Last week, Ariana Grande set the internet on fire with a lyric that suggested she was bisexual. But what was truly remarkable was how unremarkable the line was.
“I like women and men,” the 25-year-old sang casually on Monopoly, a duet with her friend Victoria Monet.
It was a throwaway comment, sandwiched between lyrics about songwriting royalties and her overwhelming workload (“I need a twin”) but it sparked a flurry of speculation about the star’s private life.
“Is she bi or nah?” asked one fan on Instagram, to which Monet replied: “She said what she said.”
On Twitter, another fan commented, “Ariana ain’t gotta label herself,” prompting the pop star to respond: “I haven’t before and still don’t feel the need to now”.
Grande isn’t alone. After decades of closeted artists and coded lyrics, a new generation of gender and sexually-fluid pop stars are challenging stereotypes and celebrating their identity through music.
A significant breakthrough came in 2012, when Frank Ocean posted an open letter to Tumblr, describing how he’d fallen for a man when he was 19.
“It was my first love, it changed my life,” he wrote. “There was no escaping, no negotiating with the feeling. No choice.”
Notably, Ocean chose to address his bisexuality at the start of his career (the letter was originally destined for the liner notes of his debut album, Channel Orange) and it did nothing to harm his sales or his reputation.
“I think the landscape has changed dramatically for queer artists,” Olly Alexander from Years & Years told the BBC last year.
“In the past, we’ve all been familiar with pop stars coming out in the middle of their careers, or after they’ve become huge and that feels like a heavy narrative to queer people.
“Now it seems to be really changing that artists can be out from the start of their career; and it’s not some sort of sensationalised headline.”
In the last few years, artists like Anne-Marie, Troye Sivan, Harry Styles, Christine and the Queens and Demi Lovato have all talked about same-sex attraction or bisexuality in their lyrics.
Miley Cyrus has been particularly upfront, telling Paper Magazine: “I’m down with any adult – anyone over the age of 18 who is down to love me.”
And when Janelle Monae defined herself as “pansexual” in a Rolling Stone profile last year, searches for the term rose by 11,000% on the online dictionary Merriam-Webster.
Pop songs are increasingly likely to feature same-sex pronouns and queer perspectives, while Monae earned a Grammy nomination for her song Pynk, a sex-positive celebration of female genitalia and self-love.
