Lucy Dacus, Melissa Etheridge, and Me

The Queer Urge to Take Down Our Own (and the prison of being cool and right)

I’ve been trying to write about aging and coolness. Specifically the utter thrill of being out of the game. Last night I went by myself to see Lucy Dacus at Massey Hall. I haven’t been to a show solo since I was a music reviewer in the mid aughts and it was fun to skulk about observing the crowd and quietly doing whatever I felt like doing. (Scrolling Her and wondering why all the butches my age live in Rochester.) I’ve been in the city for a few days, catching up with a few different friends every day. I’m staying with a pal in a very small apartment, so it was a nice reprieve to have a few hours in my own head. I mostly went because I’ve been driving down country roads belting out opener Katie Gavin’s folk record for months. Watching the crowds of mostly romantic 20-something lesbians yell worshipful yelps at Lucy, one third of Boygenius, was, in a word, adorable. The show was stunning start to finish. It was fun to love the music, and also observe the dynamics of queer fandom that has utterly transformed in recent years.

I was a freelance music reviewer for an arts weekly in the mid aughts. Writing longhand scribbles in my pocket notebook about how the girls scream-sung at a drunken Connor Oberst, or barely decipherable attempts to find adjectives for electro-clash gimmick bands. But one time I was assigned Melissa Etheridge. I went to the concert reluctantly, feeling too-cool for the crowd I assumed would be suburban and rural middle aged lesbians with bad fashion, earnestly singing along. There were so few lesbians in music then, it seems crazy that I was such an asshole about the gig. But it was a time when I felt it important to prefer Peaches or The Butchies or The Gossip, as though you couldn’t like more than one thing. Her biggest hit Like I Do had been a huge song when I was in high school before she came out. I had loved the song, and then hearing it a decade later as a dyke there was something so utterly emotional and passionate about it specific to dramatic lez dating dynamics that I felt almost second-hand embarrassment whenever I heard it. We were like that, desperately singing Come to My Window. It was true. But it was the age of irony and detachment and synthesizers, of pretending not to care that people hated you for being queer. So I went, arms-crossed and sat in the theatre ready to be a little bitch about it. And then Melissa came on stage, newly recovered from breast cancer, and she blew my fucking mind. She was so good. And the crowd of yes - middle aged dykes in tie-dyed concert tees - wept and sang along and I was so moved by the spectacle. I was utterly disarmed by the raw, vulnerable emotion on display. I cried and wrote a fawning review - I think? It’s no longer or was never online to find. It’s funny to remember how many things I published that are just lost to the wayback machine or in paper scrapbooks in a box in the attic, now that I’m a middle aged lesbian with bad fashion.

Lucy Dacus at Massey Hall April 26, 2025

It was interesting to watch Lucy Dacus sing these romantic love songs and the crowd hang on her every note. When she released a video a few months back that included a cast of masc actors and influencers, I posted it to my instagram. As a femme who dates mostly butches or mascs it felt like a triumph, this is what the kids can just do now and no one has to be handed a ‘zine or learn about it on an obscure message board. As soon as I posted it several people I don’t know messaged me to say that they hated the video because it didn’t represent a variety of bodies. I mostly didn’t reply. I’m so frustrated with this instant response - that is, I’ll admit, my entire generation’s fault - that any art produced by a queer person has to represent everyone or else it Isn’t Good. How did important and complicated conversations about representation turn into this bitchy and unreasonable sport of tearing down everyone who produces something? Trying to make your work represent everyone and be politically perfect is just not a reasonable goal and also, not the point of art. It results in work that feels didactic and educational and inauthentic. I say this as a fat femme who loves to see bigger bodies in art. Most people who respond this way aren’t critiquing the work that someone produced, they’re critiquing the work they wanted her to make. The role of a critic is to talk about what the artist was trying to do and whether or not they achieved it. A critic who only asks but does this relate to me personally, or this work trying to be everything to everyone, is not asking an interesting question. But Lucy Dacus, or anyone, can do whatever she wants. Like make a funny, goofy video about femme and masc desire using actors that fit her vision. Critiques of this nature are also woefully unaware of what it takes to produce work. Of course she chose actors who are used to being on camera. Of course the budget was probably such and such. Of course musicians have entire teams behind them working on an album aesthetic. The old millenials who only had T.A.T.U and Katy Perry kissing a girl and Girls Gone Wild will appreciate it.

I was a child who, once I turned 12, suddenly wanted to be just like the girl on the school bus drawing the words Skinny Puppy in the window condensation, not the cornballs who liked New Kids on the Block. I wanted to be cool. What a prison to be drawn into so young. How free it might have been to just ask myself honestly what I liked and wanted to do. Now I can look back and see an element of masking my adhd, mimicking whatever the cool girls did or said. The irony that I was drawn to subcultures as a teen that professed to be non-conformist, and that was a disguise I could use to pretend I wasn’t so easily influenced by what was the most punk or whathaveyou.

Last week I bought crocs to wear to the public pool. I’m free.

This week’s adorations:

Cold Specks has a new record called Light for the Midnight. I am LOVING it. Haunting, beautiful.

Last night the opener Jasmine.4.T blew my mind. It was also so heartening to hear the crowd of mostly queer women scream and cheer for a trans woman artist.