to SoundCloud rap are reminiscent of the reactions to punk, which has a similar combination of aggressive masculinity and near-queer appearance.

5. For example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDK1FQLZrz4.

6. Of course, on Spotify, where only the source songs are featured and YouTube’s comments and visual information are lost, people unfamiliar with the YouTube parodies might have even more trouble interpreting these playlists as either homophobic or reappropriated parody.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds [BOFSTG2019001201].

Notes on contributors

Ben De Smet

Ben De Smet is a PhD researcher at the Department of Communication Sciences of Ghent University and a member of CIMS, the Centre for Cinema and Media Studies. He is conducting a study within the BOF-funded project “Streams of music, identity and diversity: A qualitative study of identity-related practices on music streaming services,” under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Frederik Dhaenens and Prof. Dr. Sofie Van Bauwel. His fields of interest include pop culture, popular music, gender & diversity, and digital media.

Frederik Dhaenens

Frederik Dhaenens is an assistant professor at Ghent University, where he teaches courses that deal with media, (popular) culture and diversity. His research is situated within the field of critical media studies and cultural studies, while focusing on queer theory, LGBTQ representation, sex and sexuality, and masculinities in relation to popular culture, with a particular interest for television studies, popular music studies, and fan studies.

Further, Frederik Dhaenens is vice-chair of the Popular Culture Working Group at IAMCR. He also co-organizes the LGBTQ forum –a Flemish network of researchers, civil society actors, and policymakers working on sexual and gender diversity.