Queering Karaoke at Liverpool's The Lisbon Pub and Beyond

Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)     Queering  Karaoke  at  Liverpool’s  The  Lisbon  Pub  and  Beyond       Jelena  Gligorijević   Turku  University,  Musicology       My  interest  in  karaoke  studies  began  to  develop  in  2007  when  I  conducted  my  first   ethnographic  research  as  part  of  an  MA  course  at  Liverpool’s  Institute  of  Popular  Music.1  What   drew  me  instantly  to  karaoke  practice  was  its  omnipresence  across  many  city  pubs  and  bars.2  In   addition,  the  awareness  that  issues  of  gender  and  sexuality  had  been  addressed  only  casually  in  the   available  literature  on  karaoke  (e.g.  Drew  2001;  Mitsui  and  Hosokawa  eds.  1998)  urged  me  to   undertake  a  circumscribed  kind  of  karaoke  fieldwork  that  would  elucidate  and  fill  the  detected  gap   in  the  field.  Drawing  upon  Butler’s  (1999)  proposition  that  it  is  through  minority  gendered  and   sexual  practices  that  the  performative  nature  of  gender  comes  to  the  fore,  I  ended  up  at  Liverpool’s   gay  and  lesbian  pub  The  Lisbon  observing  karaoke  nights  on  Thursdays  and  Sundays  for  six   months.   In  the  present  article,  The  Lisbon’s  karaoke  events  are  thus  conceptualized  as  producing  a   queer  space  within  which  traditional  binaries  in  the  realm  of  gender  and  sexuality  (but  also   beyond)  are  called  into  question  through  karaoke  performances.  Such  a  conceptual  approach  is   premised  on  Drew’s  conclusion  reached  in  his  ethnography  on  karaoke  practice  in  the  USA.   According  to  him,  “[k]araoke  isn’t  just  about  validating  personal  and  social  identities;  it’s  about   performing  and  testing  these  identities  before  others”  (2001,  121).  In  this  article,  I  likewise  focus   on  gendered  and  sexual  aspects  of  identity  in  karaoke  performers  with  the  following  question  in   mind:  In  what  ways  does  karaoke  practice  contribute  to  the  destabilization  and  denaturalization  of   gender  and  sexual  categories  specific  to  such  queer  contexts  as  Liverpool’s  The  Lisbon  pub?  Of  main   interest  here  are  thus  queer  articulations  of  gender  and  sexuality  that  The  Lisbon’s  karaoke  space                                                                                                                             1  In  academic  literature,  the  term  karaoke  is  employed  to  denote  both  “a  machine  that  plays  recorded  music   which  people  can  sing  to”  and  “the  activity  of  singing  using  a  karaoke  machine”  (Mitsui  1998,  40–41).   2  As  Kelly  pointed  out  in  his  karaoke  study  in  the  UK,  “the  [karaoke]  phenomenon  was  [indeed]  first   established  in  the  industrial  north  of  England  [in  the  late  1980s]  and  it  is  here,  in  the  midst  of  a  general   decline  nationally,  that  it  continues  to  thrive”  (1998,  85).  The  corresponding  view  came  up  as  well  in  the   interview  (February  2008)  I  conducted  with  The  Lisbon  pub’s  karaoke  jockey  Martin  who  moved  his  house   from  London  to  Liverpool  for  better  job  opportunities  in  the  karaoke  industry.   1     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   affords  to  its  users.  The  ultimate  aim  of  the  article  is,  in  Butler’s  terms,  to  rethink  gender  and  its   possible  expressions  by  inquiring  what  is  queer  about  karaoke  practice  at  The  Lisbon  pub  and   beyond.  The  term  queer  clearly  highlights  a  challenge  that  (The  Lisbon’s)  karaoke  practice  may   posit  to  restrictive  and  oppressive  bodily  and  gender  norms  consolidated  through  the   heteronormative  gender  order.   To  accomplish  this  objective,  I  opt  to  keep  my  analytical  focus  close  by  looking  into  two   regularly  performed  songs  at  The  Lisbon  and  their  queer  appropriations  in  the  pub’s  karaoke   context.  Underlying  this  analytical  choice  is  another  assumption  made  by  Drew  about  crowd   favorites  at  U.S.  karaoke  bars.  In  his  view,  such  karaoke  songs  display  a  capacity  “to  crystallize  the   experience  of  the  people  who  celebrate  them  and,  as  a  result,  to  constitute  these  people  as  members   of  a  common  culture”  (2001,  56).  Accordingly,  it  is  through  the  analysis  of  The  Lisbon’s  two  then-­‐ crowd  favorites  –  Adele’s  “Chasing  Pavements”  and  Amy  Winehouse’s  “Valerie”  –  that  I  intend  to   grasp  what  constituted  the  pub’s  queer  culture  back  in  the  time  of  my  karaoke  fieldwork.  For  the   purpose  of  such  analysis,  I  mainly  employ  the  concepts  of  queer  camp  (see,  for  instance,  Case  1988– 89;  Booth  1983;  Dyer  1976;  Newton  1972)  and  opera  queen  (see  Brett  and  Wood  2006;   Koestenbaum  1993;  Morris  1993),  both  of  which  borrowed  from  the  field  of  gay  and  lesbian   cultural/music  studies.  The  former  concept  provides  the  terminology  with  which  to  identify  queer   camp  elements  in  several  objects  of  my  analysis  –  namely,  in  the  public/private  image  of  the  two   singers,  in  their  respective  singles  “Chasing  Pavements”  and  “Valerie”,  and  in  the  idiosyncrasies  of   karaoke  performances  of  these  two  songs  at  The  Lisbon.  The  latter  concept  is  additionally   reworked  to  fit  the  objects  and  context  of  the  present  analysis,  adjusting  therefore  to  two  genre-­‐ specific  pop  music  texts  and  their  reuses  in  The  Lisbon’s  queer  karaoke  space.   More  specifically,  the  Opera  Queen,  known  also  as  the  diva  effect,  can  be  defined  as  a  subject   position  generally  associated  with  “twentieth-­‐century  homosexual  cultures  in  the  West,  including   both  lesbians  and  gay  males”  (Brett  and  Wood  2006,  369).  Or  in  Morris’s  formulation,  the  Opera   Queen  refers  to  “that  particular  segment  of  the  (…)  (homosexual)  community  that  defines  itself  by   the  extremity  and  particularity  of  its  obsession  with  opera”  (1993,  184).  By  analogy  with  opera   queens,  I  argue  that  the  fascination  and  identification  of  The  Lisbon’s  karaoke  singers  (of  any  sex,   gender,  and  sexual  orientation)  with  Adele  and  Winehouse  as  pop-­‐soul  divas  created  for  them  the   subject  position  of  pop-­‐soul  queens.  And  as  Davies  and  Harré  clarify,  the  concept  of  positioning  is   central  to  the  discursive  production  of  the  multiple  “selves”  or  “identities”  one  assumes,  be  they   “called  forth”  or  actively  constructed  along  the  way.  In  their  words,     2     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   Once  having  taken  up  a  particular  position  as  one’s  own,  a  person  inevitably  sees  the  world  from   the  vantage  point  of  that  position  and  in  terms  of  the  particular  images,  metaphors,  storylines  and   concepts  which  are  made  relevant  within  the  particular  discursive  practice  in  which  they  are   positioned  (1990,  46).     In  like  manner,  for  The  Lisbon’s  pop-­‐soul  queens,  it  is  arguably  the  queer  perspective  from   which  the  world  is  viewed,  narrated,  experienced,  and  embodied.   The  analysis  of  the  pop-­‐soul  queen  phenomenon  at  The  Lisbon  pub  is  conducted  with  two  goals   in  mind.  The  first  is  to  trace  (by  means  of  analogical  relationship  between  opera  queens  and  opera   divas)  the  connections  that  The  Lisbon’s  queer  crowd  was  making  in  relation  to  two  pop-­‐soul  divas,   Adele  and  Amy  Winehouse,  in  general,  and  to  their  two  songs  in  particular.  The  key  question  here  is   thus:  What  is  it  about  these  two  divas  and  their  two  respective  songs  that  resonated  so  well  with   the  experience  of  The  Lisbon’s  queer  crowd  (and  beyond)?  The  second  objective  of  my  analysis  is  to   illustrate  how  these  connections  were  played  out  in  actual  karaoke  performances  at  The  Lisbon.   Finally,  I  conclude  my  article  with  a  theoretical  discussion  on  the  queer  camp  potential  of   karaoke  practice  extending  beyond  the  situatedness  of  my  ethnographic  study.  I  develop  my   argument  by  proposing  that  karaoke  practice  on  the  whole  can  be  thought  of  as  constituting  a   Thirdspace  (Soja  1996).  And  it  is  queer  camp  moments,  so  the  argument  goes,  that  provide  this   “third”  mode  of  karaoke’s  spatial  imagination.  Arguably,  they  open  up  opportunities  in  everyday  life   contexts  for  moving  beyond  the  “normative”  forms  of  gender  towards  more  fluid,  inclusive,  and   non-­‐violent  projections  of  the  gendered  world.   The  subsequent  analysis  clearly  draws  on  eclectic  material  sources  and  the  corresponding   selection  of  theoretico-­‐methodological  approaches  within  a  broadly  defined  cultural  studies   framework.  What  constitutes,  though,  their  common  ground  and  glues  them  together  is  the   consistent  use  of  a  queer  camp  perspective.  Subsumed  under  its  scope  is  specifically  the   interpretation  of  the  fieldwork  material  collected  from  The  Lisbon  between  November  2007  and   April  2008,  as  well  as  the  relevant  media  online  reports  on  Adele  and  Winehouse,  but  also  a  close   reading  of  “Chasing  Pavements”  and  “Valerie”.  It  is  also  worth  noting  that  my  inquiry  is  largely  (but   not  exclusively)  informed  by  the  groundbreaking  work  in  queer  musicology  (e.g.  Jarman-­‐Ivens   2009;  Hawkins  2009;  2006;  Brett  and  Wood  2006;  Richardson  2006;  Whiteley  and  Rycenga  eds.   2006;  Koestenbaum  1993),  as  well  as  by  a  variety  of  theoretical  concepts  originating  from  a  larger   field  of  gender/feminist/queer  studies  (e.g.  Halberstam  2005;  Dyer  2004;  Sullivan  2003;   Rushbrook  2002;  Butler  1999;  Cleto  1999).  Aligning  itself  to  the  basic  tenets  of  postmodern,   poststructural,  and  critical  theory,  the  present  article  sets  itself  a  similar  task  of  problematizing  the   3     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   notion  of  polarized  essences  that  runs  through  much  of  commonsense  thinking  about  gender  and   sexuality.3  To  attend  to  this  task,  I  first  briefly  clarify  the  crucial  terms  operating  within  the   conceptual  and  analytical  framework  outlined  above.     The  Essential  Vocabulary  of  Queer  Theory  and  Its  Analytical  Usage  in  the  Article:   Gender  Subversion,  Camp,  and  Queer     My  exploration  of  gender  and  sexuality  in  The  Lisbon’s  karaoke  performances  is  grounded  in   Butler’s  (1999)  oft-­‐cited  theory  on  the  performative  basis  of  gender  identity.  Importantly,  I  adopt  a   middle-­‐of-­‐the-­‐road  stance  towards  the  “determinism  versus  agency”  debate  which  this  theory   stirred  in  academia  (see  Sullivan  2003).  This  means  that,  following  feminist  writers  such  as   Lafrance  (2002,  10–12),  I  do  acknowledge  discursive  mechanisms  and  historico-­‐cultural   contingencies  behind  the  processes  of  gender  identity  construction,  whilst  allowing  at  the  same   time  a  possibility  of  individual  agency  in  negotiating  and  subverting  imposed/internalized   gendered  modalities.  Another  way  to  account  for  this  dialectic  is  to  use  Butler’s  distinction  between   gender  performativity  and  performance.  Performativity  “consists  in  a  reiteration  of  [gender]  norms   which  precede,  constrain,  and  exceed  the  performer”  (Butler  1993,  24),  whereas  performance  is   seen  as  “a  set  of  actions  which  a  presumably  always  already  constituted  subject  intentionally  and   knowingly  choreographs,  in  some  cases  for  subversive  means”  (Sullivan  2003,  201).   The  “performativity/performance”  distinction  is  problematic  on  a  number  of  accounts.  First,  it   is  open  to  debate  where  to  draw  the  line  between  intentional  and  unintentional  instances  of  gender   performance.  As  Edensor  (2002,  71–72),  following  Merleau-­‐Ponty,  notes  on  a  more  general  level,   human  actions  involve  different  modes  of  reflexivity  (most  of  which  are  “practical”  and  engaged   rather  than  contemplative)  that  switch  from  one  to  another  according  to  one’s  familiarity  with   situations  and  activities  undertaken.  Second,  it  is  likewise  hard  to  differentiate  between  subversive   and  unsubversive  gender  forms,  since  what  is  considered  gender  subversion  changes  across  time,   space,  and  social  group.  Moreover,  even  in  case  the  consensus  on  this  is  reached,  there  is   additionally  the  question  of  what  are  exactly  political  effects  of  gender  subversion.  This  question                                                                                                                             3  It  is  a  truism  that  much  of  queer  studies  nowadays  calls  for  an  intersectional  analysis  of  identity,  throwing   additionally  into  relief  the  relationship  of  social  identifiers  other  than  gender  and  sex  (such  as  race,  ethnicity,   age,  etc.)  to  prevailing  regimes  of  power/knowledge.  Notwithstanding  that,  I  still  insist  on  keeping  a  narrow   focus  on  issues  of  gender  and  sexuality  in  the  present  karaoke  study,  since  such  an  approach  secures  the   aspired  depth  of  my  analytical  efforts.  In  so  doing,  I  acknowledge  that  my  analysis  runs  a  risk  of  being  accused   either  of  exercising  a  tunnel  vision  on  the  subject  matter,  or  of  projecting  “liberal,  elitist,  or  Euro-­‐centric”   views  in  the  eyes  of  minorities  other  than  sexual  (cf.  Dayal  cited  in  Amico  2006,  137).   4     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   becomes  even  more  pertinent  when  considering  that  subversive  gender  acts  are  prone  to   clichéization  and  commodification  in  the  cultural  industry  markets  thriving  on  shock  value.  Besides,   as  Butler  explains:     Gender  can  be  rendered  ambiguous  without  disturbing  or  reorienting  normative  sexuality  at  all.   Sometimes  gender  ambiguity  can  operate  precisely  to  contain  or  deflect  non-­‐normative  sexual   practice  and  thereby  work  to  keep  normative  sexuality  intact  (1999,  xiv).     While  acknowledging  the  relevance  of  all  these  critical  arguments,  I  assert  that  the  analytical   focus  on  a  particular  kind  of  activity  (karaoke)  and  context  (The  Lisbon  pub)  in  this  article  reduces   a  majority  of  dilemmas  and  paradoxes  addressed  above.  To  be  exact,  if  musical  “performing  is  about   (…)  turning  one’s  identity  into  a  theatricalized  event”,  as  Hawkins  (2009,  11)  suggests  in  his  study   of  the  British  pop  dandy,  then  karaoke  equally  offers  performers  a  possibility  to  arrange  and   manage  the  stylization  of  their  bodily  actions.  Moreover,  that  karaoke,  just  like  any  other  form  of   staged  music  performance,  brings  issues  of  gender  and  sexuality  to  the  fore,  is  another  viewpoint   coming  close  to  Hawkins’s  theorization.  According  to  him,  it  is  in  the  arena  of  pop  music  that   explorations  of  erotic  desire  and  fantasy  hold  a  central  place,  whereas  genderplay  works  almost  as   a  norm.  Karaoke  practice  can  likewise  be  understood  as  a  common  platform  for  a  plenitude  of   (un)intentional  gender  enactments,  and  possibly  transgressions,  through  playful  displays  and   deployments  of  the  gendered  body  and  voice.  When  filtered  in  addition  through  the  queer   framework  of  The  Lisbon’s  karaoke  space,  such  gender  performances  can  be  said  to  break  down  a   presumably  causal  or  structural  link  between  gender  and  sexual  practice,  and  thereby  defy  the   heteronormative  implications  of  such  thinking.  In  doing  so,  karaoke  activity  at  The  Lisbon,  as  the   following  analysis  will  illustrate,  ultimately  disrupts  and  transcends  the  binary-­‐based  categories  of   gender  and  sexual  identity  (namely,  strict  binaries  of  masculine/feminine  and  straight/gay).   Of  crucial  importance  here  is  also  the  use  of  camp  as  an  effective  stylistic  strategy  for  disclosing   the  performative  nature  of  gender.  Camp  is  routinely  associated  with  (self-­‐)irony,  (self-­‐)parody,   artificiality,  theatricality,  and  exaggeration  (see,  for  instance,  Sullivan  2003,  193),  producing  thus  “a   disruptive  style  of  humour  that  defies  canons  of  taste”  (Brett  and  Wood  cited  in  Hawkins  2009,   146).  However,  the  theorization  of  camp  within  a  broad  perspective  of  cultural  studies  has  been  by   far  more  complex  and  exhaustive  than  the  description  given  above.  As  Cleto  notes,  camp  has   initially  been  conceptualized  “as  sensibility,  taste,  or  style,  reconceptualised  as  aesthetic  or  cultural   economy,  and  later  asserted/reclaimed  as  (queer)  discourse”  (1999,  2;  emphasis  in  original).  It  is   5     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   mainly  in  this  last  sense  that  I  use  the  notion  camp  in  the  analysis  of  The  Lisbon’s  karaoke   phenomenon.   Moreover,  this  also  explains  why  I  use  the  terms  camp  and  queer  interchangeably  or  jointly  (as   in  the  expression  queer  camp)  throughout  the  article.  Implied  by  this  is  the  main  analytical  concern   with  those  aspects  of  camp  performativity  in  karaoke  practice  which  are  framed  as  queer   performativity  (Sedgwick’s  expression  cited  in  Cleto  1999,  32).  This  practically  means  that  I  seek  to   discern  the  ways  in  which  camp  is  utilized  in  karaoke  practice  –  first,  to  reveal  the  sociocultural   contingency  and  constructedness  of  dominant  gender  and  sexual  modalities;  and  second,  to  disturb   and  counter  the  pervasive  authority  of  heteronormativity.  In  this  approach,  queerness  is  as  broadly   defined  as  “a  positionality  vis-­‐à-­‐vis  the  [hetero]normative”  (Halperin  cited  in  Sullivan  2003,  43).   Queer,  thus,  operates  less  as  a  sexual  category  that  can  be  distinguished  across  a  wide  range  of   cultural  texts  and  practices.  Queer  is  rather  understood  as  equivalent  to  a  critical  approach  which   renders  the  prevailing  sexual  and  gender  order  problematic  and  inherently  oppressive  (cf.  Lee   Oakes  2006,  48).   Note  in  addition  that  the  joint  expression  queer  camp  does  not  solely  work  here  as  an  indicator   of  the  camp’s  subversive  political  edge.  Its  consistent  usage  also  points  to  two  main  discursive   arenas  within  which  “both  [notions  of]  camp  and  queer  (and  camp  as  queer)”  came  to  take  shape   over  time.  In  the  first,  camp  is  to  be  reclaimed  and  preserved  by  LGBTQ  cultures  on  the  grounds  of   its  initial  homosexual  meanings.  And  of  relevance  in  the  second  discursive  arena  are  instances  of   camp’s  diffusion  into  the  channels  of  mainstream  (“straight”)  mass-­‐consumption  due  to  its  appeal   to  the  “postmodern  subject”  (Cleto  1999,  33–34).  Thus,  by  introducing  the  term  queer  camp  into  the   analysis  of  karaoke  practice  in  The  Lisbon’s  queer  space,  I  wish  to  call  attention  to  the  camp’s   original  affiliation  with  both  past  and  present-­‐day  queer  cultural  practices.  Then  again,  since   mainstream  and  queer  cultures  stand  in  dialectical  relationship  with  each  other,  both  discursive   layers  of  camp  and  queer  are  in  fact  implicitly  entangled  in  the  discussion  of  karaoke  that  follows.     Liverpool’s  The  Lisbon  Pub  as  a  Queer  Space     The  Lisbon  pub  is  located  on  the  corner  of  Stanley  and  Victoria  Streets  at  the  very  heart  of   Liverpool’s  Gay  Quarter.  It  occupies  a  spacious  underground  area  designed  in  the  flamboyant  pub   style  of  the  late  Victorian  era.  What  immediately  catches  the  customer’s  eye  are,  indeed,  The   Lisbon’s  lavishly  ornate  red-­‐golden  ceiling  and  dark  wooden  panels  covering  the  walls  along  with   decorative  mirrors,  wall  sconces,  and  framed  posters  and  prints  of  the  eclectic  content.  The  pub’s   6     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   interior  space  is  encircled,  along  the  wall  lines,  by  padded  benches  complete  with  tables  and  chairs,   a  massive  bar,  a  pool  table,  a  couple  of  fruit  machines,  as  well  as  a  tiny  dance  floor  with  a  DJ  most   nights  and  a  KJ  (karaoke  jockey)  on  Thursdays  and  Sundays.   The  history  of  The  Lisbon  as  a  public  venue  is  long  and  rich,  stretching  back  to  the  1930s  when   it  operated  as  a  “fully  licensed  first-­‐class  restaurant”  serving  then-­‐exotic  dishes,  such  as,  frog  legs   and  Burgundy  snails  (Tankard  1932).  The  conversion  of  the  venue  into  a  gay  pub  took  place  in  the   late  1970s  (Dr.  Michael  Brocken,  pers.  comm.).  Nowadays  The  Lisbon  is  categorized,  marketed,   narrated,  and  experienced  as  a  “mixed  gay/lesbian”  and  “straight  friendly”  venue.  While  the   necessity  of  such  categorizations  for  legal,  commercial,  organizational,  cultural,  and  other  reasons  is   understanding  and  well-­‐expected,  many  instances  of  gender  and  sexual  ambiguities  on  the  ground   bear  witness  to  the  limiting  scope  of  the  simplified  sex  labels  such  as  “gay”,  “lesbian”,  and  “straight”.   For  this  reason,  I  put  forward  the  more  inclusive  and  binary-­‐breaking  term  queer  to  describe  The   Lisbon’s  crowd  (and  hence  The  Lisbon’s  space  accommodating  that  crowd),  since  it  depicts  more   accurately  the  ambiguous  relationship  of  people’s  sexual  inclinations  and  gender  modalities   displayed  and  performed  therein.   What  constitutes  The  Lisbon  in  addition  as  a  queer  space  is  the  incongruity  produced  between   the  pub’s  outer  “straightness”  (i.e.  its  traditional-­‐looking,  late  Victorian  exterior  and  interior  design)   and  its  inner  “queerness”  (i.e.  the  above-­‐pinpointed  diversity  of  its  crowd  along  gender  and  sexual   lines).   Indeed,  a  great  majority  of  my  interlocutors  from  The  Lisbon  agreed  about  the  community  feel   and  warm  qualities  that  the  pub  holds,  and  yet  did  not  hesitate  to  point  to  other  gay  venues  in   Liverpool  (such  as,  The  Masquerade  Bar,  G-­‐Bar,  or  Chicago’s)  which  they  considered  more   representative  of  the  local  queer  culture.  Moreover,  one  of  my  informants  spoke  unfavorably  about   the  venue,  most  notably  about  its  interior  decoration,  describing  it  as  “too  straight”  and  thus  boring.   “I  dropped  in  to  please  my  boyfriend”,  he  excused  his  presence  at  the  pub.   Public  reviews  of  The  Lisbon  acknowledge  likewise  the  pub’s  apparent  falling  short  of  the  usual   visual  expectations  for  gay  venues.  As  The  Lisbon’s  online  reviewer  Emma  Louise  M.  (2010)  writes,   “when  we  think  Gay  Quarter,  we  think  neon,  thumping  music,  bright  colours  and  highly  modern”.   Then  again,  as  she  asserts  further,  it  is  precisely  The  Lisbon’s  external  “straightness”  that  assists  the   pub’s  enduring  popularity  with  the  queer  crowd.   For  the  very  same  reason,  some  public  reviews  of  The  Lisbon  showcase  the  initial  puzzlement  of   its  newcomers  at  whether  the  venue  belongs  at  all  to  the  Liverpool’s  Gay  Quarter.  But  once  the   initial  doubt  is  cast  away,  the  novices  are  overtaken  by  a  sense  of  relief  and  gratification,  as  the   following  online  comment  attests:   7     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)     The  Rainbow  flag  around  the  (pub’s)  side  and  the  fun  music  pulled  us  in.  We  were  a  bit  confused   about  whether  the  flag  actually  belonged  to  what  looked  like  a  straight,  dingy,  old  basement  pub.   There  didn’t  seem  to  be  a  flag  over  the  door,  so  we  just  went  in  and  hoped  for  the  best.  Once  we   were  in,  we  realised  that  -­‐  hoorah  -­‐  it  was,  in  fact,  a  gay  pub  (sparklepop  in  View  Liverpool  2010).     More  to  the  point,  by  calling  The  Lisbon  a  queer  space,  I  automatically  assign  queerness  a   function  of  the  focal  filter  through  which  to  observe  and  interpret  all  cultural  activities  (not  least   karaoke  performances)  unfolding  therein.  Put  in  the  language  of  Goffman’s  theory  of  framing,  the   queerness  of  The  Lisbon’s  space  can  also  be  said  to  “determin(e)  the  type  of  ‘sense’  that  will  be   accorded  to  everything  within  the  frame”  (1961,  20).  Following  this  line  of  reasoning,  I  assert  that   whoever  enters  The  Lisbon  enters  a  queer  space;  whatever  happens  at  The  Lisbon  acquires  a  queer   flavor;  and  by  extension,  whoever  finds  themselves  at  The  Lisbon  can  be  said  to  partake  in  the   production  of  its  queer  space.     Queering  The  Lisbon’s  Crowd  Favorites     The  Cult  of  the  Singer:  Adele  and  Amy  Winehouse  as  Pop-­‐Soul  Divas     In  this  section  of  the  article  I  chart  a  list  of  factors  giving  rise  to  the  cult  of  Adele  and  Amy   Winehouse  as  pop-­‐soul  divas.  The  main  task  here  is,  thus,  to  single  out  those  elements  in  Adele  and   Winehouse’s  overall  public  output  that  appealed,  and  continue  to  appeal,  to  The  Lisbon’s  queer  crowd   (and  beyond).   To  begin  with,  I  maintain  that  Adele  and  Amy  Winehouse  were  publicly  conferred  the  status  of   “gay  icons”  as  a  result  of  the  diva  effect  to  which  both  artists  succumbed.  Their  affiliation  with  queer   culture  does  not  take  the  form  of  explicit  engagement,  especially  considering  the  heteronormative   orientation  in  both  artists’  music  production  and  image  construction  off  and  on  stage.4  For  this   reason,  it  is  more  instructive  to  slot  them  into  the  category  of  what  Booth  calls  camp  fads  and   fancies.  In  his  words,  this  category  comprises  “people  and  objects,  which,  although  not  intrinsically   camp,  appeal  to  camp  people”  (1983,  68).  I  argue  accordingly  that  it  is  precisely  through  Adele  and   Winehouse’s  cult  of  pop-­‐soul  singers/divas  that  these  two  artists  are  so  successful  in  recruiting   their  queer  followers,  The  Lisbon’s  crowd  included.                                                                                                                             4  The  only  exception  to  this  was  Amy  Winehouse’s  self-­‐outing  as  bisexual  in  2010  (see  Towle  2010).   8     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   First,  it  should  not  go  unnoticed  that  the  cult  of  the  singer,  which  is  in  Morris’s  (1993,  187)  view   “central  to  the  ‘true’  opera  queen’s  aesthetic”,  is  a  role  specifically  assigned  to  females.  In  that   regard,  the  veneration  of  Adele  and  Winehouse  by  The  Lisbon’s  crowd  clearly  followed  in  the   footsteps  of  a  larger  queer  tradition,  which  can  generally  be  described  as  female-­‐identified.  In  the   queer  studies  literature,  the  driving  force  behind  this  type  of  worship  is  theorized  in  several   different  ways.  For  Koestenbaum  (1993),  the  elements  of  diva  conduct  are  said  to  be  reworked  by   gay  men/queers  as  part  of  their  charting  a  way  through  the  hostile  homophobic  environment.  For   Dyer,  gay  men/queers  identify  with  female  singers/divas  because  of  their  shared  desire  for  men   (2004,  151),  but  also  because  they  reject  “most  of  the  values  associated  with  masculinity  in  this   society  (aggressiveness,  competitiveness,  being  ‘above’  tenderness  and  emotion)”  (1999,  112).   At  any  rate,  all  this  might  also  explain  the  observations  of  Drew  (2001)  and  The  Lisbon’s  KJ   Martin  on  the  role  of  sex  and  gender  in  the  selection  process  of  karaoke  songs.  Drawing  on  their   respective  (field)work  experience,  they  both  noticed  that  male  performers  in  straight  karaoke  bars   rarely  do  female  vocals,  and  when  doing  so,  they,  to  quote  Drew,  tend  to  “use  overstatement  and   horseplay  to  slyly  intimate,  ‘This  isn’t  really  me’”  (2001,  65).  A  male  share  of  The  Lisbon’s  crowd,  in   contrast,  readily  performed  “ladies  songs”  (how  KJ  Martin  calls  them),  delivering  them  with   genuine  conviction  and  passion.  I  would  say  that  such  observations  seem  to  ring  true  despite  the   essentialist  undertones  underpinning  them.   Second,  Adele  and  Winehouse’s  appeal  to  The  Lisbon’s  queer  crowd  lies  substantially  in  the   style  of  music  they  are  associated  with.  The  labels  blue-­‐eyed  retro  soul  (Brooks  2010,  39)  and  the   vintage-­‐soul  perhaps  describe  most  accurately  the  musical  style  which  was  in  the  2000s  ardently   endorsed  and  fostered  not  only  by  Adele  and  Winehouse  but  also  by  “other  young  white  Brit   females  who  pass  [as  well]  for  black  American  lady  singers  from  the  sixties”  (Reynolds  2011,  xix).  It   is,  arguably,  this  wholehearted  commitment  to  retro  styles  in  much  of  Adele  and  Winehouse’s  visual   presentation  and  sonic  output  that  is  most  pertinent  to  queer  tastes.  According  to  Reynolds,  retro   and  camp  are  usually  linked  out  of  playfulness  and  irony  with  which  contemporary  artists  recycle   and  recombine  various  stylistic  codes  from  the  past  to  create  their  own  “bricolage  of  cultural  bric-­‐a-­‐ brac”  (2011,  xxxi–xxxii).  However,  this  is  not  really  the  case  with  Adele  and  Winehouse  and  their   dead  serious  retro-­‐fetishistic  approach  to  music  production.  Rather,  what  draws  queers  to  Adele   and  Winehouse’s  pop-­‐soul  songs  is  the  nostalgic  sentiment  evoked  by  their  lyrical  content  and   vintage  sound.  Following  Anderson,  Padva  sees  “nostalgia  (…)  [as]  a  form  of  desire  which  creates  a   complex  temporality  for  queer  subjects  for  whom  the  past  offers  neither  explanation  nor  origin”   (2014,  Chapter  1,  para.  15;  emphasis  in  original).  And  this  is  precisely  where  the  link  between   queer  nostalgia  and  queer  retro  inclinations  is  to  be  made.  Psychoanalytically  speaking,  retro  tastes   9     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   in  queers  have  a  compensatory  function  for  the  elusive  origins  of  their  sexuality:  “Because  queers   do  not  usually  have  queer  parents,  queers  must  invent  precedent  and  origin  for  their  taste”   (Koestenbaum  1993,  47).  Hence  a  great  love  of  queers  for  bygone  styles.   Indeed,  in  the  visual  domain,  the  success  of  Winehouse’s  look,  especially  her  conspicuous   beehive  hairdo  and  Cleopatra  makeup,  rested  largely  upon  the  distinct  style  of  the  1960s  girl   groups,  above  all,  the  Ronettes  (see  Yaeger  2007).  Adele’s  visual  appearance  likewise  continues  to   thrive  on  retro  chic  and  glamour  of  the  same  era.  Besides  her  1960s  inspired  makeup  (in  particular   her  kitten  eyeliner)  and  hairdos  (ranging  from  bouffant  and  similar  updo  types  of  hairstyles  to   voluminous  curls),  Adele  also  takes  pride  in  her  love  for  vintage  clothes,  or  in  her  “wor[k]  with  her   stylist  to  create  one-­‐of-­‐a-­‐kind  dresses  for  big  events”  (Nespolo  2014).  This  parallels  the  opera  diva’s   obsession  with  gowns,  as  discussed  in  Koestenbaum’s  analysis  of  the  codes  of  diva  conduct.  As  he   notes,  “[a]  good  gown  vindicates  the  diva  by  making  her  glamorous,  and  it  inspires  the  queer  fan  by   showing  gender’s  dependence  on  costume”  (1993,  120).   Music-­‐wise,  Winehouse  and  Adele’s  soul/torch  songs  are  well  tailored  to  showcase  the  singer’s   vocal  mastery.  This  is  another  significant  quality  that  resembles  the  opera  queen’s  fascination  with   the  excessiveness  and  artificiality  of  operatic  singing  styles  (see  Hendrickson  2006).  Furthermore,   songs  by  these  two  artists  abound,  just  like  opera  does,  in  dramatized,  overemotional  expression,   “provid[ing]  a  situation  where  most  of  (…)  rigidly  controlled  desires  and  attitudes  [in  queer   subjects]  may  have  free  rein  without  social  censure”  (Morris  1993,  193).  Such  songs  can  also  be   seen  to  both  channel  and  compensate  for  a  sense  of  failure  at  love  that  every  queer  person  is   doomed  to  encounter  by  refusing  to  partake  in  the  heteronormative  sexual,  marital,  and   reproductive  economies  (cf.  Koestenbaum  1993).   In  addition,  the  brassy  quality  of  Adele  and  Winehouse’s  vocal  timbre  and  the  gritty  soulfulness   of  their  vocal  delivery  in  a  clearly  Americanized  accent  (which  is  otherwise  British)  construct  their   vocal  subjectivities  as  unmistakably  “black”.  In  this  regard,  there  is  once  again  a  noteworthy   analogy  to  be  made  with  white  opera  divas  and  some  troubling  instances  of  racial  masquerade  in   their  vocal  performance  practice.  For  one  thing,  opera  divas  are  taught  to  aspire  to  a  certain  quality   of  sound,  which  they  can  achieve  by  making  it  “darker”  (i.e.  by  covering  the  tones).  Secondly,  they   are  routinely  associated  with  the  images  of  darkness  through  the  roles  of  dark-­‐skinned,  willful   heroines  they  play,  “underscoring  at  the  same  time,  in  a  problematic  masquerade,  the[ir]  (…)   separation  from  the  women  of  color  (…)  [they]  portray”  (Koestenbaum  1993,  106).  By  analogy,   Adele  and  Winehouse  have  their  musical  (and  otherwise)  identities  authenticated  by  “putting  on   the  ‘vocal  costume’”  (Frith  cited  in  Hawkins  2009,  123)  of  black  female  performers.  Also,  they  can   musically  appropriate  and  explore  “the  trope  of  ‘blackness’  as  a  site  of  affective  nostalgia”  (cf.   10     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   Brooks  2010,  50)  but  without  bearing  the  burden  of  race.  And  last  but  not  least,  the  gap  between   their  visual  “whiteness”  and  sonic  “blackness”  is  filled  with  sensational  narratives  about  both  divas’   personal  affairs  and  emotional  troubles.  The  white/black  split  therefore  neither  incites  critical   interrogations  on  the  workings  of  white  privilege  in  interracial  musical  encounters,  nor  it  instigates   reflections  on  the  racial  complexity  of  the  retro  soul  past  (cf.  Brooks  2010).  But  even  if  problematic,   it  is  perhaps  this  obvious  crossing  of  the  white/black  binary  in  the  construction  of  Adele  and   Winehouse’s  respective  stage  persona,  that  resonates  well  with  the  queer  public.   Besides  retro-­‐fetishism,  nostalgia,  vocal  mastery  and  racial  masquerade  displayed  in  their  work,   there  are  several  other  factors  consolidating  Adele  and  Winehouse’s  status  as  pop-­‐soul  divas.  For   instance,  both  singers  exemplify  what  Flinn  (1999,  448)  calls  camp’s  exaggeration  of  the  female   form.  In  the  case  of  Adele,  this  is  to  some  extent  implicated  in  the  discourse  of  obesity,  as  her  zaftig   figure  repeatedly  comes  up  as  a  topic  in  the  media  limelight.5  Not  only  are  larger  bodies  in  (opera)   diva  iconography  presumed  to  signify  the  diva’s  “presence”  and  the  superiority  of  her  vocal   capacity.  There  is  also  a  sense  of  allegiance  between  large  divas  and  queer  subjects  based  on  the   shared  understanding  of  the  body  as  a  site  of  shame  and  difference  (Koestenbaum  1993,  101).   Speaking  on  behalf  of  opera  queens,  Koestenbaum  offers  an  additional  explanation  for  the   fascination  of  queers  with  large  divas:     We  consider  the  diva  fat  because  we  are  the  hungry  ones;  we  want  to  ingest  the  diva  through  our   voracious,  vulnerable  ears.  And  so  we  project  onto  the  diva’s  body  an  image  of  our  own   cannibalistic  orality,  an  image  of  how  grotesque  we  consider  our  desires  to  be  (102).     The  exaggerated  female  form  can  also  be  a  result  of  “what  that  body  might  undergo,  be  it   substance  abuse”  (Flinn  1999,  448)  or  (self-­‐)destructive  behavior.  This  was  chiefly  linked  to  the   public  image  of  Amy  Winehouse  (much  less  to  that  of  Adele6),  whose  notorious  history  of  drug  and   alcohol  addiction,  coupled  with  a  number  of  other  mental  health  problems  (such  as,  depression,   self-­‐harm,  aggression,  eating  disorders),  was  painstakingly  documented  in  media  reports.   Furthermore,  if  “camp  also  works  to  violate  the  standards  of  ‘good  taste’,  allying  itself  with  filth,   the  profane,  and  an  overall  sense  of  disreputability”  (Flinn  1999,  447),  then  Winehouse’s  reputation   as  “a  filthy-­‐mouthed,  down-­‐to-­‐earth  diva”  (Rogers  2006)  and  one  of  the  worst  dressed  female                                                                                                                             5  Adele  admitted  in  an  interview  that  “she  is  a  little  resistant  with  the  negative  aspects  of  fame  especially   when  it  comes  to  gossip  and  criticisms  about  her  weight.  ‘I’ve  always  been  a  size  14–16,  and  been  fine  with  it’,   Adele  said  to  The  Times.  ‘I  would  only  lose  weight  if  it  affected  my  health  or  sex  life’”  (see  Morrison  2009).   6  Namely,  Adele’s  autobiographer,  Marc  Shapiro,  shed  light  on  the  circumstances  under  which  the  singer   would  have  episodes  of  binge  drinking  (see  The  Huffington  Post  2012).   11     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   celebrities  (see  Bold  Sky  2009)  provides  an  excellent  case  in  point.  Such  an  impression  was   additionally  reinforced  by  the  trashy  aesthetic  of  her  13  tattoos,  many  of  which  “markings   reminiscent  of  cheap  flash:  hearts,  anchors,  pin-­‐ups,  horseshoes,  a  pocket  above  her  left  breast   lettered  with  her  lover’s  name”  (Trebay  2011).   What  adds  to  the  construction  of  Adele  and  Winehouse  as  pop-­‐soul  divas  is  a  touch  of  tragedy,   as  evidenced  by  Winehouse’s  horrible  death  at  her  premature  age  and  the  heyday  of  her  music   career.  Parallels  with  opera  divas  can  once  again  be  drawn  here,  in  particular  with  Maria  Callas,   whose  cult  status  among  opera  queens  has  been  assisted  by  her  untimely  death,  too.  In   Koestenbaum’s  view,  queers  can  easily  relate  to  the  diva’s  tragic  end  because  their  experience  is   similarly  marked  by  the  themes  of  “premature  mortality,  evanescence,  solitude”  (1993,  134).   The  tragic  undertones  also  underpinned  much  of  the  media  chronicle  of  Adele’s  troubles  with   her  vocal  chords,  which  led  to  a  temporary  loss  of  her  voice  and,  eventually,  to  a  throat  surgery.  As   a  result,  Adele’s  voice  changed  in  a  way  she  describes  as  “‘not  as  husky’  and  (…)  higher  than  it  used   to  be”  (Cable  2013).  This  sets  Adele  in  line  with  a  considerable  number  of  opera  divas  whose   careers  have  also  been  interrupted  or  brought  to  an  end  by  vocal  crisis.  The  notion  of  vocal  crisis  is   very  relevant  to  queer  experience,  as  documented  by  Koestenbaum:     “Vocal  crisis”  means  a  crisis  in  the  voice,  but  it  also  means  articulate  crisis,  crisis  given  voice.  Hardly   an  interruption  of  diva  art,  vocal  crisis  is  the  diva’s  self-­‐lacerating  announcement  that  interruption   has  been,  all  along,  her  subject  and  method.  And  in  her  interruption,  I  hear  the  imagined  nature  of   homosexuality  as  a  rip  in  meaning,  in  coherence,  in  cultural  systems,  in  vocal  consistency.   Homosexuality  isn’t  intrinsically  an  interruption;  but  society  has  characterized  it  as  a  break  and  a   schism,  and  gay  people,  who  are  molded  in  the  image  of  crisis  and  emergency,  (…)  may  begin  to   identify  with  crisis  and  to  hear  the  interrupted  voice  as  [their]  echo  (1993,  128–129;  emphasis  in   original).     In  short,  it  is  the  controversial  elements  of  Adele’s  and  Winehouse’s  broken  lives  that  turn  them   into  objects  of  queer  obsession.  Moreover,  according  to  Mira,  ‘the  key  to  defining  the  diva  [as   opposed  to  the  star]  is  the  way  in  which  she  inhabits  her  own  myth,  the  way  in  which  her  life  oozes   through  her  creations’  (cited  in  Knights  2006,  88).  It  is  likewise  difficult  to  differentiate  between   the  personas  that  Adele  and  Winehouse  assume  on  stage  (in  their  music)  and  off  stage  (in  their   personal  affairs).  The  locus  of  queer  investments  works  accordingly  on  multiple  fronts  at  the  same   time.  For  instance,  the  possibility  for  queer  identifications  might  arise  out  of  intimate  engagement   with  tabloid  details  of  Adele  and  Winehouse’s  emotional  struggles  in  both  their  private  and   12     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   professional  lives.  Then  again,  queer  subjectivity  is  also  produced  through  appropriations  of  certain   elements  of  Adele’s  and  Winehouse’s  embodied  images  (their  body  type,  visual  style,  and  singing   voice)  and  respective  song  repertoire  (both  their  lyrical  content  and  musical  style).   Along  the  process,  of  special  relevance  to  queer  subjects  is  the  capacity  of  both  artists  to  convey   a  sense  of  vulnerability  and  suffering  combined  with  defiance  (both  actual  and  depicted  in  music)   (cf.  Brett  and  Wood  2006,  369).  In  view  of  that,  the  comments  on  a  Winehouse’s  queer  tribute   forum  (2007)  praising  “Amy’s  raw  emotional  delivery,  rebellious  nature,  explicit  lyrics  and   appearance”,  or  “a  mixture  of  courage  and  vulnerability”  in  the  totality  of  her  being-­‐in-­‐the-­‐world,   come  as  no  surprise.  Adele’s  strength-­‐through-­‐vulnerability  strategy  employed  in  her  torch  songs  of   loss  and  longing  seems  to  produce  similar  effects  on  her  queer  devotees.  Namely,  her  songs  are   described  in  the  media  as  having  power  to  help  young  gay  men  come-­‐out  (see  Towle  2011),  even  to   turn  people  gay  (see  Morgan  2014).   Except  for  their  publicly  recognized  emotional  authenticity,  Adele  and  Winehouse  are   apparently  also  appreciated  by  queer  audiences  for  daring  to  challenge  the  norm,  to  be  different,   and  at  the  same  time  for  receiving  worldwide  acclaim  despite  (or  because  of?)  that  difference.   However,  the  violation  of  cultural  norms  by  divas  becomes  a  proof  of  supremacy  and  a  source  of   empowerment  precisely  because  it  is  predicated  upon  their  public  recognition,  and  because  for   non-­‐divas,  as  Koestenbaum  points  out,  ‘difference  only  leads  to  ridicule’  (1993,  91).   In  queer-­‐related  public  discourses,  both  Adele  and  Winehouse  are,  indeed,  described  as  pop   divas  breaking  “out  of  the  mold”.  Adele  is  praised  for  her  “anti-­‐Gaga”  allure,  “easy  accessibility”,  and   therefore  “an  image  as  a  living,  breathing  human  being”  (Williams  2011).  Winehouse  is  likewise   discussed  on  her  tribute  forum  (2007)  as  sporting  “a  style  of  her  own”  which  is  at  odds  with  the   media-­‐dominant  image  of  Barbie  or  bimbo  female  types.  She  is  additionally  seen  as  “a  woman  with   balls”,  or  as  someone  displaying  tomboy  or  “drag-­‐queenish”  qualities  and  attendant  sexual   ambiguities.7  At  any  rate,  for  pop-­‐soul  queens  at  The  Lisbon  and  beyond,  the  difference  that  Adele   and  Winehouse  are  said  to  embody  apparently  inspires  their  never-­‐ending  struggle  to  be  accepted   on  equal  terms  as  the  heteronormative  majority.   To  reiterate,  then,  the  previous  analysis  sought  to  pinpoint  the  elements  that  constitute  Adele’s   and  Winehouse’s  statuses  as  pop-­‐soul  divas.  Also  illustrated  was  how  these  elements  might  (have)   be(en)  pertinent  to  the  everyday  experience  of  pop-­‐soul  queens  from  The  Lisbon  and  elsewhere.  In                                                                                                                             7  A  forum  member  with  the  alias  “black”  wrote:  “I  can’t  remember  where  I  saw  her  say  these  things  but  in  one   interview  she  says  ‘I’m  more  of  a  boy  than  a  girl  but  that  doesn’t  mean  I’m  a  lesbian,  at  least  not  until  I’ve  had   a  sambouka  [sic].’  On  another  post  she’s  asked  who’s  your  favorite  female  artist?  and  she  says  Alice  Cooper,  I   love  her.  Then  she’s  asked  are  you  a  sex  symbol?  and  she  says  only  to  gays.”   13     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   the  next  section,  the  analytical  focus  switches  to  more  specific  considerations  of  queer  details  in   The  Lisbon’s  two  crowd  favorites  (one  by  Adele  and  the  other  by  Winehouse)  and  their  respective   karaoke  renderings.     Queer  Analysis  of  The  Lisbon’s  Crowd  Favorites     In  the  following  queer  analysis  of  The  Lisbon’s  crowd  favorites,  Adele’s  “Chasing  Pavements”   and  Winehouse’s  “Valerie”,  and  their  karaoke  performances,  I  proceed  from  two  theoretical   assumptions.   Firstly,  I  expand  on  the  implications  of  Koestenbaum’s  (1993,  42)  observation  that  the  opera   queen’s  identification  with  divas  emerges  through  the  acts  of  listening  and  singing  along.   Specifically,  he  argues  that  it  is  through  engagement  with  the  diva’s  singing  that  queer  subjects  can   restore  their  queer  embodiment  which  is  otherwise  curbed  by  straight  socialization.  Or  as   Koestenbaum  puts  it  in  a  more  elaborate  fashion:     You  listen  to  an  operatic  voice  or  you  sing  with  operatic  tone  production  and  thereby  your  throat   participates  in  that  larger,  historical  throat,  the  Ur-­‐throat,  the  queen’s  throat,  the  throat-­‐in-­‐the-­‐sky,   the  throat-­‐in-­‐the-­‐mind,  the  voice  box  beneath  the  voice  box.  Homosexuality  is  a  way  of  singing.  I   can’t  be  gay,  I  can  only  sing  it,  disperse  it.  I  can’t  knock  on  its  door  and  demand  entrance  because  it   is  not  a  place  or  a  fixed  location.  Instead,  it  is  a  million  intersections  –  or  it  is  a  dividing  line,  a   membrane,  like  the  throat,  that  separates  the  body’s  breathing  interior  from  the  chaotic  external   world  (1993,  156;  emphasis  in  original).     I  assert,  by  extension,  that  The  Lisbon’s  pop-­‐soul  queens’  investments  in  the  diva  figures  of   Adele  and  Winehouse  are  even  stronger  in  their  emotional,  experiential,  and  corporeal   ramifications  when  made  through  the  karaoke  medium.  This  is  because  in  karaoke  renderings  of   “Chasing  Pavements”  and  “Valerie”,  the  diva’s  voice  actually  speaks,  as  it  were,  through  the  throat  of   The  Lisbon’s  pop-­‐soul  queens.  The  distance  which  otherwise  separates  pop-­‐soul  queens  from  their   beloved  divas  is  not  only  reduced  along  the  way.  It  is  also  suspended,  so  to  speak,  allowing  karaoke   performers  to  reinvent  themselves  into  actual  reincarnations  of  the  diva  herself.   Secondly,  and  on  a  related  note,  drawing  on  Devitt’s  (2006)  and  Lee  Oakes’s  (2006)  queer   readings  of  particular  music  events  and  performances,  I  propose  in  addition  an  approach  to   karaoke  as  performance  in  drag.  According  to  Newton,  central  to  the  concept  of  drag  is  “distance   [posited]  between  the  actor  and  the  role  or  ‘act’”  (1999,  105;  emphasis  in  original).  Paradoxically,   14     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   thus,  to  erase  the  distance  between  themselves  and  their  beloved  divas,  pop-­‐soul  queens  actually   need  to  foreground  it  in  their  karaoke  acts.  In  The  Lisbon’s  queer  space,  to  karaoke  sing  in  drag  is  to   masquerade  as  Adele’s  and  Winehouse’s  voices;  to  revel  “in  detailed  drag  of  queenliness”   (Koestenbaum  1993,  108)  by  impersonating  Adele’s  and  Winehouse’s  diva  conduct;  to  take  an   ambiguous  stance  by  combining  sincerity  with  camp’s  humor.  All  these  forms  of  diva  masquerade   in  The  Lisbon’s  karaoke  practice  ultimately  result  in  gender  subversion.  In  this  regard,  The  Lisbon’s   karaoke  performances  in  drag  come  close  to  queer  effects  produced  by  the  drag  performance  itself.   The  culturally  constructed  nature  of  gender  performativity  in  drag  performance  has  been  famously   addressed  and  elaborated  by  Butler.  In  her  words,     When  [gender  and  sex]  categories  come  into  question  [in  drag  performance],  the  reality  of  gender   is  also  put  into  crisis:  it  becomes  unclear  how  to  distinguish  the  real  from  the  unreal.  And  this  is  the   occasion  in  which  we  come  to  understand  that  what  we  take  to  be  ‘real’,  what  we  invoke  as  the   naturalized  knowledge  of  gender  is,  in  fact,  a  changeable  and  revisable  reality.  (1999,  xxiii;   emphasis  in  original)     Furthermore,  if  “diva  conduct,  enacted  by  men  or  women,  […]  has  enormous  power  to   dramatize  the  problematics  of  self-­‐expression”  (Kostenbaum  1993,  133),  then  its  dramatic  and   expressive  potential  can  presumably  be  explored  and  utilized  to  its  fullest  through  karaoke   performances  of  the  diva’s  song  repertoire.  Both  Drew’s  (2001)  and  my  own  ethnographic   investigation  in  fact  revealed  that  karaoke  is  often  viewed  as  a  vital  source  for  self-­‐expression   and/or  self-­‐invention  by  its  users.  And  since  “gay  culture  has  perfected  the  art  of  mimicking  a  diva  –   of  pretending,  inside,  to  be  divine  –  to  help  the  stigmatized  self  imagine  it  is  received,  believed,  and   adored”  (Koestenbaum  1993,  133;  emphasis  in  original),  then  retaliatory  opportunities  for  self-­‐ expression/self-­‐invention  that  karaoke  affords  to  queer  subjects  must  also  be  acknowledged.   Lastly,  in  order  to  proceed  with  the  queer  analysis  of  The  Lisbon’s  crowd  favorites,  it  is   necessary  to  make  some  additional  clarifications  with  respect  to  the  methodological  steps  to  be   undertaken  therein.  Of  central  importance  to  the  subsequent  analysis  are  specifically  Morris’s   findings  about  the  opera  queen’s  aesthetic  stance,  whereby  “the  intensity  of  discrete  moments  [in   opera]  matters  more  than  large-­‐scale  dramatic  coherence”  (1993,  197).  In  accordance  with  this   presumption,  I  offer  first  a  close  queer  reading  of  “Chasing  Pavements”  and  “Valerie”  in  turn.  On   these  grounds,  I  investigate  next  how  the  key  details  of  these  two  songs  (in  both  their  text  and  vocal   delivery)  work  within  the  queer  context  of  actual  karaoke  performances.  While  so  doing,  I  pay  a   15     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   special  analytical  attention  to  three  recurring  features  pertinent  to  queer  camp  manifestations.   According  to  Newton  (1999),  these  are  incongruity,  theatricality,  and  humor.     Adele  “Chasing  Pavements”:  A  Queer  Reading     In  the  subsequent  close  analysis,  I  argue  that  Adele’s  “Chasing  Pavements”  was  celebrated  by   The  Lisbon’s  queer  crowd  because  of  the  queer  moments  displayed  in  the  song’s  lyrical  content,  and   even  more  so  in  many  of  its  musical  properties.8   First  of  all,  the  very  title  of  the  song  brought  about  some  controversies  in  the  American  public   because  it  was  mistakenly  understood  to  refer  to  the  singer’s  chasing  gay  men  (Daily  Mail  2008).   Perhaps  the  demonstrated  public  anxiety,  which  urged  several  U.S.  radio  stations  to  even  ban  the   single  from  going  on  air,  was  generated  in  addition  by  the  song’s  lyrical  narrative  within  which  the   sex  of  the  addressed  object  of  desire  is  left  unspecified.  The  latter  is  accomplished  by  the  use  of   direct  mode  of  address  (i.e.  the  sex-­‐neutral  pronoun  “you”)  every  time  the  female  protagonist  of  the   song  turns  her  attention  to  the  person  she  desires  and  fears  to  confront  with  her  love  feelings.   Secondly,  in  terms  of  its  lyrical  content,  the  song  clearly  gives  voice  to  people  finding   themselves  in  a  position  of  vulnerability.  This  explains  why  the  song  can  have  a  special  appeal  to   sexual  minorities  living  in  a  society  which  is  at  worst  hostile  and  at  best  skeptical  towards  sexual   (and  otherwise)  difference.  Also,  the  opening  verse  of  the  song  (“I’ve  made  up  my  mind,  don’t  need   to  think  it  over.  If  I’m  wrong  I  am  right,  don’t  need  to  look  no  further.  This  ain’t  lust,  I  know  this  is   love.”)  might  be  said  to  interpellate  listeners  into  the  queer  subject  position  by  inviting  them  to   embrace  their  non-­‐normative  sexual  desires  and  accept  them  as  something  “right”  even  if  they  may   come  across  as  something  “wrong”  (i.e.  stigma-­‐laden).  The  next  verse  of  the  song  calls  to  (queer)   mind  the  idea  of  outing  (“But  if  I  tell  the  world”),  immediately  followed  by  the  expressed  sense  of   resignation  (“I’ll  never  say  enough”)  that  the  disclosed  queer  desire  would  ever  be  understood  and   let  alone  accepted  by  heteronormative  society.  Despite  all  that,  what  only  matters,  as  suggested  by   the  lyrics  in  the  rest  of  the  verse  (“‘cause  it  was  not  said  to  you,  and  that’s  exactly  what  I  need  to  do   if  I  end  up  with  you”),  is  the  feeling  of  fulfillment  promised  to  those  (queers)  who  bravely  pursue   romantic  love.  Then  again,  the  chorus  of  the  song  (“Should  I  give  up?  Or  should  I  just  keep  chasing   pavements  even  if  it  leads  nowhere?  Or  would  it  be  a  waste  even  if  I  knew  my  place?  Should  I  leave   it  there?”)  depicts  the  deadlock  situation  for  stigmatized  and  guilt-­‐burdened  queer  subjects  torn                                                                                                                             8  “Chasing  Pavements”  is  a  Grammy  awarded  torch  song  from  Adele’s  debut  album  19,  released  in  January   2008  by  XL  and  Columbia  Records.   16     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   between  request  to  meet  the  expectations  of  heteronormative  society  (by  “giving  up”  their  romantic   fantasies)  and  urgency  to  pursue  their  erotic  desires  (by  “keeping  chasing  pavements”).   Importantly,  it  is  in  the  musical  fabric  of  the  song  that  instances  of  gender  and  sexual   ambiguities  are  even  more  revealing.  To  begin  with,  “Chasing  Pavements”  falls  in  line  with  the  rest   of  Adele’s  musical  production  subsumed  under  the  heading  of  torch  songs  –  a  generic  label   featuring  soul,  R&B,  jazz,  and  pop  inflections.  As  explicated  above,  this  fact  alone  is  noteworthy   from  a  queer  point  of  view,  since  the  given  qualities  of  the  song  (such  as  high  standards  of  vocal   delivery,  dramatized  expression,  and  overriding  sentiment  of  longing)  can  be  easily  reworked  for   queer  uses.  Besides,  if  we  allow  that  “queerness,  with  its  basis  in  highly  mediated  and  mutable   identities,  can  itself  be  marked  as  a  feminine  subject  position”,  as  Lee  Oakes  (2006,  49)  suggests,   then  torch  songs,  with  their  feminine  associations,  might  hold  a  special  resonance  for  queer   audiences.   What  is  perhaps  especially  meaningful  for  the  queer  experience  of  “Chasing  Pavements”  (and   other  torch  songs  in  general)  are  the  moments  in  which  the  song  protagonist’s  emotional  outburst   persistently  dwell  on  the  verge  of  excess  and  corniness.  This  is  especially  evident  in  the  chorus   sections  as  well  as  at  the  culmination  point  towards  the  end  of  the  song  (namely,  in  the  last  segment   of  the  bridge  preceding  the  last  rendition  of  the  chorus).  In  both  instances,  over-­‐the-­‐top  feelings   and  a  sense  of  dramatic  tension  are  conveyed  by  the  sonic  richness  of  instrumental  arrangements,   which  stand  in  sharp  contrast  to  the  neighboring  sections  with  more  scarce  textures  (comprising   the  piano,  guitar,  bass,  and  drum  kit  in  several  different  combinations).  Specifically,  the  chorus   section  is  performed  with  a  full  orchestral  sound  bringing  structural  and  emotional  climaxes,   whereas  the  culmination  point  develops  over  tremolo  strings,  whose  dramaturgic  effect  has  been   widely  exploited  throughout  history  across  a  variety  of  music  genres.   Another  point  at  which  queer  camp  operates  in  these  two  sections  of  the  song  is  the  high   register  of  the  vocal  part  that  centers  on  the  persistently  repeated  note  B♭ .  The  camp  effect  of  such   repetition  occurs  to  its  fullest  extent  when  the  note  B♭  lends  itself  on  the  on-­‐beats  of  the  vocal  line:     Example  1:  The  chorus  opening             17     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)                       18     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   Example  2:  The  culmination  point                           Being  accentuated  on  the  strongest  and  next  strongest  beats,  the  key  note  B♭  in  the  examples   above  showcases  to  a  degree  what  Jarman-­‐Ivens  calls  “the  exaggerated  sense  of  […]  ‘phallic   directionality’”  within  the  structurally  masculine  narrative  (2009,  200).  As  she  clarifies  further  in   her  analysis  of  musical  camp  elements  in  one  particular  Liberace’s  piano  performance,  “the   exaggeration  enacts  a  sense  performativity  in  relation  to  that  phallic  masculinity,  and  (…)  such   playfulness  with  gendered  codes  is  precisely  at  the  heart  of  camp”.   I  wish  to  add,  however,  that  some  crucial  structural  elements  in  “Chasing  Pavements”  can  be   coded  as  queer  precisely  because  they  work  against  the  masculinity  of  the  song’s  overall   compositional  framework.  Namely,  the  musical  flow  of  the  entire  song  can  be  said  to  progress  in  a   sort  of  circulatory  movement  which  remains  without  final  closure.  This  logic  of  structural  open-­‐ endedness  and  fluidity  is  buttressed,  on  the  one  hand,  by  the  persistent  incongruity,  especially  in   the  song  verses,  between  the  endings  of  lyrical  lines  and  their  corresponding  melodic  phrases  in  the   vocal  part.  Produced  as  a  result  is  the  effect  of  disruption,  leaving  the  listener  with  an  impression  of   constantly  shifting  accents  and  attendant  structural  irregularities.  On  the  other  hand,  what  arguably   “queers”  the  song’s  structure  are  also  its  lingering  tonal  and  harmonic  ambiguities.  Not  only  does   the  musical  flow  constantly  vacillate  between  C  minor  (in  its  both  natural  and  harmonic  versions),   as  a  key  in  which  the  song  is  crafted,  and  its  relative  E♭  major,  but  it  also  refuses  to  settle  on  the   tonic  chord  at  the  structural  endings  of  the  song.  The  only  exception  to  this  is  a  sense  of  closure   accomplished  at  each  (but  one)  conclusion  of  the  chorus  section.  Even  there,  however,  the  ending  is   “weak”  and  sealed  with  the  tonic  chord  of  the  relative  E♭  major.   19     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   Finally,  there  is  one  more  crucial  detail  in  “Chasing  Pavements”  that  should  be  pointed  out  as   the  possibly  queerest  moment  of  the  entire  song.  It  emerges  at  the  very  borderline  between  the   song’s  first  and  second  verses,  falling  on  the  word  “but”  (see  below  Example  3).  What  renders  this   occurrence  queer  is  the  intensity  with  which  it  destabilizes  the  surrounding  musical  flow,  calling   attention  at  the  same  time  to  the  dubious  meaning  of  the  word  “but”.  The  latter,  indeed,  needs  to  be   acknowledged  since  the  use  of  “but”  captures  succinctly  the  condition  of  queerness  as  being  fraught   with  uncertainty  and  doubt.  The  musical  means  by  which  this  “but-­‐as-­‐queer”  moment  comes  across   as  an  instance  of  sonic  rupture,  or  perhaps  as  a  symbolic  cry  of  despair,  are  manifold.  On  the  one   hand,  it  is  accentuated  by  its  position  on  the  (strongest)  downbeat,  by  its  relatively  significant   duration  in  the  note  value  of  the  given  time  signature  (i.e.  the  quarter  note),  and  by  its  highest  pitch   within  the  song’s  verse  sections.  On  the  other  hand,  the  destabilizing  (and  therefore  queer)  impact   of  the  “but”  moment  on  the  song’s  surrounding  structure  is  achieved  through  a  temporarily   changed  time  signature  (from  4/4  into  2/4),  through  a  harmonically  induced  tension  and  instability   of  the  passing  dominant  chord  belonging  to  both  C  minor  and  E♭  major,  and  through  the  above   mentioned  incongruity  produced  between  corresponding  musical  and  lyrical  lines  in  terms  of  their   different  endings/beginnings  (here  the  musical  ending  of  the  opening  verse  marks  at  the  same  time   the  beginning  of  the  lyrical  line  of  the  next  verse).     Example  3:  The  “but-­‐as-­‐queer”  and  “portamento”  moments                           Of  relevance  here  is  also  the  musical  phrase  “this  is  love”,  paving  the  way  for  the  occurrence  of   the  “but-­‐as-­‐queer”  moment.  The  phrase  offers  a  temporary  resolution  in  E♭  major,  whose  bright   undertone  is  meant  to  corroborate  a  sense  of  hope  that  the  song’s  protagonist  expresses  for  the   20     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   future  of  her  fantasized  romance  (by  stating  “this  is  love”).  What  makes  this  phrase  sound  campish   is  the  cabaret-­‐like  style  of  Adele’s  vocal  delivery  of  the  word  “this”.  Specifically,  the  singer’s  voice   makes  a  portamento  move  downward  from  the  previously  reached  height  of  the  note  pitch  G  into   that  of  B♭ ,  bridging  that  way  the  leap  (of  a  major  sixth)  contained  in  the  melodic  line  of  the  vocal   part.  The  described  portamento  gesture  and  its  theatrical  (i.e.  camp)  effect  are  additionally   underlined  by  a  sense  of  attained  equilibrium  and  by  a  seemingly  prolonged  duration  of  the  phrase,   both  of  which  are  thrown  into  sharp  relief  against  the  musical  momentum  of  the  next  verse.  If  this,   however,  does  not  indicate  a  representative  instance  of  “an  overworked  system  of  tension  and   release”  as  central  to  the  production  of  musical  camp,  to  refer  to  Jarman-­‐Ivens  (2009,  202)  once   again,  then  it  bears  at  least  traces  of  such  workings.   Thus,  as  shown  above,  many  properties  of  the  song,  such  as,  circularity,  fluidity,  open-­‐ endedness,  a  sense  of  irregularity,  ambivalence,  and  disruption,  call  into  question  its  structurally   masculine  narrative.  Alongside  these  are  occurrences  of  camp  exaggeration  in  some  segments  of   the  vocal  line  and  delivery  underlined  by  the  pathos  of  the  orchestral  tutti.  Ultimately,  all  such   elements  work  together  in  “Chasing  Pavements”  to  undermine  and  “fool  around”  with  the  binary   organization  of  gendered  codes  and  procedures  operating  in  music.  They  accordingly  make  an   imprint  in  the  listener’s  experience  which  can  be  called  queer  insofar  as  it  can  be  said  to  signify  a   non-­‐normative  position  and  a  sense  of  troubled  gender  and  sexual  identity  shared  by  Adele’s  queer   audience.   It  goes  without  saying  that  a  majority  of  The  Lisbon’s  karaoke  pop-­‐soul  queens  sought  to  adopt   and  replicate  Adele’s  singing  style,  for  example,  her  portamento  delivery  of  the  song’s  “this  is  love”   part.  But  more  importantly,  as  I  am  about  to  argue,  it  was  through  the  idiosyncrasies  of  their  vocal   timbres,  vocal  deliveries,  and  stage  performance  styles  that  The  Lisbon’s  karaoke  performers  put  an   additional  touch  of  camp’s  queerness  into  their  favorite  song.     Adele  “Chasing  Pavements”:  The  Lisbon’s  Karaoke  Performances     In  order  to  handle  and  systematize  a  great  diversity  of  my  fieldwork  material,  I  divide  the   following  queer  analysis  of  The  Lisbon’s  karaoke  performances  of  “Chasing  Pavements”  into  two   parts.  The  first  centers  on  the  exploration  of  incongruous  juxtapositions  along  the   masculine/feminine  binary  as  a  typical  expression  of  camp,  according  to  Newton  (1999,  103).  In   The  Lisbon’s  queer  karaoke  space,  the  incongruity  of  such  juxtapositions  reveals  itself  in  particular   details  of  some  karaoke  singers’  vocal  delivery  as  well  as  in  their  bodily  impersonation  of  diva   conduct.  In  the  second  part,  attention  shifts  to  the  task  of  addressing  and  describing  several  types  of   21     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   what  Hawkins  (2009)  calls  camp  vocalities  that  surfaced  in  karaoke  renditions  of  Adele’s  “Chasing   Pavements”.   To  better  understand  how  the  incongruity  between  masculine  and  feminine  played  out  in  some   vocal  performances  of  The  Lisbon’s  crowd  favorite,  it  is  important  to  recollect  first  that  the  subject   position  of  pop-­‐soul  queens  is  female-­‐identified.  This  fact  alone  bears  camp  implications,  as  Booth   asserts  in  his  article  on  the  origins  and  definitions  of  camp:     To  be  camp  is  to  present  oneself  as  being  committed  to  the  marginal  with  the  commitment  greater   than  the  marginal  merits.  (…)  The  primary  type  of  the  marginal  in  society  is  the  traditionally   feminine,  which  camp  parodies  in  an  exhibition  of  stylized  effeminacy.  (…)  [This]  throw[s]  an   ironic  light  not  only  on  the  abstract  concept  of  the  sexual  stereotype,  but  also  on  the  parodist  him   or  herself  (1999,  69;  emphasis  in  original).     Curiously  enough,  an  absolute  majority  of  The  Lisbon’s  karaoke  performances  of  “Chasing   Pavements”  seemed  to  exhibit  no  traces  of  parodic  intentions.  On  the  contrary,  they  were  meant  to   be  taken  seriously,  thereby  encroaching  on  the  terrain  of  so-­‐called  unintentional  (or  naïve)  camp   (Newton  1999),  the  acknowledgment  of  which  is  predicated  upon  the  (queer)  viewer’s  perception.   That  said,  The  Lisbon’s  karaoke  events  did  provide  pop-­‐soul  queens  with  a  platform  from  which  to   display  and  indulge  in  gestures  of  “stylized  effeminacy”  while  performing  “Chasing  Pavements”.   This  was  especially  true  for  The  Lisbon’s  karaoke-­‐goer  Ralph,  a  blonde  short-­‐haired  and  scarce-­‐ bearded  Liverpudlian  in  his  early  twenties.  His  performance  of  “Chasing  Pavements”  was  grounded   in  an  elaborate  enactment  of  diva  conduct.  The  moment  his  singing  commenced,  his  whole-­‐body   figure  suddenly  “shrank”,  taking  up  a  constricted  posture  –  a  gesture  suggesting  a  strong   concentration  on  singing.  Such  an  abrupt  switch  to  the  role  of  diva  performance  was   simultaneously  accompanied  by  the  recurring  delicate  shrugs  of  his  shoulders,  lifted  in  sync  with   the  beat  of  the  sung  phrases.  Soon  his  body  began  to  relax  and  move  gently,  mainly  from  one  side  to   the  other,  sometimes  with  the  upper  part  making  a  full  circulatory  movement,  sometimes  with  a   sudden  pull  of  his  head  to  either  side.  The  intensity  of  his  bodily  movements  was  naturally  dictated   by  those  of  the  sung  phrases.  Even  if  subtle  on  the  whole,  his  karaoke  performance  came  across  as   stage-­‐conscious  containing  an  apparently  high  level  of  bodily  self-­‐regulation.  This  was  especially   discernible  in  a  number  of  Ralph’s  hand  movements  and  facial  expressions  as  the  major  loci  of   emotional  investment  involved  in  his  role-­‐playing.  Indeed,  the  hallmark  of  Ralph’s  karaoke   renderings  of  “Chasing  Pavements”  was  a  wide-­‐open  palm  or  a  limp  wrist  of  his  free  hand  (the   other  was  busy  holding  the  mike)  gesturing  in  the  air  or  resting  briefly  over  his  chest  (as  a  symbolic   22     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   gesture  of  emotional  suffering)  for  the  most  part  of  his  performance.  No  less  contributing  to  Ralph’s   emphatic  role-­‐playing  act  were  as  well  the  grimaces  of  pain  and  sorrow  complementing  his  singing,   particularly  at  the  climax  points  of  the  song.  In  short,  by  assuming  the  diva  stance  in  his  karaoke   renditions  of  “Chasing  Pavements”,  Ralph  could  freely  enjoy  and  celebrate  the  stylized  gestures  of   his  queer  embodiment  as  an  unfettered  site  of  transgressive  gender  play.   Moreover,  one  common  trait  found  in  almost  all  karaoke  performances  of  “Chasing  Pavements”   at  The  Lisbon  was  an  oft-­‐present  tendency  towards  grimacing  so  as  to  express  a  yearning  sentiment   of  the  song.  The  facial  expressions  of  emotional  suffering  form  part  of  the  canned  and  limited   corpus  of  gestural  mannerism  long-­‐established  in  the  history  of  vocal  practice,  and  as  such,  they  can   be  easily  imitated.  Yet,  if  exaggerated  during  vocal  performance,  they  might  take  on  a  grotesque   (and  thus  camp)  form.  As  Koestenbaum  teaches  us,  “[m]any  manuals  recommend  singing  in  front  of   a  mirror  to  ward  off  (…)  convulsive  grimacing”,  with  “fish  mouth”  being  cast  off  as  the  freakiest  one   (1993,  168).  By  contrast,  for  Koestenbaum  as  an  opera  queen,  the  opportunity  given  to  opera  divas   to  look  grotesque  while  singing  holds  a  positive,  appealing  quality;  it  is  something  to  take  pleasure   from,  providing,  of  course,  that  one  chooses  to  embrace  it.  Notwithstanding  that,  the  ambiguous   stance  towards  the  diva  role  (featuring  theatricality  and  sincerity  at  the  same  time)  manifest  in   karaoke  acts  by  The  Lisbon’s  pop-­‐soul  queens  made  it  difficult  to  assess  whether  their  staged  sore   grimaces  of  emotional  pain  were  meant  to  be  deployed  strategically  as  a  form  of  camp  pleasure,   especially  when  performing  the  “queerest”  moments  of  “Chasing  Pavements”  (see  above  Examples   1,  2,  and  3).  But  at  least  there  was  no  doubt  that  the  “freakishness”  of  such  bodily  gestures  afforded   delightful  joys  to  The  Lisbon’s  karaoke  audience  members  with  queer  camp  empathies  (including   myself).   The  queer  moments  of  “Chasing  Pavements”,  marked  in  the  previous  analysis  as  the  most   dramatic  points  of  the  song  and  delivered  expectedly  in  the  high  vocal  register,  did  not  only  prompt   the  expulsion  of  convulsive  grimacing  on  the  faces  of  The  Lisbon’s  karaoke  pop-­‐soul  queens.   Considering  all  the  labor  and  special  technique  involved  in  the  vocal  production  of  belting,  to  which   amateur  karaoke  singers  are  by  no  means  attuned,  the  queer  moments  of  the  song  would  also  turn   frequently  into  the  moments  of  voice  “cracking”.  And  it  was  there  –  in  the  voice  breaking  between   vocal  registers;  in  singing  unexpectedly  falsetto  (that  feigned,  blank,  weak,  and  shameful  sound)   after  the  song  sections  delivered  with  the  full  richness  of  the  chest  voice  –  that  the  song’s  queer   moments  would  become  even  queerer  (“super  queer”,  as  it  were;  zoomed  to  their  extremes)  in   some  of  The  Lisbon’s  karaoke  performances  of  “Chasing  Pavements”.  As  Koestenbaum  clarifies:     23     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   Falsetto  seems  profoundly  perverse:  a  freakish  sideshow:  the  place  where  voice  goes  wrong.  And   yet  falsetto  obeys  the  paradigm  of  all  voice  production.  (…)  The  falsetto  is  part  of  the  history  of   effeminacy…  Long  before  anyone  knew  what  a  homosexual  was,  entire  cultures  knew  to  mock  men   who  sang  unconventionally  high.  (…)  I  have  always  feared  the  falsetto:  voice  of  the  bogeyman,   voice  of  the  unregenerate  fag;  voice  of  horror  and  loss  and  castration;  floating  voice,  vanishing   voice.  (…)  Falsetto  is  not  a  sin;  the  sin  is  breaking  into  it  undisguisedly.  Consistent  falsetto,  like   expert  drag,  can  give  the  illusion  of  truth.  (…)  The  break  between  registers  (…)  is  the  place  within   one  voice  where  the  split  between  male  and  female  occurs.  The  failure  to  disguise  this  gendered   break  is  fatal  to  the  art  of  “natural”  voice  production.  (…)  By  coming  out,  gays  provoke  seismic   shudders  in  the  System-­‐of-­‐the-­‐Line,  just  as,  by  revealing  the  register  break,  a  singer  exposes  the   fault  lines  inside  a  body  that  pretends  to  be  only  masculine  or  only  feminine.  (Or,  by  coming  out,  do   we  inadvertently  reaffirm  the  divided  world?)  (1993,  164–167)     Very  often  the  voice  of  the  same  karaoke  performer  would  persist  in  breaking  –  and,  thus,   exposing  the  performativity  of  the  “System-­‐of-­‐the-­‐Line”  of  gender  division  –  in  the  same  manner   and  at  the  same  crucial  points  of  the  song  every  single  time  s/he  would  sing  “Chasing  Pavements”.   For  instance,  in  the  case  of  pop-­‐soul  queen  Jamie  and  his  regular  karaoke  renditions  of  the  song  at   The  Lisbon  pub,  the  recurring  falsetto  intonations  of  the  words  “this”  and  especially  “but”,  both   occupying  the  pitch  G  and  concluding  the  opening  verse  of  the  song  (see  above  Example  3),  would   immediately  render  his  voice  break  wide  open.  In  like  manner,  the  chorus  line  of  “Chasing   Pavements”  in  the  karaoke  version  of  The  Lisbon’s  female  pop-­‐soul  queen  Ann  would  continually   fluctuate  in  terms  of  the  quality  of  vocal  production  between  “forceful”  and  “weak”  surges  of  air.  In   the  latter  case,  Ann  would  muffle  particular  words  (namely,  every  appearance  of  the  word  “just”,   and  sometimes  the  word  “if”  within  the  lyrical  line  “even  if  I  knew  my  place”)  whose  silencing  in  her   performance  stood  in  sharp  contrast  to  their  originally  accentuated  and  campy  rendition.  This   paradoxically  might  have  sounded  even  campier  in  its  effect  than  the  original  delivery.  Beside  this,   Ann  would  also  noticeably  gasp  for  air  between  the  music  phrases,  and  let  her  voice  fade,  lose   power,  “shut  down”  at  the  endings  of  the  smaller  musical  units  that  the  chorus  section  consists  of   (i.e.  falling  on  the  words  “pavements”,  “nowhere?”,  “there”).  At  any  rate,  the  muted  character  of  the   incidentally  produced  falsetto  in  The  Lisbon’s  karaoke  performances  of  “Chasing  Pavements”  would   each  time  brought  about  the  same  queer  camp  effect:  a  sense  of  disruption  or  rupture,  occurring   simultaneously  in  both  aural  and  gender/sexual  realms.  Or,  to  use  Koestenbaum’s  vocabulary,  the   falsetto  as  a  “detour”  from  singing  could  signify  just  as  well  a  “detour”  from  the  taken-­‐for-­‐granted   coherence  and  sameness  of  the  karaoke  performer’s  sex  and  gender  identity.   24     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   In  The  Lisbon’s  queer  karaoke  space,  I  was  drawn  to  three  additional  vocal  renditions  of   “Chasing  Pavements”,  whose  idiosyncrasies  can  also  be  associated  with  the  elements  of  queer  camp.   Richardson’s  (2006)  provisional  but  comprehensive  taxonomy  of  the  characteristics  constituting   the  male  camp  voice  is  taken  here  as  a  major  point  of  reference.  Not  only  does  this  taxonomy   incorporate  the  portamento  and  (incidental)  falsetto  styles  of  singing  that  have  already  been   addressed  in  the  analysis  above.  It  also  proposes  the  categories  of  vocal  styles  that  encapsulate  well   the  particular  details  of  karaoke  renditions  of  “Chasing  Pavements”  by  The  Lisbon’s  three  karaoke   singers,  I  would  designate  here  as  pop-­‐soul  queens  A,  B,  and  C.  These  queer  camp  categories  are:  a)   flamboyant  vocal  styles  featuring  excessive  vibrato;  b)  affected  vocal  production  brought  about  by   nasality;  and  c)  ostentatious  –  or  to  be  more  precise,  ostentatiously  humorous  –  theatricality.   The  pop-­‐soul  queen  A  displayed  in  his  karaoke  interpretation  of  “Chasing  Pavements”  a  high   level  of  mastery  in  soul  and  R&B  singing  techniques.  His  vocal  delivery  in  persistent  falsetto   abounded  with  resonant  vibrato,  applied  on  almost  every  tone  of  the  song,  whereas  the  tones  of   longer  duration  were  routinely  embellished  with  improvised  riffs.  In  the  repeated  phrase  “Or   should  I  just  keep  chasing  pavements”  towards  the  end  of  the  chorus  section,  he  interpolated  in   addition  an  elaborate  vocal  run,  turning  upside-­‐down  the  course  of  the  original  melody.  In  the   typical  manner  of  soul  singing,  he  also  made  the  original  beat  of  the  song  come  loose,  by  dragging  or   rushing  its  relatively  steady  metro-­‐rhythmical  structure  all  along  the  way.  Note  that  in  some  other   performance  contexts,  the  described  type  of  karaoke  singing  would  by  no  means  be  considered   queer  camp.  But  in  the  queer  karaoke  space  of  The  Lisbon,  the  excessively  embellished  vocal   delivery,  overabounding  in  vibrato,  should  be  understood  as  nothing  else  than  an  apt  manifestation   of  camp  vocalities.  Not  only  did  the  Lisbon’s  pop-­‐soul  queen  A  overemphasize  the  soul  vocal   mannerism  present  in  Adele’s  singing  style,  but  his  insistence  on  the  vocal  timbre  and  practice   coded  as  black  was  juxtaposed  oddly  with  his  external  whiteness.  In  that  regard,  his  karaoke   rendition  of  “Chasing  Pavements”  can  be  said  to  have  additionally  “queered”  the  presumed   correlation  that  most  people  unquestionably  draw  between  a  vocal  timbre  and  the  singer’s  race   (see  Eidsheim  2009).   The  excessive  vocal  nasality  in  the  karaoke  delivery  of  “Chasing  Pavements”  by  the  Lisbon’s   female  pop-­‐soul  queen  B  bore  a  striking  resemblance  to  the  country  style  of  singing  found,  for   example,  in  the  vocal  production  of  Justin  Moore.  Her  karaoke  performance  was  characterized  by   the  heavy  use  of  twangs  throughout  the  entire  song.  The  campiness  in  the  manner  of  singing  which   is  consistent  with  “vowel  breaking”  was  additionally  heightened  by  the  sporadic  accentuation  of   certain  words,  either  those  lending  on  the  ascending  leap  within  the  vocal  melodic  structure  –  e.g.   on  the  (bolded)  words  “don’t  need  to  think  it  over”,  “this  is  love”  (in  the  opening  verse),  “I’ll  never   25     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   say  enough”,  “if  I  end  up  with  you”  (in  the  second  verse),  etc.;  or  those  words  resting  on  the  on-­‐ beats  of  the  melodic  line  and,  thus,  playing  around  with  “the  exaggerated  sense  of  ‘phallic   directionality’”  mentioned  in  a  queer  reading  of  the  original  song  above  –  e.g.  the  words  “wrong”,   “further”  (in  the  opening  verse),  “enough”,  “exactly”  (in  the  second  verse),  etc.  Another  instance  of   camp  exaggeration  in  B’s  karaoke  performance  was  achieved  using  a  completely  different  type  of   accentuation.  Specifically,  she  would  each  time  pick  the  line  “even  if  I  knew  my  place”  from  the   chorus  section,  and  emphasized  it  with  a  shouting  voice  and  a  growl  on  the  word  “my”.  Once  again,   it  was  difficult  to  estimate  whether  her  performance  meant  to  be  serious  or  mocking;  but,  as   pointed  out  above,  inducing  this  sort  of  uncertainty  among  audience  members  is  precisely  one  of   the  defining  features  of  camp.   Playing  the  “ambiguity”  card  was,  by  contrast,  less  prominent  in  the  vocal  rendition  of  “Chasing   Pavements”  by  pop-­‐soul  queen  C.  In  fact,  the  comic  output  of  his  karaoke  delivery  was  immediately   picked  up  by  The  Lisbon’s  crowd  bursting  occasionally  into  laughter  out  loud.  The  humorous  effect   was  partly  achieved  here  through  the  juxtaposition  of  two  contrasting  styles  in  C’s  vocal  delivery  –   one  intended  for  the  chorus  section,  and  the  other  for  the  rest  of  the  song.  The  former  comprised   singing  in  a  raspy  voice  with  a  persistent  nasal  intonation.  Added  to  this  as  a  visual  counterpart   were  funny  grimaces  engendered  by  forceful  blinking  and  eyebrows-­‐raising.  The  latter  style  of  C’s   vocal  production,  reserved  for  the  song’s  verses  and  bridge,  seemed  to  replicate  a  cabaret  manner   of  singing  in  that  it  was  at  times  rhythmically  free  and  imitative  of  the  natural  inflections  of  speech.   As  a  result,  the  soul  runs  from  the  original  vocal  part  were  contracted,  melodically  simplified,  often   kept  in  the  lower  vocal  register,  and  sometimes  awkwardly  accentuated.  On  a  couple  of  occasions,   karaoke  performer  C  also  used  his  speaking  voice,  unexpectedly,  to  highlight  the  meaning  of  the   uttered  phrases  “this  is  love”  (at  the  end  of  the  opening  verse)  and  “Should  I  give  up?”  (in  its  second   appearance  in  the  bridge).  This  theatrical  gesture  sparked  immediate  laughter  from  the  audience.   On  the  whole,  the  performance  of  “Chasing  Pavements”  by  The  Lisbon’s  pop-­‐soul  queen  C  was  truly   hilarious  in  its  “ostentatious  theatricality”.  As  such,  it  can  serve  as  an  excellent  case  in  point  for   Newton’s  musings  on  camp:     Camp  is  for  fun;  the  aim  of  camp  is  to  make  an  audience  laugh.  In  fact,  it  is  a  system  of  humor.  Camp   humor  is  a  system  of  laughing  at  one’s  incongruous  position  instead  of  crying.  (…)  Only  by  fully   embracing  the  stigma  itself  can  one  neutralize  the  sting  and  make  it  laughable  (1999,  106–107;   emphasis  in  original).     26     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   It  goes  without  saying  that  the  reverse  outcomes  of  camp’s  humor  –  “from  laughter  to  pathos”,   as  Newton  put  it  –  can  befall  karaoke  queens,  too.  For  instance,  during  my  karaoke  fieldwork  at  The   Lisbon,  I  observed  a  male-­‐female  duet  whose  joint  karaoke  performance  ended  up  “tragically”  for   the  male  participant.  Since  the  selected  karaoke  song  did  not  fit  his  vocal  range,  he  put  the  blame  on   his  female  duet  partner  for  having  made  such  a  “terrible”  song  choice  in  the  first  place.  Noticeably   indisposed,  he  snapped  at  her  afterwards  with  an  angry  frown  on  his  face:  “You’ve  just  ruined  my   career  at  this  place!”  The  observed  episode  of  overdramatic  reaction  in  one  of  The  Lisbon’s  karaoke   queens  does  not  only  exemplify  well  the  camp’s  capacity  to  transform  easily  from  laughter  to  self-­‐ pity.  The  same  episode  is  also  indicative  of  so-­‐called  camp  speech,  which  Morris  (1993,  190)   describes  as  a  point  where  histrionics  and  hysteria  meet.     Amy  Winehouse  “Valerie”:  A  Queer  Reading     “Valerie”  is  one  of  the  cover  songs,  featuring  Amy  Winehouse  as  a  vocalist,  on  the  second  studio   album  Version  by  the  English  music  producer  Mark  Ronson.  The  single  made  an  immediate  success   at  the  time  of  its  release  back  in  June  2007,  thus  coinciding  with  its  popularity  as  a  karaoke  number   at  Liverpool’s  The  Lisbon  pub  during  my  ethnographic  research.   The  latter  should  come  as  no  surprise  considering  that  the  single’s  music  video  (directed  by   Robert  Hales)  invokes  in  part  the  practice  and  atmosphere  of  karaoke  performance.9  Specifically,   the  video  storyline  involves  several  women  who  are  invited  by  Ronson  and  his  fellow  musicians  to   climb  up  from  the  audience  onto  the  stage  and  fill  the  gap  created  by  the  suddenly  realized  absence   of  the  main  vocalist  (i.e.  Amy).10  Even  though  they  are  all  miming  to  Winehouse’s  pre-­‐recorded   voice  throughout  the  entire  video,  one  cannot  help  but  think  that  the  song  recommends  itself  as   well  suited  for  a  karaoke  setting.   Taken  on  the  whole,  the  queerest  point  in  Winehouse’s  “Valerie”  is,  arguably,  the  performance   of  gender  subversion  occurring  in  the  lyrics.  Namely,  this  song  was  originally  recorded  in  2006  by   The  Zutons,  a  Liverpool  male  indie  band11,  and  dedicated  to  a  former  girlfriend,  called  Valerie,  of  the   band’s  lead  singer  Dave  McCabe.  Since  the  lyrics  in  Ronson’s  cover  version  of  the  song  remained   intact,  its  original  heteronormative  disposition  was  camped-­‐up  through  the  newly  established                                                                                                                             9  Available  at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HLY1NTe04M.   10  Thinking  of  this  video  storyline  in  hindsight  might  give  us  an  uncanny  feeling  of  fulfilled  prophecy  –  that   Amy  Winehouse  will  have  been  absent  for  good  four  years  later.   11  Perhaps  the  fact  that  the  song  was  originally  crafted  by  a  local  indie  band  added  a  new  layer  of  meaning   (that  of  being  Liverpool-­‐identified,  that  is,  of  being  a  Liverpudlian)  to  the  karaoke  experience  of  “Valerie”  at   The  Lisbon.   27     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   relations  of  sex,  gender,  and  desire  in  the  lyrical  narrative  between  the  vocalist’s  subject  position   (i.e.  Dave  and  Amy  respectively  as  the  imagined  protagonists  of  the  song’s  storyline)  and  the  object   of  his/her  desire  (i.e.  Valerie).  The  subversive  effect  of  inverted  gender  and  sex  roles  in   Winehouse’s  rendition  of  “Valerie”  becomes  especially  evident  in  the  bridge  section  where  the   sentiment  of  longing  is  overtly  enunciated  (“And  I’ve  missed  your  ginger  hair  /  And  the  way  you   like  to  dress  /  Won’t  you  come  on  over  /  Stop  making  a  fool  out  of  me  /  Why  don’t  you  come  on   over,  Valerie?”).  No  wonder,  then,  that  this  cover  version  generated  anxieties  among  the  public   about  the  singer’s  “true”  sexual  orientation,  but  also  about  sexual  practice  more  generally.  Then   again,  as  Hawkins  (2009)  stresses,  the  gender  and  sexual  masquerade  of  pop  is  central  to  its   seducing  power  over  the  public,  and  forms  accordingly  a  necessary  part  of  pop  music  pleasures.   Music-­‐wise,  “Valerie”  does  not  differ  much  from  the  rest  of  Winehouse’s  music  production,   especially  not  from  her  second  album  Back  to  Black  (released  in  October  2006  by  Island  Records),   on  which  Ronson  also  worked  as  a  producer.  Evoked  in  either  case  are  “the  heydays  of  Motown  and   soul,  R&B,  jazz,  girl  groups  and  Phil  Spector’s  Wall  of  Sound”  (Barton  2011).     Despite  its  steady,  offbeat  groove,  giving  the  song  a  cheery,  danceable  character,  the  main  feel  in   “Valerie”  is  not  really  a  happy  one.  Rather,  it  churns  up  nostalgic  undertones  using  predominantly   plagal  chord  changes  and  the  reverberated  fullness  of  the  wall-­‐of-­‐sound  effect  (including  here  the   spot-­‐on  use  of  sentimentally  charged  strings).  The  latter  is  not  only  indicative  of  the  song’s   noteworthy  proximity  to  the  Motown  Sound  operating  at  many  of  its  musical  levels.12  Of  much   greater  relevance  for  the  subject  at  hand  are  camp  connotations  that  such  a  glossy  outcome  of  the   song’s  studio  production  can  be  said  to  hold.  Indeed,  with  reference  to  the   “authenticity/artificiality”  dichotomy  that  regulates  core  value  judgments  in  popular  music   discourses,  the  saccharine  quality  of  Winehouse’s  version  of  “Valerie”,  foregrounded  by  the  use  of   string  instruments  and  percussions  (above  all,  tubular  bells  and  glockenspiel  in  the  chorus),  can  be   understood  as  a  debased  version  of  the  song’s  original.  For  the  affiliation  of  the  latter  with  rock   music  facilitates  the  construction  of  its  presumed  virility  and  more  sincere  feel.  It  is  therefore  this   “overabundance  of  artifice  and  calculated  exertion”  –  on  which  Lee  Oakes  (2004,  70–71)  elaborates   in  his  discussion  on  the  “madeness”  and,  thus,  perceived  “badness”  of  pop  music  on  the  whole  –  that   renders  Winehouse’s  “Valerie”  appealing  to  queer  camp  tastes.                                                                                                                             12  For  instance,  in  using  tambourines  to  underscore  the  backbeat,  widely  known  as  “phallic”  in  the  feminist   musicologist  discourse  (see  McClary  1991);  in  its  catchy  syncopated  bass-­‐guitar  line,  opening  the  song  alone   during  the  two  first  bars;  and  in  its  highly  polished  studio  production  with  carefully  arranged  orchestral   string  and  horn  sections.   28     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   When  all  three  layers  of  the  analysis  of  Winehouse’s  “Valerie”  are  brought  together  (namely,  the   song’s  music  video,  lyrics,  and  music),  several  conclusions  on  its  queer  effects  come  to  mind.  From  a   broadly  understood  queer  perspective,  it  can  be  said  that  the  song  and  its  music  video  throw  into   sharp  relief  a  host  of  well-­‐established  dichotomies  prevailing  in  the  world  of  popular  music.   Specifically,  the  song’s  status  as  a  cover  version,  its  celebration  of  retro  music  styles  coded  as  black,   the  group  karaoke  feel  of  the  music  video  in  which  Amy’s  non-­‐presence  is  filled  with  randomly   selected  female  audience  members  lip-­‐syncing  to  her  voice  –  all  these  elements,  thus,  work  together   to  blur  the  imagined  boundaries  between  live  and  recorded  performance,  musicians  and  audience,   original  and  copy,  authenticity  and  artificiality,  “black”  (aural)  interiority  and  “white”  (corporeal)   exteriority,  and  so  on.  It  is  exactly  through  this  playfulness  and  ambiguity  vis-­‐à-­‐vis  the  discursive   system  of  polarized  essences  that  the  concept  of  queerness  becomes  fully  tangible.   Moreover,  the  idea  of  camp  queerness,  as  shown  above,  also  operates  in  more  specific  domains   of  gender  and  sexual  subjectivities.  What,  namely,  comes  to  be  unveiled  through  the  subversive   workings  of  the  song’s  lyrical  content  and  the  camp  implications  of  its  Motown-­‐inspired  musical   arrangement,  is  precisely  the  performativity  of  subject  positions  assumed  in  the  process  of   gender/sexual  identifications.  The  same  logic  of  non-­‐fixed,  shifting  subject  positions  is  also   symbolically  replicated  in  the  visual  content  of  the  song’s  music  video,  where  several  different   women  mime  in  turn  to  the  original  (Amy’s)  voice.  In  like  manner,  it  is  plausible  to  theorize  (as  I   will  do  in  the  pages  to  come)  that  karaoke  represents  a  potentially  emancipatory  medium  for   authenticating  queer  (sexual,  gender,  and  otherwise)  identities.     Amy  Winehouse  “Valerie”:  The  Lisbon’s  Karaoke  Performances     By  setting  up  a  model  of  same-­‐sex  desire  in  its  lyrics,  Winehouse’s  “Valerie”  was,  quite   predictably,  performed  more  readily  by  The  Lisbon’s  self-­‐identified  lesbian  karaoke  singers.  In  fact,   the  song  has  been  claimed  by  a  wider  lesbian  community,  judging  by  the  commentary  posted  after   the  singer’s  death  on  one  lesbian  website  (see  Joosten  2011).  Highlighted  therein  is  the  special   significance  that  Winehouse’s  music  has  in  general  held  for  the  lesbian  community,  in  particular  the   “Valerie”  song  –  as  the  following  rhetorical  question  illustrates:  “Who  hasn’t  sung  ‘Valerie’  at  lesbian   karaoke  night?”  While  acknowledging  the  relevance  of  such  insights,  I  would  nonetheless  argue  that   it  was  actually  in  karaoke  renditions  of  the  song  by  The  Lisbon’s  male  pop-­‐soul  queens  that  the   workings  of  queer  camp  could  be  witnessed  at  its  purest.  This  claim  makes  perfect  sense  in  the  light   of  the  following  consideration:  What  else  could  in  The  Lisbon’s  queer  space  make  the  already   29     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   subverted  sex  and  gender  roles  in  Winehouse’s  cover  song  queerer  than  its  karaoke  re-­‐ appropriations  by  male  pop-­‐soul  queens!?   Given  the  uplifting  groove  of  Winehouse’s  “Valerie”,  it  comes  as  no  surprise  that  the  queerest   karaoke  performances  of  the  song  that  I  observed  at  The  Lisbon  made  use  of  the  camp  strategies  of   exaggeration  and  theatricality.  The  three  of  them  stood  out  as  especially  compelling  in  this  regard,   each  illuminating  equally  well  the  camp’s  function  to  amuse  and  poke  fun  at  the  “queenliness”  of   the  performer’s  pop-­‐soul  diva  pose.  However,  in  the  cases  of  karaoke  singers  no.  1  and  no.  2,  the   queer  camp  effects  of  their  acts  were  accomplished  unintentionally,  combining  authentic  and   theatrical  approaches  at  once  –  a  mixture  which,  in  Dyer’s  view,  lies  at  the  heart  of  “the  antithetical   disposition  of  gay  sensibility”  (2004,  150).  By  contrast,  The  Lisbon’s  pop-­‐soul  queen  no.  3  was   seemingly  in  full  control  of  gender  performance  when  doing  his  karaoke  version  of  “Valerie”,   thereby  pushing  his  parodic  attitude  into  the  limelight.  Let  me  attend,  now,  in  greater  detail  to  each   of  these  pop  soul  queens  and  their  karaoke  performances  respectively.   The  karaoke  rendition  of  “Valerie”  by  The  Lisbon’s  pop-­‐soul  queen  no.  1  was  characterized  by   pronounced  exuberance  and  overdramatized  expression.  In  a  queer  camp  twist,  he  retrieved  the   virile  quality  of  the  original  (Zuton’s)  song  by  “kinging  it  up”  (see  Halberstam  2005,  128)  with  the   type  of  soul  vocal  technique,  coming  close  in  its  emotional  intensity  to  James  Brown’s  macho  style   of  singing.  Thus,  in  place  of  Winehouse’s  wide  vibrato,  frequent  twangs,  and  prolonged  nasal  offsets,   there  was  powerful  belt  singing  “spiced  up”  all  along  the  way  with  persistent  rasps  and  a  variety  of   exclamations,  such  as,  “yeah!”,  “hey!”,  “oh!”,  “ah!”.  The  latter  were  regularly  interpolated  between   the  sung  phrases  and  intonated  either  in  the  chest  voice  as  sharp  yells  and  roars,  most  often   abrasive  and  unsettling  in  their  sonic  effect;  or  in  the  effeminate  falsetto  voice  as  brief,  soft  howls.   The  assertiveness  of  his  vocal  style  was  aptly  complemented  by  the  energetic  bodily   movements.  His  body  was  bouncing  to  the  song’s  beat  throughout  the  entire  karaoke  act,  along  with   his  palm-­‐closed-­‐finger-­‐pointed  fist  repeatedly  raised  in  the  air  –  another  telling  gesture  embodying   the  phallic  power.  Some  other  bodily  actions  also  worked  nicely  together  to  render  his  performance   earnest  in  the  eyes  of  The  Lisbon’s  crowd:  for  instance,  the  occasional  head  slides  to  the  left  and   then  to  the  right  in  one  quick  movement,  repeated  several  times  in  a  row  to  the  song’s  beat;  or   tapping  the  left  side  of  chest  with  the  right  palm  –  another  symbolic  gesture  standing  for  singing   from  the  bottom  of  one’s  heart.  The  Lisbon’s  pop-­‐soul  queen  (or  rather:  “king”)  no.  1  appeared  to  be   dead  serious  about  his  karaoke  act.  However,  his  emotionally  sincere  attitude  indicated  at  the  same   time  a  sense  of  ironic  distance  towards  the  assumed  role  of  pop-­‐soul  queen/king.  Not  only  did  a   cheeky  smile  persisting  on  his  face  during  the  entire  performance  betray  his  faithful  approach  to   30     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   the  role.  Also,  the  insistence  on  “overdoing”  his  karaoke  act  (by  kinging  it  up)  even  more  reflected   his  conscious  engagement  with  the  camp’s  theatricality.   A  similar  mixture  of  authenticity  and  theatricality  was  also  displayed  in  the  karaoke  rendition   of  “Valerie”  by  The  Lisbon’s  pop-­‐soul  queen  no.  2.  But  in  contrast  to  the  above-­‐described   performance,  this  one  clearly  strived  to  live  up  to  the  queenly  standards  of  diva  conduct.  To  begin   with,  the  very  visual  appearance  of  the  pop-­‐soul  queen  no.  2  was  notably  stylish  and  attended  with   much  care.  He  sported  a  casual-­‐chic  outfit  (comprising  tight  jeans  and  designer  T-­‐shirt),  complete   with  the  perfectly  groomed  eyebrows,  a  blonde-­‐dyed  pompadour  at  the  middle  of  his  brown  hair,   cut  short  along  the  side  of  the  head,  the  subtly  gauged  ears,  and  a  couple  of  metal  rings  worn  on   both  his  hands.   The  same  level  of  refinement  and  artifice  was  also  exhibited  in  the  totality  of  his  karaoke  act.  I   observed  therein  few  types  of  bodily  gestures  through  which  the  aspired  diva  attitude  was   constituted.  One  was  contained  in  the  dancing  part  of  his  performance,  where  a  special  emphasis   was  placed  on  hip  swinging  to  the  beat,  occasionally  followed  by  the  up-­‐raised  arm  motion  and   finger  snapping.  “Miming”  particular  words  of  the  song  in  hand  gestures  was  another  campy   embodiment  found  in  the  karaoke  performance  by  The  Lisbon’s  pop-­‐soul  queen  no.  2.  For  instance,   he  very  often  mimed  the  pronoun  “you”  (as  in  the  line  “Did  you  have  to  go  to  jail”)  by  stabbing  his   index  finger  in  the  air  as  if  pointing  to  the  subject  of  his  address  in  the  song  (i.e.  Valerie).  The  words   connoting  the  head-­‐related  matters  (as  in  the  line  “And  in  my  head  I  paint  a  picture”,  or  in  “are  you   still  dizzy?”)  were  also  illustrated  with  the  help  of  index  finger,  tapping  this  time  the  side  of  his   head.  In  the  part  of  the  song  inquiring  about  Valerie’s  current  hair  color,  he  grabbed  and  twisted  a   piece  of  his  dyed  hair  between  his  thumb  and  index  fingers,  and  showed  it  to  the  audience.  And   when  the  crucial  line  of  the  song  came  up:  “Why  don’t  you  come  on  over,  Valerie?”,  he  seductively   curled  his  index  finger  towards  himself.   However,  the  most  queenly  and,  certainly,  most  peculiar  embodiment  accompanying  his   karaoke  act  was  the  odd  gesture  of  rolling  in  the  lips  so  that  they  rolled  across  one  another  –  a   gesture  which  was  reserved  for  brief  moments  of  rest  in  the  vocal  part,  turning  up  just  before  the   continuation  of  the  next  singing  phrase.  Over  the  course  of  his  performance,  this  lip  mannerism,   resembling  somewhat  a  preening  gesture  for  women  evening  out  lipstick,  evolved  rapidly  into  the   recurring  brisk  sound  effect  of  lip-­‐smacking.   No  less  campy  in  its  effect  was  the  theatrical  quality  of  his  vocal  delivery  towards  the  end  of  the   song.  Having  previously  combined  several  modes  of  singing  –  ranging  from  the  belt-­‐singing  voice   (with  rare  rasps)  and  its  corresponding  crying  grimace,  to  the  falsetto  voice  manipulated  with  the   eyes  shut  –  The  Lisbon’s  pop-­‐soul  queen  no.  2  pushed  his  voice  to  the  limit  in  the  last  section  of  the   31     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   song  (commencing  immediately  before  the  last  rendition  of  the  chorus)  to  fully  shine  in  his   wannabe  diva  role.  This  self-­‐aggrandizing  quest  for  vocal  dominance,  based  on  the  production  of   excessive  vibrato  and  elaborate  riffs  and  runs,  was  not  only  determined  by  the  structure  of  the   “Valerie”  song,  whose  coda  section  permitted  a  demonstration  of  Winehouse’s  vocal  abilities,  too.  It   was  additionally  premised  on  the  narcissistic  need  of  pop-­‐soul  queen  no.  2  to  beat  the  original’s   vocal  delivery.  This  was  accomplished  through  an  immense  vocal  effort  to  sing  ceaselessly  in  large   chunks  until  the  end  of  the  song,  by  connecting  the  ending  syllable  of  one  vocal  phrase  (e.g.  “Stop   making  a  fool  out  of  me”)  to  the  opening  syllable  of  the  following  phrase  (e.g.  “Why  don't  you  come   on  over,  Valerie?”)  without  break.  This  kind  of  “oversinging”  produced,  admittedly,  the  hypnotizing   effect  on  The  Lisbon’s  queer  crowd.   Lastly,  the  karaoke  rendition  of  “Valerie”  by  The  Lisbon’s  pop-­‐soul  queen  no.  3  intentionally   parodied  the  original  soulfulness  of  the  song.  This  was  achieved  by  making  both  the  body  and  the   voice  a  site  of  ridicule.  The  incongruity  produced  between  the  hyper-­‐idealized  image  of  the  muscled   gay  body  that  karaoke  singer  no.  3  put  on  display,  and  the  spectacular  embodiment  of  girlish   femininity  enacted  on  The  Lisbon’s  karaoke  stage,  was  truly  effective  in  disclosing  the   performativity  of  gender  codes.  Every  single  bodily  movement  he  made  was  imbued  with   theatricality:  a  wide  palette  of  facial  expressions,  ranging  from  innocent,  through  to  seductive  with   a  predatory  intent,  to  comically  agonizing;  or,  a  distinct  dance  style,  very  much  flamboyant  in  its   silliness  and  ostensible  clumsiness,  with  the  arms  bouncing  freely  along  the  body  and  occasional   jumps  in  the  same  spot,  as  in  the  excitement  of  a  child.   A  combination  of  these  bodily  movements,  deliberately  choreographed  to  appear  awkward  and   misplaced,  alternated  at  short  intervals  with  graceful  moments  of  diva  conduct.  The  Lisbon’s  pop-­‐ soul  queen  no.  3  would  either  sporadically  lift  up  his  leg  when  singing  (a  clichéd  feminine  gesture   associated  with  the  kissing  scenes  from  the  old  Hollywood  movies),  or  tilt  the  head  sideways  and  a   bit  forward  over  the  shoulder  curved  forward  in  the  same  direction  (as  in  seductive  posing  for   photo  shooting  sessions,  similar  to  the  over-­‐the-­‐shoulder  pose,  but  without  looking  back),  or  flow   his  upper  body  in  a  snake-­‐like  movement.  The  expressions  of  stylized  effeminacy  were,  however,   played  out  most  stunningly  through  the  movements  of  his  (mike-­‐free)  hand  –  placed  either  on  his   hip,  or  stuck  in  the  limp-­‐wrist  position,  or  thrown  up/down  as  in  a  gesture  of  exasperation  –  at  the   points  of  the  song  that  are  crucial  in  terms  of  their  vocal  performance  demands  (usually  at  the   endings  of  vocal  phrases)  and,  less  often,  in  terms  of  their  denotative  meaning  (as  in  the  line:  “Why   don’t  you  come  on  over,  Valerie?”).   The  described  queer  embodiment  was  suitably  matched  with  a  special  type  of  “vocal  costume”   that  pop-­‐soul  queen  no.  3  put  on  for  his  karaoke  act  at  The  Lisbon.  The  gravelly  sound  and  the  nasal   32     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   inflection  of  his  vocal  delivery  held  something  of  a  vexing,  caricatured  quality  similar  to  Brian   Johnson’s  (from  AC/DC)  raspy  singing,  or  even  to  Beavis’s  (from  the  American  animated  sitcom   Beavis  and  Butt-­‐head)  persistent  grunts.  What  made  his  karaoke  delivery  sound  additionally  campy   was  a  strong  inclination  towards  a  singing  style  with  the  exaggerated  accents,  especially  in  the  last   rendition  of  the  bridge  section  with  each  accent  “roared”  on  the  strongest  beat  of  the  vocal  phrases   therein  (i.e.  on  the  words  “since”,  “body”,  “missed”,  “way”).  Equally  amusing  were  occasional   reversals  of  the  originally  descending  melodic  pattern  of  the  key  vocal  line  “Valerie”  within  the   chorus  part,  which  he  would  intonate  to  sound  as  a  question  mark.  Finally,  in  the  coda  section  of  the   song,  his  camp  attitude  surfaced  once  again  in  his  deliberate  efforts  to  ridicule  the  mannerism  of   soul  vocal  technique  by  extensively  drawling  the  vowels  in  the  sung  word  “Valerie”  –  an  instance  of   vocal  parody  that  inevitably  lent  to  his  face  an  almost  deranged  look.     Karaoke  as  a  Thirdspace:  Queering  Karaoke  Beyond  The  Lisbon’s  Queer  Space     In  the  final  section  of  this  article,  I  intend  to  develop  a  theoretical  argument  about  the  queer   camp  potential  of  karaoke  practice  beyond  the  situatedness  of  my  ethnographic  study.   Notwithstanding  the  assumption  that  in  contexts  other  than  Western(ized)  ones  the  notion  of   queerness  might  take  on  different  forms  (see  McLelland  2006,  296–300),  I  propose  that  karaoke   may  be  considered  and  exercised  as  a  queer  camp  practice,  constituting  thereby  a  Thirdspace  (Soja   1996).  To  support  my  claim,  I  summarize  some  of  the  crucial  arguments  that  have  been  brought  up   in  the  discussion  above,  in  parallel  with  bringing  to  the  table  some  additional  insights  into  the   subject  matter.   It  has  long  been  recognized  in  academia  (see,  for  example,  Devitt  2006;  Mungen  2006;   Halberstam  2005;  Sullivan  2003)  that  the  relationship  between  mainstream  media  and  queer   cultures  is  of  a  dialectical  nature:  they  both  appropriate  from  one  another,  each  for  their  own   purposes.  So  is  the  case  with  mainstream  pop,  where,  as  mentioned  above  with  reference  to   Hawkins  (2006;  2009),  the  appropriation  of  queerness  is  almost  a  norm,  even  if  most  often   showcased  within  the  presumed  heteronormative  framework.  Hawkins  also  maintains  that  such   instances  of  gender  masquerade  in  pop  are  predicated  upon  the  privilege  of  pop  celebrities  –  if  not  their   cultural  function  (Turner  cited  in  Hawkins  2009,  105)  –  to  create,  play,  and  capitalize  on  sexual  and   gender  ambiguities  in  their  self-­‐representation.  I  would  like  to  stretch  his  argument  further  by  asserting   that  karaoke,  as  a  medium  (among  many  others  in  times  of  digital  convergence)  bridging  the  gap   between  mass-­‐mediated  cultural  forms  and  everyday  life,  permits  this  privilege  to  be  exercised  by  non-­‐ 33     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   celebrities,  too.  Specifically,  it  allows  the  standard  pop  practices  of  genderplay  to  migrate  and  become   integrated  into  the  spheres  of  the  everyday  and  the  semi-­‐public/semi-­‐private,  with  karaoke  bars/pubs   and  YouTube  videos  facilitating  this  activity  perhaps  most  effectively.   By  extension,  karaoke  can  also  be  said  to  have  a  capacity  to  produce  a  queer  space,  but  of  different   kind  than  that  implied  and  advocated  by  radical  queer  critics  of  normative  spatial/sociocultural/sexual   practices  (see,  for  instance,  Society  and  Space  2012;  Halberstam  2005;  Rushbrook  2002).  The  queerness   of  karaoke  space,  as  demonstrated  by  the  previous  analysis,  is  not  necessarily  constituted  by  the   oppositional  practices  of  “queer  subcultures”,  not  even  at  queer  places  such  as  Liverpool’s  The  Lisbon   pub.  Rather,  karaoke  space  is  at  best  delineated  by  the  workings  of  queer  camp’s  ambiguities,   challenging  (hetero)normative  behavior  at  the  same  time  as  complying  with  it.  What  is  at  stake  here  are,   thus,  those  queer  camp  components  of  karaoke  practice  that  facilitate  “the  polymorphous  states  of   human  difference”,  to  borrow  Hawkins’s  (2006,  291)  expression,  as  part  of  people’s  everyday  life   experience.   Furthermore,  I  insist  on  the  spatial  component  of  karaoke  practice  because  it  helps  me  frame  the   moments  of  queering  in  karaoke  experience.  Drawing  on  Soja’s  (1996)  theorization  of  a  multiplicity  of   spaces,  I  argue  that  karaoke  should  be  viewed  as  an  instance  of  Thirdspace  par  excellence.13  Karaoke   space  is  both  real  (a  Firstspace  perspective)  and  imagined  (a  Secondspace  perspective),  and  more  (a   Thirdspace  perspective).  It  is  real  in  the  materiality  of  cultural  texts  and  practices  it  accommodates,  and   the  embeddedness  of  these  in  particular  sociocultural  contexts  as  well  as  in  a  wider  network  of  social   relations  of  (re)production.  Karaoke  space  is  at  the  same  time  imagined  through  the  representational   discourses  and  subjective  imaginaries  of  its  users  and  observers.  Specifically,  karaoke  space  is  conceived   and  experienced  as  a  space  of  fun,  play,  and  joke;  a  space  of  all  sorts  of  phantasms,  capable  of  evoking   different  kinds  of  feelings  and  memories;  a  space  of  courtship,  friendship,  and  togetherness,  but  also  a   space  of  competition  and  social  comparison.  Finally,  what  could  create  this  “third”  term,  “an-­‐Other   term”,  another  mode  of  karaoke’s  spatial  imagination  that  both  draws  upon  and  extends  beyond  the   boundaries  of  its  First-­‐  and  Second-­‐spaces,  is  precisely  the  moment  of  “queering-­‐as-­‐Othering”  inherent   in  karaoke  practice.   There  are  multiple  points  where  such  “queering-­‐as-­‐Othering”  reveals  itself  in  karaoke’s  Thirdspace.   To  begin  with,  the  easy  accessibility,  performance  context,  and  participatory  nature  of  karaoke  practice   makes  it  by  definition  well  suited  for  blurring  many  boundaries  and  polarized  essences,  such  as  those                                                                                                                             13  My  proposal  is  not  entirely  new  considering  that  some  other  cultural  practices,  such  as  LGBTQ  club   cultures,  have  been  seen  as  constituting  Thirdspaces  as  well  (see  Roseneil  2006).   34     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   established  through  familiar  distinctions  between  cultural  production  and  consumption,  live  and   mediated,  reality  and  fantasy,  the  mundanity  of  everyday  life  and  the  “suspension  of  everyday  time”   (Fast  cited  in  Hawkins  2009,  66),  fan  and  star,  amateur  and  professional  (cf.  Lee  Oakes  2006).  In  fact,  not   only  did  my  fieldwork  observations  of  The  Lisbon’s  karaoke  events  show  that  few  pop  songs  came  to  be   identified  with  the  karaoke  regulars  who  kept  on  performing  them  rather  than  with  their  original  artists.   The  British  karaoke  studies  scholar  Kelly  has  likewise  acknowledged  the  capacity  of  karaoke  practice  to   disassociate  pop  songs  from  the  exclusivity  of  the  music  industry  field,  and  allow  amateur  karaoke   singers  to  appropriate  them  for  their  own  purposes,     thus  closing  the  gap  between  amateur  and  professional.  This  represents  a  shift  from  a  close   identification  between  professional  singer  and  song  to  a  disproportionate  emphasis  on  the  song  itself   which  has  been  reinvented  for  the  karaoke  format  and  the  amateur  singer  (1998,  89).     Another  queer  camp  constituent  “thirding”  karaoke  space  is  rooted  in  the  discourses  of  bad  music   (see  Frith  2004).  Being  essentially  carried  out  in  everyday,  localized,  micro-­‐cultural  contexts,  karaoke   practice  is  commonly  thought  of  as  producing  poor  (i.e.  “bad”)  aesthetic  results,  due  to  the  inherent   musical  incompetence,  crudity,  and  inferiority  that  surround  it.  The  perceived  badness  of  karaoke  might   also  be  linked  to  its  deprived  aesthetic  status  as  an  inauthentic  musical  practice,  implicated  in  “a  wider   culture  of  the  copy”  that  thrives  in  today’s  (Western)  society  (Reynolds  2011,  53).  Moreover,  the   situatedness  of  karaoke  practice  prevents  it  from  fulfilling  the  modernist  norms  of  universality  and   transcendence  across  the  confinements  of  time  and  space  that  “genuine”  art  (music)  is  said  to  embody.   The  low  aesthetic  status  of  karaoke  conflates,  predictably,  with  its  dwelling  on  the  social  margins  of   cultural  life.  Since  “the  ‘bad  music’  side  of  the  good/bad  equation  is  typically  aligned  with  the  Other”   (Lee  Oakes  2004,  66),  so  is  karaoke’s  alignment  with  marginalized  social  groups,  most  often  along  the   class  lines.   Yet,  in  its  subversive  workings,  karaoke  overthrows  the  established  division  between  good  and  bad   taste  by  proposing  alternative  criteria  for  assessing  pop  music.  For  instance,  both  Kelly’s  (1998)  and  my   ethnographic  surveys  of  karaoke  events  have  proven  that  many  karaoke  performers  make  selections  of   songs  according  to  their  vocal  range  and  competence,  or  according  to  the  crowd’s  mood.  Alternatively,   the  good/bad  distinction  becomes  challenged  simply  by  virtue  of  reframing  apparently  bad  songs  and   karaoke  performances  into  sites  of  guilty  pleasures.  In  consequence,  as  Lee  Oakes  underlines,     35     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   the  subversion  of  good  and  bad  aesthetic  classifications  (…)  is  directly  linked  to  the  destabilization  of   other  too-­‐tidy  oppositions  and  assumptions  surrounding  race,  gender,  class,  and  other  means  of  social   identifications  (2004,  78).     On  that  note,  it  is  important  to  reiterate  that  karaoke  essentially  involves  performance  in  drag,  given   the  gap  arising  between  the  actor  (i.e.  karaoke  singer)  and  their  role  (i.e.  the  assumed  attitude  towards   the  selected  song  and  its  content,  the  subject  position(s)  offered  therein,  the  song’s  original   performance  and  performer).  It  goes  without  saying  that  every  performance  act  necessitates  a  similar   kind  of  distance,  but  in  karaoke  space  such  distance  is  foregrounded  by  the  very  raison  d’être  of  this   cultural  practice  –  which  is  to  appropriate  and  replicate  already  existing  products  of  pop  music.  This   doubleness  of  karaoke  performance  opens  up  a  productive  (Third)space  for  one’s  masquerading  along   the  gender  lines;  for,  ultimately,  one’s  gender  can  be  made  authentic  and  real  only  through  “the  act  of   creating  a  convincing  fake”  (Lee  Oakes  2006,  49).  In  the  performance  space  of  karaoke,  the  moment  of   “queering-­‐as-­‐Othering”  occurs  when  camp  –  or  alternatively  king  –  is  used  (whether  strategically  or  not)   to  expose  the  performative  basis  of  gender  and  sexuality.   Karaoke  space  could  also  potentially  be  utilized  for  similar  “queering”  interventions  that  call  into   question  other  social  identifiers  such  as  those  of  race,  ethnicity,  age,  locality,  and  so  on  (cf.  Lee  Oakes   2004).  Notwithstanding  the  foregoing,  my  ethnographic  study  on  The  Lisbon’s  karaoke  events  mainly   sought  to  shed  light  on  the  ambiguities  and,  at  times,  subversive  workings  of  queer  camp   (re)signification  in  the  realms  of  sexuality  and  gender.  The  detailed  analysis  above  hopefully  illuminated   convincingly  enough  the  central  importance  of  embodiment  and  vocalities  therein.  Specifically,  the   analysis  showcased  that  it  was  largely  through  elaborate  enactments  of  diva  conduct  and  a  variety  of   queer  camp  expressions  in  vocal  delivery  that  The  Lisbon’s  pop-­‐soul  queens  demonstrated  their   commitment  to  the  marginal,  trashy,  flawed,  incongruous,  exaggerated,  theatrical,  humorous,  ironic,   and  paradoxically:  sincere.  In  The  Lisbon’s  queer  space,  the  deployments  of  queer  camp  strategies  in   karaoke  performances  and  the  self-­‐expressive  and  retaliatory  functions  they  served  (and  most  likely   continue  to  serve)  for  the  pub’s  queer  crowd,  are  thus  undeniable.   Beyond  queer  spaces  such  as  Liverpool’s  The  Lisbon  pub,  the  readings  of  queer  camp  occurrences   surrounding  karaoke  practice  depend  more  noticeably  upon  various  contextual  contingencies.  This  fact   alone  calls  attention  to  the  more  general  problematic  of  ambiguous  effects  inherent  in  queering  –   namely,  that  it  can  be  regarded  either  as  an  act  of  critical/subversive/progressive  engagement,  or  as   essentially  conforming/apolitical/conservative  in  its  outcomes  (see  Lee  Oakes  2004).  I  wish  nonetheless   to  conclude  this  article  on  a  high  note  by  focusing  on  the  productive  side  of  queering  within  the  said   36     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   equation.  When  discussing  karaoke’s  Thirdspace,  it  is  primarily  through  the  queer  camp’s   destabilizing/transgressive  function,  through  “queering-­‐as-­‐Othering”,  that  karaoke  can  promote   difference.  If  constructed  and  employed  that  way,  karaoke’s  Thirdspace  can  be  said  to  partake  in  a   utopian  project  of  imagining  and  creating  a  fully  free  and  tolerant  society  of  equal  rights  for  everyone.       Acknowledgments:     I  would  like  to  acknowledge  my  colleague,  Susanna  Välimäki,  for  her  invaluable  input  on  the  conceptual   framework  of  this  article.  I  am  also  eternally  indebted  to  my  conference  companion,  Michael  Drewett,   who  was  generous  enough  to  proofread 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 sound   even  better  than  before.  Mail  Online.  Posted  on  March  29.   http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-­‐2300846/How-­‐I-­‐gave-­‐Adele-­‐voice-­‐Throat-­‐ surgeon-­‐claims-­‐singer-­‐sound-­‐better-­‐before.html#ixzz3GyfYalc0   Daily  Mail.  2008.  ‘Americans  think  that  I’m  chasing  gay  men’,  says  Adele  as  she  reveals  hit  song   radio  ban.  Posted  on  Sep  10.  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-­‐ 1054239/Americans-­‐think-­‐Im-­‐chasing-­‐gay-­‐men-­‐says-­‐Adele-­‐reveals-­‐hit-­‐song-­‐radio-­‐ban.html   Joosten,  Geraldine.  2011.  What  Amy  Winehouse  means  to  us  –  Her  forgotten  bisexuality.   Lesbiatopia.  http://www.lesbiatopia.com/2011/07/what-­‐amy-­‐winehouse-­‐means-­‐to-­‐us-­‐ her.html   M.,  Emma  Louise.  2010.  The  Lisbon  –  Recommended  Reviews.  Yelp.  Posted  on  May  29.   http://www.yelp.co.uk/biz/the-­‐lisbon-­‐liverpool   Morgan,  Joe.  2014.  Adele  songs  turn  people  gay,  claims  therapist.  Gay  Star  News.  Posted  on  March   18.  http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/adele-­‐songs-­‐turn-­‐people-­‐gay-­‐claims-­‐doctor180314   Morrison,  James.  2009.  Adele.  SanJose.com.  Posted  on  Jan  29.  http://www.sanjose.com/adele-­‐ e498781   Nespolo,  Giulia.  2014.  V&Oak  Post:  Vintage  make  up.  V&OAK  Magazine.  Posted  on  Apr  3.   http://www.judysvintagefair.co.uk/2014/04/03/voak-­‐post-­‐vintage-­‐make-­‐look-­‐stars/   Rogers,  Jude.  2006.  Year  of  the  woman.  New  Statesman.  Posted  on  Dec  11.   http://www.newstatesman.com/node/155073   sparklepop.  2010.  The  Lisbon  User  Reviews.  View  Liverpool.  Posted  on  Nov  14.   http://www.viewliverpool.co.uk/pubsandbars/the-­‐lisbon-­‐info-­‐37780.html   Tankard.  1932.  There  is  a  Tavern  in  the  Town.  The  Liverpolitan  I/5.   The  Huffington  Post.  2012.  Adele’s  bisexual  ex-­‐boyfriend  dumped  her  for  gay  best  friend,  new   biography  claims.  Posted  on  June  25.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/25/adele-­‐ bisexual-­‐boyfriend-­‐gay-­‐new-­‐biography-­‐_n_1624799.html   Towle,  Andy.  2010.  Amy  Winehouse:  I’m  bisexual.  TowleRoad.  Posted  on  Feb  1.   http://www.towleroad.com/2010/02/amy-­‐winehouse-­‐im-­‐bisexual.html   41     Popular  Musicology  Online     Issue  2  (2017)   Towle,  Andy.  2011.  Adele  talks  about  helping  kids  out-­‐of-­‐the-­‐closet.  TowleRoad.  Posted  on  May  16.   http://www.towleroad.com/2011/05/adele-­‐talks-­‐about-­‐helping-­‐kids-­‐out-­‐of-­‐the-­‐closet.html   Trebay,  Guy.  2011.  A  bad  girl  with  a  touch  of  genius.  The  New  York  Times.  Posted  on  July  27.   http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/28/fashion/amy-­‐winehouse-­‐bad-­‐girl-­‐with-­‐a-­‐touch-­‐of-­‐ genius.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&   Williams,  Mary  Elizabeth.  2011.  The  rise  of  Adele,  new  gay  icon.  Salon.  Posted  on  Feb  25.   http://www.salon.com/2011/02/25/adele_heartbreak_heroine_gay_icon/   Yaeger,  Lynn. 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