The sounds queer connoisseurs champion often celebrate and reconcile these discrepancies. producers such as Stock Aitken Waterman filled the void with gay-targeted “hi-NRG” tracks that crossed into the mainstream via Dead or Alive, Bananarama, Minogue and Summer, while everyone from the Latin Rascals to the Pet Shop Boys replicated Rodriguez’s machine-gun edits. In 1982, ABBA’s North American label issued its kindred uptempo tune “The Visitors” as a single, but once again, a gay subscription-only remix service, Hot Tracks, supplied the extended version.Īfter ABBA that year recorded what would be for decades its final sessions, U.K. This forced a 12-inch release overseas of “Lay All Your Love on Me’s” comparatively ordinary LP cut that preserved the exclusivity of Rodriguez’s version, while its longevity proved that dancers - particularly gay ones - still craved fast and lusty club anthems. One couldn’t just walk into a store and buy it: In those pre-streaming days, you could hear it only at clubs like the Saint, where it remained in rotation for years. Like Leslie’s similarly beloved mix of Jimmy Ruffin’s “ Hold on to My Love,” Rodriguez’s ABBA transformation appeared only on Disconet, a gay-owned subscription remix service. 5, 2021 An earlier version of this article gave a Jimmy Ruffin song title as “Hang on to My Love.” It is “Hold on to My Love.” Rodriguez turned his splicing flub into a thunderous attention-grabber that packed the air with pumping fists and poppers alike.ĥ:42 p.m. “The first time he did that, it was a mistake,” recalls Robbie Leslie, DJ veteran of New York City’s the Saint, the ultimate ’80s gay disco.
The edits created a particularly percussive “BAM BAM BAM.” Raul Rodriguez - DJ at the nightclub New York, New York - came up with a solution when he extended ABBA’s 1980 album track “Lay All Your Love on Me” in his home studio with tape and razorblades. Straight clubs shifted to eclectic funk and new wave, but the well of speedy gay dancefloor arias nearly ran dry. This challenged DJs who since 1977’s “Saturday Night Fever” had had a rhythmic deluge from which to draw. mainstream media and record companies alike declared disco dead.
Things changed in the early ’80s when the U.S. Yes, there were exceptions: Larry Levan - the influential gay Black DJ at New York’s legendary and largely Black/LGBTQ Paradise Garage - adored Cher’s “ Take Me Home.” But gay DJs and their audiences mostly favored underground divas and obscure orchestral maestros they discovered and popularized, not successful pop acts plucked from AM radio. (He’s since regretted this.)įrom the earliest subterranean clubs to Studio 54, the LGBTQ-friendly discos of the ’70s were powered by Black and Latin grooves. Disco’s top mixer, Tom Moulton, considered “Dancing Queen” perfect as is, so he turned down the chance to remix it. Back when Donna Summer reigned as indisputable dancing queen, ABBA didn’t get much gay club play, not even you-know-what. While even icons like Madonna polarize opinion, nearly every color of the gay rainbow agrees on ABBA. This week releasing “Voyage,” its first new LP since 1981 and a teaser for next year’s London concerts featuring 3D avatars, ABBA is to many gay fans what the Rolling Stones are to straights - archetypes whose appeal transcends time, place and age. Ostensibly cheerful but packed with drama and peppered with Scandinavian melancholy, the Stockholm mixed-gender quartet’s pop has blueprinted the glitz of countless gay and gay-friendly acts from Kylie Minogue to Lady Gaga, Adam Lambert to Lil Nas X - a singular achievement for a band that hadn’t completed an album in 40 years. Thanks to multiple stage and screen incarnations of “Mamma Mia!,” fabulously garish costumes from gay designer Owe Sandström and consummately crafted songs more retroactively popular than in their ’70s and early ’80s heyday, ABBA has for decades been the bull’s-eye of the LGBTQ musical universe. Donald Trump and his followers may have for a time claimed the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” and “Macho Man” for themselves, but there’s no way they’ll take this one from us.
It’s our variation on what fans do at ballgames when their team is winning, but with a camp exuberance ignited by the song’s brassy harmonies and handy references to feminine royalty. Gay revelers (and their lucky straight friends) are waving their arms, striking ingenue poses and shamelessly singing along to the sugary 45-year-old pop standard that’s become synonymous with queer nightlife. Somewhere, right now, ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” is playing at an LGBTQ club, bar or house party.