Did straight people really not realise the Pet Shop Boys were gay back in the day?

If they were too stupid to figure out Liberace or the Village People, what do you expect?

They are as straight as Freddie Mercury

Wow all those unnecessary words just to start a thread, badly, about the great Pet Shop Boys. 🙄😜🤡

I think it was pretty much known by most straight people (in the UK, anyway) that they were gay from the outset. It was kind of a game to check the 'nod and a wink' references to gay culture referenced in the songs, covers, videos etc.

For example, my mum used to sing around the house while doing chores :"I love you / 'Cos you are bent..."

Everyone knew that the Pet Shop Boys were gay. No one was fooled by the Village People or by Liberace either (Liberace famously sued a newspaper for outing him, but that was back in the fifties). There's a good argument that straight people mostly accept gay men as entertainers.

I don't think The Pet Shop Boys had throngs of teenage bobbysoxers running at them. Frankie Goes to Hollywood makes fun of this concept in the video for Relax but I think most listeners knew that many of their favorite artists were gay, and didn't care, they just liked the music. They didn't think too much about the lyrics.

Of course we knew. They wrote some of the best songs about the AIDS epidemic. It's part of why we loved them.

The real question is about George Michael. Didn't everyone know???

no one had a clue

Not even after this? Pet Shop Boys and Liza and Sondheim?

It was widely assumed.

Honey, some people believed Boy George when he said he wasn't interested in sex, and would prefer a cup of tea.

I think we all knew but they were so good no one really cared if they were... they had the best tongue in cheek lyrics... usually with a side of snark somewhere, along to great music.

^ QED

I think any straight person of modest intelligence or exposure to the world at least assumed, "hmm, might be gay" -- that is *if* they gave it any thought at all.

The problem is not do much stupidity but ignorance, the kind of ignorance that assumes that white straight people are the standard measure of things. Without painfully obvious evidence to the contrary, they assume every one else -- certainly everyone else they like or don't dislike-- is white and straight. It's the default, the factory setting, they just assume without giving it the least consideration.

And by "painfully obvious" I mean something as painful as a punch in the face. Particularly in the 1980s-1990s. A great many gave it not a tiny bit if thought because, well, that would be outside the norm and unexpected.

When straight people are shocked that you are gay it's not because you act so straight. They're shocked because they never made a space in their heads to consider the possibility. They just assumed. That has changed much for the better since the 80s/90s, but there's still cluelessness about. The ignorance that gays and lesbians exist in real life, in everyday life has mostly disappeared.

Most straight people in the 80s/90s just didn't give the cocksuckery of the PSB much thought. And the PSB played heavily on "gay sensibility" without addressing their sexuality in a hit-me-with-a-hammer way that was required then.

Next up from OP: "Did people really think HItler would stop after he got the Sudetenland?"

no one batted an eyelash when George Michael was arrested cruising a public bathroom in Beverly Hills

Who did they pay off? God?

Did straight people really not realize that The Village People were gay back in the day.

[quote] no one batted an eyelash when George Michael was arrested cruising a public bathroom in Beverly Hills

George himself released a statement saying in effect “now my fans know I’m gay”.

Was it in People magazine?

I know they continued to have success in Europe after Neil official acknowledged he was gay with the Very album. But they never had another hit in the US; Very, which had gone #1 in the UK, Finland, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, and the all-European chart, yielding two top ten hits -- Can You Forgive Her? and Go West -- across Europe, only made it to #20 in the US, and none of the singles made the Hot 100 (though they did top the US Dance chart).

This, combined with George Michael's fall from the charts in the US after coming out, led me to believe that America was ok with gay stars as along as they were coy/closeted. Once they came out, America shunned them. It's changed since then, thank God.

To Speak Is A Sin, from the Very album, is one of my all-time favorite of their songs.

Very is definitely my favorite album of theirs from start to finish. Actually a close second.

Individual songs on other albums are great too, but those just flow from beginning to end.

They also thought Frankie Goes To Hollywood was straight

I never cared about PBS being gay or straight because I was not interested in the Pet Shop Boys for sex only great music.

I think most of the straights who were actual fans realized it. Casual listeners may not have.

Some people in their fan forum still believe they are straight.

I knew they were gay even before i knew what it meant being gay

I found them insufferable at times, but grew to like them more when they did NYC Boy . The one who is singing in the Domino Dancing video has a very punchable face and a shitty singing voice. The worst song was Opportunities a melody that grates and an obvious cliched lyric. I quite liked the Dusty hit and Being Boring and West End Girls they sucked when i saw them at Radio City

Their hits had all but dried up in the US with the "Behaviour" album, R15.

Not all the Village People were gay.

As R15 has said, for straight white Christian society, there was something of a learning curve regarding gays and gay culture. All things being equal, left on their own, people frequently didn't recognize gay people - unless an authority figure among them singled it out and named it (a little like a body snatcher pointing and screaming). Once someone like Anita Bryant or Jerry Falwell had publicly denounced someone as homosexual, awareness suddenly spread about the named subject (say, a popular singer, or Tinky Winky Teletubbie). But, pending the pronouncements of some self-appointed Gayfinder General, celebrities and other public figures could pass, sometimes for decades, even though they were maddeningly obvious to us. I was still having arguments with straight friends about Elton John all the way into the late 80s/early 90s. Straights offered all sorts of rationalizations for celebrities they liked and preferred to believe were straight.

Also, straights like to deny and erase gayness.

You see it here all the time when the fraus come in with their “you guys think everyone is gay” bullshit.

[quote]Wow all those unnecessary words just to start a thread, badly, about the great Pet Shop Boys.

[quote]Next up from OP: "Did people really think HItler would stop after he got the Sudetenland?"

God, who hurt you?

As a little kid, I would listen to PSB in the car with my dad who had Introspective, Behaviour, Discography and Very on cassette. I loved them, and even I viewed everything they were singing through a straight lens, imagining he was singing about women. Now I'm looking back on their music it's amazing how gay it all really is. Not in the way straights think of things as being gay, but just real lives of gay men. It's heaps of fun now going back and thinking: 'ahhh, that's what they are talking about there' or 'that definitely taps in to a gay sensibility'.

There seemed to be a lot of gay British musicians in the 80s who had a lot of success, it's very interesting. I think only Bronski Beat were blindingly obvious about it though. Although when I watch, say the video for "Relax", it is very obvious to me, but I am looking back from the future and as a gay man myself.

[quote]If they were too stupid to figure out Liberace or the Village People, what do you expect?

This is a fair point. The story about the US navy being horrified to find out the Village People were singing about gay themes after they let them film on their ship is hilarious.

R34 For me it was the opposite, as a little 10 yo girl for me it was no question they were gay, and at the time i remember they were in teen idols girls magazines, but my first thought while watching their photos was " Those two are married with each other", of course this didn't stop me from having a crush on Neil anyway.

People used to doubt Rock Hudson was gay too

That's so interesting, R35! Haha you were much quicker on the uptake than I!

No one cared.

The only people that cared were gay people.

The breeders didn’t care as long as we stayed invisible

Chris is so adorable here. Love the little dance between the curtains.

Chris in the "Boy" cap, this is a great picture.

Thanks for sharing R40. I had such a crush on Chris as a kid, before I even knew what that meant for me.

I should do a chronological run through of their video clips, I think I've seen most of them before at least once, but can't remember a lot of them.

[quote]The breeders didn’t care as long as we stayed invisible

This is why I love all the gay-coded imagery of the time. It reflects a gay sensibility but not one fed through straight culture. If that makes any sense haha. It's the kind of thing as a kid you would look at and just know "these are my people" even before you knew exactly what that meant.

R19 just their name 'Village People' made it queer. That is clear!

Chris dancing in his underwear:

They suck.

Straight people had such odd ideas about gay people in the 80s. I remember bringing the Andy Warhol diaries to my job and my boss looking at the pictures and saying he believed Andy Warhol was ugly, but none of the other men could be because no good looking men were gay. I believe a lot of straight people held similar bizarre beliefs that blinded them to people who were so flaming they set of sprinkler systems like PSB.

whatevs, R45

[quote]no good looking men were gay

That's hilarious! Especially as I grew up in the era of women complaining that "all the good looking men are gay!"

The gays were not pin ups

My idea of hell is listening to more than two tracks by them in a row.

^ thanks for sharing, Debs

I detest anything arty and progressive. I'm grizzled, old, mean, bitter, crotchety, low-information, superficial queen into my garbage gay diva pow pow "music".

OP--everyone looked gay.

R20 everybody that ever saw a WHAM! video already knew George was gay.

No one ever thought the were straight, and no one cared.

Well I watched George Michael shaking his ass in that video, with his perfectly manicured stubble, watched it pretty closely I might add. No adults came by and told me he was gay. I just thought that was the heterosexual ideal. No wonder I ended up so confused.....

I guess, as Joe Jackson sang in 1982, "all the gays are macho".

....

Such a brilliant song, and I love that video too. There seemed to have been this brief moment in the early 90s of a kind of throwback to an older glamour from previous decades but through a modern lens, if that makes sense?

They were the authority on “Being Boring”.

^ find another thread, cunt

it's not hard

[quote]Did straight people really not realize that The Village People were gay back in the day.

Lead singer Victor Willis wasn't gay. He was married to Phylicia Rashad, aka, Claire Huxtable.

[quote]The original lead singer of the Village People. Victor Willis was the driving force behind the group as well as the group's only straight member. In addition to singing lead, he also wrote such hits as YMCA, Macho Man, In the Navy, and Go West, etc.

In fact, Village People initially consisted of only Victor Willis who recorded the group's first album in 1977 with use of professional background singers. Other group members were quickly assembled after Willis' first album, under the auspices of Village People, started climbing the charts. The first album contained the hit "San Francisco." Willis left the group in 1979 and returned in 1984 for the album "Fox on the Box." Willis left the group for good in 1985. He was the original cop and naval officer.

In 1978, he married Phylicia Rashad,better known as The Cosby Show Clair Huxtable. They divorced in 1984. An accomplished Broadway actor, Willis was in the original Broadway production of The Wiz, and such other major plays as Hair, River Niger, Three Gentlemen of Verona, and The Great MacDaddy to name a few. In fact, Victor Willis and Phylicia Rashad met while they were both cast members of "The Wiz," after which they soon starting dating and eventually wed.

Re Village People, Ray Simpson wasn’t flgay too. He’s married.

People may have liked the music of the Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and whoever else who was gay. But that did not translate into acceptance. I'd say they ignore it, if anything. I graduated high school in 1981. Queen was popular. My straight friends went to Queen's concerts. I don't remember them saying anything about Freddie Mercury. As for the other bands...they were popular when I was in college (graduated in '85). Did study abroad in '84 when FGTH had their hits. They were playing the music in European clubs. I remember being kinda shocked when a friend told me what the lyrics of Relax meant. And those groups remained on the Charts or at least played through the 80s.

Still, anti-gay attitudes were common and rampant at times. I can remember someone calling Tears for Fears "Tears for Queers" Slurs and anti-gay jokes were commonplace.

I had a happy youth and young adulthood, but the 80s sucked for its homophobic culture.

They knew but didn't care. As long as it wasn't talked about- Don't ask, Don't tell.

Were Tears for Fears a gay band too? I hadn't actually thought about that before.

The most successful musicians who were gay, like George Michael and Elton John were so dull to me. I much prefer going back at listening to bands like Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, Bronski Beat, Frankie Goes to Hollywood etc. Any others in this sort of realm you can recommend for me?

There really does seem to have been a bit of a UK gay band thing going on there for awhile.

Was that why Duran Duran fans hated Boy George ?

R58 R59 It's weird but "being boring" never did anything to me, i 've never seen the appeal nor in the music nor in the music video despite how much it is praised ( i'm not even sure if it's the MV fault beacuse everytime i see it i think it's a abercrombie add), i adore their imperial phase and the Very era tho, i know i'm in minority since Being boring is everyone's favourite song.

I remember one of the teenybopper magazines (Tiger Beat?) running an article about how "dreamy" the Village People were, as if they were the Bay City Rollers. You know the staff was cackling behind the scenes.

R68

I agree. Though I like some songs from Behaviour, but overall I like Very more. Can you forgive her? is their best song. Catchy light tune - and brutal, eviscerating lyrics.

Who bought the Very CD with the special case ?

[quote] OP--everyone looked gay.

In the 1980s, if Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran, all the guys in Depeche Mode, and all the guys in Spandau Ballet could be straight, then it wasn't inconceivable that the Pet Shop Boys could be straight.

I assume the British audience caught on quicker, but in the U.S. I think it was probably the video for "Domino Dancing" that finally made audiences say, "That sure is gay." Not coincidentally, the Pet Shop Boys never had another Top 40 hit in the U.S. after that.

R70 Can you Forgive her? Is one of my favourite song of them indeed!

And from their imperial phase "Rent", i just love it, and again i noticed most of their fanbase don't particulary like it , it seems my taste don't match the popular wave.

Interesting you say that, R73 - I'm not the biggest fan of "Rent". I've listened to it a bit more lately due to paying attention to the lyrics more than I did when I was a kid, but yeah, it's not a favourite of mine.

[quote]I assume the British audience caught on quicker, but in the U.S. I think it was probably the video for "Domino Dancing" that finally made audiences say, "That sure is gay." Not coincidentally, the Pet Shop Boys never had another Top 40 hit in the U.S. after that.

It seems to me, looking in from the outside, that in the US people's personal lives are taken a lot more [italic]personally[/italic] than elsewhere. Homophobia is and was a big thing across the board, but I feel like in Europe at least people are able to divorce the lives of the artists from the art more. Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems like gayness didn't necessarily affect whether someone could be as successful in Europe or Australia/New Zealand as it would in the US? Also in other ways, like Kate Bush releasing a song called "A Deal With God" wouldn't have affected the success of her song one bit in these other places, but it had to be re-titled "Running Up That Hill" because Americans wouldn't play it otherwise.

I know straight people who were shocked that Michael Stipe was gay

He had Natalie M. bearding for him hardcore.

I also know straight people who were stunned when Kevin Spacey was outed/came out

We’re straight people bothered by Melissa Etheridge and kd lang ?

More so than George Michael bothered them.

R74 I also like the version of Rent that Neil did with Suede, another group that i loved , i think Bret Anderson favourite was Rent from PSB.

It's the combination of those lyrics and music that give such a melancholic feel

Also Cardi B said her favourite is Rent (this is a bit surprising) But yes, from what i've read in their forum Rent is considered the least appealing , while Being Boring is higly praised

I remember when people thought that Ricky Martin was straight

r78, kd lang probably scared them, she's SO butch.

Melissa Etheridge was accepted -- she was reasonably hot in the mid-90s, plus she was a rocker. It was after she had come out that her next album, Yes I Am (1993), yielded the big hit "I'm The Only One," which not only reached #8 on the Hot 100, but went to #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart.

And DL thinks everyone is gay

Well not EVERYONE.

But the PSB and Ricky Martin ...

"And DL thinks everyone is gay"

R83 - Or should be!

Most folks are sexually fluid, r83, whether they can admit it is another issue.

[quote]kd lang probably scared them, she's SO butch.

I've always noticed kd has a lot of fans from across the board. I think her voice trumped everything else.

no one cares whom KD is doing. Like the Pet Shop Boys, people only want to hear her sing.

Neil is literally bisexual (not that women and men care at this point i guess)

For the first few albums they winked at sophisticated audiences .

In the interviews they did with teen pop mags in the 80s, Neil would always talk about (past) girlfriends so that deliberately created a false impression with the teen demo, which at the time was a lot more naive than it is today.

What I remember is that Pet Shop Boys had two hits and then was essentially never played again. I thought they had died or broken up and it's not so much about Americans but what the Powers That Be feel comfortable marketing to them. They didn't want to market PSB to us, but they did want to market George Michael as long as he could stay on the borderline of "possibly attracted to women" for the market they wanted to sell him to (young women).

You people on this board consistently act as though what people buy or see or listen to is not heavily prejudged and prefiltered by the owners of media and publishing. The masses will end up buying what is marketed to them, even pap and garbage but if the radio never plays someone past "West End Girls" most people are not going to go digging and seek out their records. Also, it seems like the industry wanted to move away from new wave rapidly into crappy pop and "singers" who were mostly dancers (if that), so the audience mostly moved along too.

So I wouldn't be too quick to assume the PSB sexual orientation had anything much to do with it. They were everywhere and then they were nowhere. To us, just one of many two hit wonders. No string choices or feelings or associations made whatsoever.

No one gave a shit whether they were or not. You think straight people sat around "Ok, guys, tonight we need to talk about something serious - are the Pet Shop Boys gay or not??"

90% of people back then listening to the radio just thought "Oh yeh I like that West End Girls song" and that was the end of it.

What’s interesting is st8 guys thought depeche mode were gay back in the 80’s- early 90’s. I read several articles /blogs written by them and the stigma behind being a fan back then:

Here is one

R66, no.

I grew up in a rural community in the UK and even there where you might expect a little naïveté we knew the PSB were gay, that Holly Johnson, Boy George, Mark Almond a few others were gay. I can’t remember giving Wham much thought but I suppose we knew as there was no surprise when George came out.

When you work in entertaiment industry, and more specifically in music industry, you don't sell only your music, but also your image and your sexuality, because that makes a difference.

Obviusly Neil Tennant being a journalist knew this way too well, he said it himself that if he revealed he was gay( or bi, since he claimed to be genuinely actrated to both ) he couldn't had sat at Top Of The Pops singing a song like Rent.

Especially when you are in your prime and you have many teenage fangirls( and yes, PSB had them ) it's unwise to out being gay, being Bi is considered more inclusive and less "scary".

Back then we weren’t obsessed with labeling everything and identifying everyone’s gender and sexuality as if it was the most important thing in the world. We knew they were gay, but it wasn’t worth mentioning.

Are you trying to say being gay wasn’t an issue in the 1980’s? We didn’t centre gender and sexuality as we do now but PSBs ambiguous messaging did have an effect on how they were promoted in the US

I just discovered Pete Shelley's "Homosapien" from 1981. This song also seems so obvious, but I wonder if that's just to me as a gay man?

I think they stopped being sold to us here less on their orientation and more because they were too arty.

They only want to sell vapid, easily understood stuff with a strong beat here.

"Domino Dancing" is a song I would've assumed would've done quite well in the US. I mean, it got to 18 I see, which is decent, but I would've expected higher. But there you go.

They thought they were gay, but not because they were gay.

R99 Too Arty? They did very disco catchy songs.

I don't know, i'm european, but i feel that despite their great success and hit songs their discography didn't age too well compared to other 80s groups, i'm surprised by this but i never hear their songs in movies/series setted in the 80s, meanwhile you can hear The smiths, The cure, simple minds, new order etc.

R101 They are so gay that Neil tried hard to convince everone that he is Bi and attracted to women. without even trying to have a beard because too gay to play that stunt.

The Pet Shop Boys were just part of a drizzle of basic dreary New Wave acts through the early 1980s. I think the only members of the public who bothered thinking of them as people rather than as supermarket background noise were probably romantic little gaylings.

Straight people didn't realize George Michael and Elton John were gay, or that Boy George was a drag queen. Don't expect straight people to be very perceptive.

Straight people thought Boy George was gay, but as I wrote with the PSB, not because he WAS gay. He looked like a girl, thus people would say he was gay and/or call him a "fag."

R105 My dad thought he was an "ugly woman" at first. My mom told him Boy George is a boy, hence the name and the voice, and they just assumed he was an 80s genderbending kook who made good music. Culture Club is the first concert our parents took my sister and me to. I posted an interview here a few weeks ago from 1985 in which Boy George tells a British talk show host that some Americans yell hateful things at him but that he was successful here mainly because most American people didn't have any clue he was gay, much less a drag queen; they just thought he was an eccentric Brit.

Neil in a interview right after coming out( lol as if people couldn't see from mars he was gay) said he came out so late because an artist when come out stop being seen as an artist and is seen as a "gay artist"- I think he is right even if it doesn't work for everyone , Freddy Mercury was gay but nobody considers him a "gay rockstar" rather than a "rockstar", same for Morrissey(he never come out but com'on ), he surely isn't cornered into the "gay" label.

It is true for PSB tho