Spoiler alert: they’re all gay AF.
Christmas is kind of a hard time to be really gay. I mean, you do get make cute little families of gingerbread and snowmen, but leave it to Melissa Etheridge to remind us that sometimes all you have to do make a family Christmas gay, is to show up. Making a scene wouldn’t hurt either. Not that I would know.
The Christmas album aside, there’s not a whole lot of especially tender songs in M.E.’s discography, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a kind of intimacy and 4th Street Feeling is filled with love songs with decidedly queer meanings. Describing “I Can Wait” on the album commentary, she says, “It’s a song about being still while your partner might be going through whatever they’re going through… but my part in it is to not take it personally and not assume anything and to let my partner go have her fear, her journey, whatever they’re supposed to do, and I will stay right here and wait.” That’s pretty good advice, I think, and pretty gay.
Still a full five years before M.E. would come out publicly, Brave and Crazy was released full of songs of forbidden love. But how anyone could think there was a heterosexual explanation for opening the whole album on the lines, “Hello, hello this is Romeo. / Calling from a jackpot telephone. / Shame, shame, but I love your name,” is beyond me.
I’ll be completely honest and say that I’m rating this whole album this high mostly because the title track is such a bop, and I may or not have lip-synched “I want to see how lucky lucky can be! I want to ride with my Angel and live shockingly! I want to drive to the edge and into the sea!” on Snapchat Story. I’m practicing for next time I’m at Stonewall on karaoke night.
And speaking of queer breakups, the last time I listened to “Yes I Am,” full disclosure this was like two months ago, I was deep in that post-breakup process. I walked past her apartment building on my way home from work hoping to run into her. And one day, when I finally did, I put in earbuds and hit play only to hear M.E. sing “So you walked with me for a while / Bared your naked soul /And you told me of your plan / How you would never let them know / In the morning of the night / You cried a long lost child / And I tried oh I tried to hold you / But you were young / And you were wild / But, I , I will never be the same” So for sentimental reasons alone I would say this album is pretty gay, but it’s also worth mentioning that M.E. released this album just months after she came out. So it’s all there. Every beautiful, heart-wrenching moment of it. I’m not crying. You are.
Finally, the absolute gayest Melissa Etheridge album of all is Melissa Etheridge. If not for “The Way I Do” then for the sheer Big Dyke Energy of releasing a self-titled album right off the bat, the first album out.