Out of the Closet..Sorta

So I was listening to Macy Gray's newest album, The Sellout, this morning while I was getting dressed. It's a really good album; if you liked her old stuff I would recommend it. But I was a little surprised to here her singing about her man in one love song after another. Earlier this year I heard an interview with Macy Gray where she was talking about how she had gone crazy for a few years because she felt like she was living a lie. She came out to the world and introduced her girlfriend. She said it was liberating and allowed her to write some of the most honest music that she had written in years. So why does she still feel like she needs to hide behind the stereotypical love song about a man when she doesn't have one and never will?

I watch Ellen periodically and I love how open she is about her wife. She frequently refers to things that happen to her and her wife Portia. She talks about their life together like any other married couple would. The only difference is that she is a lesbian and her partner is a woman. Ellen doesn't present an agenda or talk about anything political, she just talks about her life and her audience accepts her.

Years ago when Rosie O'Donnell came out on her show she became very political after being extremely family friendly for years. Her viewers didn't respond well to this and eventually her show was cancelled. The same thing happened on The View. When she became too political and combative they kicked her off the show. It was too much for the conservative housewife crowd to take. I love Rosie and listen to her radio show all the time but I am not a person who would watch The View. I hope that she goes the way of Bill Maher and gets a show on cable where she can be herself and doesn't have to censor herself.

So back to Macy Gray. 5% of the population is gay (pretty well established statistic at this point) and 60-70% of the people who listen to R & B music are female (not sure how reliable this statistic is but it seems that more women than men listen to R & B). So if you guess that 5% of the 60-70% are gay then as many of 40% of the people who listen to Macy Gray are thinking about their woman and not their man. So why hide it?

Hearing that someone is gay isn't a big deal (at least not to my generation) at this point. There is something very sad about knowing that someone is gay but is still living in the closet in some ways. I couldn't function if I hid who I was and who I loved from the world. She already came out to the world; that was the hard part. I just hope she realizes that people who love her music won't love it less just because she's gay.