Retroversy

In the mid-aughts, when I was making my way through what Americans would call “high school”, strange things were afoot in the world of music. Everyone knew CDs were on their way out and the Internet would replace them, but no one knew how. Spotify wasn’t even a blip on the radar, YouTube hadn’t really established itself as a platform for music streaming just yet — in fact, YouTube hadn’t really established itself period, unless you count hosting ripped episodes of Naruto in three ten-minute parts as “establishing itself” — and buying music via services like iTunes wasn’t exactly something teens did, as it required you to have a credit card.

The result was that television rose up as the curator of many a teen’s taste. There weren’t enough channels to cater to every taste however, and so, the selection of music videos they blasted onto the airwaves was eclectic to say the least. Your afternoon could kick off with the brutality of Slipknot, followed up by a German novelty song, pass a hot new indie band from the UK and some 9-minute trance track set to stock footage of partying frat bros, and end on an adult contemporary balled mewled by some clean-shaven one-hit-wonder. Point is, everyone I knew essentially listened to the same stuff, and that stuff could be just about anything.

Scissor Sisters were a band that could thrive in this environment. They weren’t quite pop, but they weren’t quite rock either. They weren’t mainstream, but they sure as hell weren’t edgy. As such, their aesthetic gelled perfectly with this anything-goes attitude the music video channels had. Scissor Sisters stood out, and in an era when listeners themselves were more and more becoming the curators of what music is popular, that was a major asset. It remains to be seen whether Scissor Sisters were standing out in a positive way among my peers, however. One day, when I overheard my classmates talking about this hot new band, the conversation was set alight with an inevitable bombshell: “Scissor Sisters? You do know every single person in that band is gay, right?”

Scissor Sisters were “the gay band”. That was obvious to anyone who knows what their name referred to, but my classmates considered it to be some kind of shocking revelation. In hindsight, that’s a bit odd, seeing as this was an era when media stereotypes and homophobic misconceptions equivocated a camp, effeminate aesthetic with queer sexuality so thoroughly that “being gay” was associated by us teens with flamboyancy more than it was with, y’know, liking people of the same sex. In fact, I wouldn’t even be surprised if it turned out those channels had started pushing this eccentric band, whose entire shtick was a throwback to a — back then — particularly maligned era in music history, not because they were talented performers who made fun songs, but because they could be carted out as a kind of curiosity — “Behold, ladies and gentlemen! The gay in his natural habitat!”

Nevertheless, I wasn’t repulsed by Jake Shears and co. being exposed as card-carrying members of the homo-sexual underground. “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’”, their big hit at the time, was a quirky song, with its falsetto vocals, old-timey piano chords, counter-intuitive lyrics (“Why is he singing about not wanting to dance to this incredibly danceable melody?”) and a quirky video to match. The fact that they were — allegedly — all gay, just read to me as “way in which these guys are not like other people”, just as their song was not like other songs. I hated it when people told me to “act normal”, so I’ve didn’t really have any issues with people whose only crime was not being normal. It was, admittedly, a pretty milquetoast way of supporting the queers, but hey, for a teen in the year 2006, I could have done a lot worse.

So, what does congratulating myself on my not-as-bad-as-it-could-have-been attitude towards the queer community in the mid-aughts have to do with “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’”? Not a fat lot, admittedly. Still, there is still a way in which I pay homage to the respect I felt for Scissor Sisters and their unapologetic quirkiness. “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’” is the only song I will ever sing at a karaoke party. It’s on Singstar: Pop Hits for the Playstation 2, a game seemingly all my cousins own, so I’ve been to quite a few karaoke parties in my time. This is the only track that can make me come out of the toilet I’ve locked myself onto on such occasions.

Don’t get me wrong, I like singing, but don’t like being vulnerable and exposed the way singing makes you vulnerable and exposed, and I’ve been hurt a few times too many. For Scissor Sisters, I’ll gladly make an exception, though. They deserve it, for throwing shame out of the window and being who they are in an era when their was no greater sin than honesty. Also, “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’” is utterly irresistible. Odd that, for a song about being perfectly able to say “no” to something supposedly irresistible.