From Chappell Roan’s princess-pop-party anthem Good Luck, Babe! to the existential emotive lyricism of Boygenius’ Cool About It; Conan Gray’s tongue-in-cheek critique of capitalism, Bourgeoisieses, to Frank Ocean’s soul-destroying portrayal of unrequited love in Bad Religion, LGBTQ+ music artists never cease to offer us rich and vibrant insights into the queer experience — of life, of love, and of everything in between.
This article rounds up just a handful of book recommendations for lovers and listeners of these remarkable LGBTQ+ musicians to ensure that your summer TBR is filled with stories as colourful, diverse, and abundant as your Spotify playlists.
Frank Ocean
Frank Ocean is a songwriter, singer, and rapper who many critics credit for pioneering the alternative R&B genre. With two incredible albums under his belt, Channel Orange (2012) and Blonde (2016), Ocean is renowned for showcasing a range of musical styles, taking inspiration from psychedelia, gospel, and soul genres in order to build and innovate his own unique sound.
His music is highly confessional and deeply introspective, dealing in complex and profound themes including the struggle to find identity, recounting his journey to self-acceptance, and often detailing his personal struggles in intimate relationships as he does so.
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin is the perfect recommendation for fans of Frank Ocean’s power and skill with imagery and metaphor. In Baldwin’s novel, we follow David, a young American man in his search for belonging, watching as he travels to Paris to escape the social norms he feels all-pervasively closing in around him. There, he meets and falls in love with Giovanni, an Italian barman working in a Parisian Gay bar.
Their romance is complicated and tragic, plagued by fears of judgment and David’s inability to ever fully embrace his own desires. Read whilst streaming Ivy and with a box of tissues close at hand.
“If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody.”
James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room
Boygenius
Boygenius is an indie rock supergroup composed of Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus, and Julien Baker — all incredible musicians in their own right (and whose discographies you should therefore definitely check out if you haven’t already!) The band has released three EPs and one best-selling studio album, entitled The Record (2023), which was the subject of outstanding critical acclaim and was awarded perfect scores by Rolling Stone upon its release.
Their music delves into themes of friendship, platonic love, loyalty, the complexity of our relationships with others, the importance of community, and queer joy. As co-writers, their music works as a beautiful synthesis of their individual vulnerabilities and experiences to culminate in a truly harmonious and equally devastating listening experience.
Fans of Boygenius will love The Idiot by Elif Batuman, as well as its sequel, Either/Or. The Idiot is a semi-autobiographical novel following Selin, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, as she attends Harvard University in the mid-1990s, struggling to find her identity and forge meaningful new connections.
We witness Selin’s confusion about first love and friendship, and watch as she comes to appreciate (and feel doomed by) the mysterious act of writing as a means of self-expression and self-making. This novel is the literary embodiment of Not Strong Enough and a must-read for any Boygenius fans!
“It can be really exasperating to look back at your past. What’s the matter with you? I want to ask her, my younger self, shaking her shoulder. If I did that, she would probably cry. Maybe I would cry, too.”
Elif Batuman, The Idiot
Chappell Roan
Chappell Roan is the drag persona and stage name of Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, a Grammy-award-winning singer and songwriter. Her indie-pop songs and eccentric, theatrical stage presence offer a bold and reverberant celebration of lesbian identity and queer love; with her music often exploring themes of complex WLW relationships and compulsory heterosexuality.
Her hit songs Pink Pony Club and Hot To Go! have culminated in her rapid, seemingly overnight success, as well as the global superstar status she holds today. As we wait in patient anticipation for the announcement of her newest studio album, here’s a fabulous book rec to keep you occupied.
Sunburn by Chloe Michelle Howarth is a queer coming-of-age novel set in a small, rural town in Ireland during the 1990s. Following protagonist Lucy, a young girl soon-to-be on the brink of entering a traditional life of marriage, motherhood, and the Catholic church, grapples to understand and process her complicated feelings for her friend, Susannah.
Heart-breaking, poignant, and indescribably tender, Sunburn accurately portrays the reality of growing up queer in an isolated, close-minded town – depicting the pressures of a unrelentingly conservative community that coerces its members to sacrifice parts of themselves for the sake of tradition. This is a book which is sure to leave readers remembering back to their own first-loves, and streaming Picture You on repeat for days and weeks afterwards.
“I knew she would be beautiful today, of course I knew, but this is unbelievable. Never in all my years of Christianity has there been talk of an angel like this. My God, she is not even walking, she floats around the room.”
Chloe Michelle Howarth, Sunburn
Troye Sivan
Troye Sivan is an Australian singer, songwriter, YouTuber, and actor who has released three incredible studio albums: Blue Neighbourhood (2015), Bloom (2018), and Something To Give Each Other (2023). Famous for his dexterous blend of indie, synth, and dance pop, Sivan writes soundtracks to unapologetic LGBTQ+ love, trauma, and joy.
He delves into critiques of gender-norms and imaginatively re-examines the possibilities of masculine identities and bodies as a space for queer empowerment. Troye Sivan uses his music as a platform to reflect upon his own journey as a gay man of Jewish heritage, and as a place where he can inspire others to live life as their authentic selves.
Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman brilliantly fuses Troye Sivan’s thematic interests with the coming-of-age genre. Set in the 1980s, the novel focuses on teenage student, Elio, and his visiting American professor, Oliver; following the trajectory of their complex (and somewhat controversial) relationship over the twenty years that follow.
The book takes a critical look at the idea of identity and attraction, as well as the way that regret comes to shape who we are and the quality of the lives we go on to have. Aciman also deftly portrays the hurt and heartbreak of first love, and the anticipatory yearning one feels even once it is over. The Good Side, FOOLS, and One of Your Girls serve as the perfect musical accompaniment to this sultry, summer read.
“I’m not wise at all. I told you, I know nothing. I know books, and I know how to string words together—it doesn’t mean I know how to speak about the things that matter most to me.”
André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name
Ethel Cain
Ethel Cain is a transgender multidisciplinary artist whose original sound blends together ambient, indie rock, and alternative pop genres, as well as that of contemporary folk music. Renowned for her nostalgic, Southern Gothic lyricism, her discography contemplates religious trauma, family scandal, and secrets, as well as the shifting — at times dystopian — commercial American landscape.
She is particularly drawn to the repressed and shameful aspects of domestic and cultural life, drawing great inspiration from Gothic novels and the way they perpetuate feelings of depravity, despair, and suffuse the past with a spectral, haunted quality.
Dizz Tate’s Brutes is the twisted love-child of The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides and Ethel Cain’s song, Sun Bleached Flies. The novel centers on a group of shameless, unkempt, 13-year-old girls as they obsessively orbit around the local Preacher’s daughter, Sammy, and are later mesmerised and enthralled by her unexplained disappearance.
Through a darkly compelling and tinted lens, Dizz Tate works to capture the horrors and manic violence of girlhood, exposing the seemingly unbreakable ties between young friends at the moment it ceases to be forever.
“Even when we were happy, even when we reassured each other we were really living, there was a feeling lying in us that we were not. We squashed our faces against the glass of our own lives. Is this it? we asked. Are we having fun like they have fun? Are we in love like they are in love?”
Dizz Tate, Brutes
Conan Gray
Conan Gray is a singer-songwriter who first kick-started his career on YouTube at the age of 15, posting original songs, vlogs, and covers. He has released three amazing, deeply relatable, studio albums: Kid Krow (2020), Superache (2022), and Found Heaven (2024); all of which share similar thematic preoccupations and musical styles.
Utilising indie, acoustic, and bedroom pop genres, Conan Gray’s music candidly reflects his own experiences of heartbreak and unrequited love, excellently setting the complex emotions and struggles of young adulthood to words and music. Many of his songs also encourage listeners to acknowledge how inequalities of social class continue to make music and other forms of artistic creativity more difficult for certain groups of people to access than others.
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton therefore makes for a compelling, and fitting recommendation for fans of Conan Gray. This coming-of-age novel follows PonyBoy Curtis, a Greaser, as he attempts to navigate and mediate conflicts between his gang and their rivals, the Socs. Dealing intimately with themes of violence, loyalty, and friendship, the book examines the struggles of a young man in a world divided and ruled by prejudice, and his enduring determination to find a place of belonging in spite of his rugged background and low social class.
Conan Gray’s songs, Affluenza and Idle Town perfectly encapsulate the comfortable, suburban lifestyle being aspired to and subverted in Hinton’s novel; where she works not only to deconstruct the illusion of the American Dream, but also encourages readers to reconsider who the dream is really for and who is persistently, and purposefully, excluded from it.
“It seemed funny to me that the sunset she saw from her patio and the one I saw from the back steps was the same one. Maybe the two different worlds we lived in weren’t so different. We saw the same sunset.”
S.E. Hinton, The Outsiders
By reading books that complement the music that we listen to, we are able to develop more intimate, more bespoke experiences with the artists that we love the most, and gain further opportunities to connect our favourite songs with other parts of our lives and identities.
For fans of the awe-inspiring queer musicians featured here, these recommended novels offer up new perspectives and understandings of their music and provide an abundance of authentic, unapologetic stories that have indisputably enriched and influenced them as queer artists, and subsequently, the LGBTQ+ community more widely.
Has this article left you wanting more LGBTQ+ pop culture recommendations? Why not read our article: A Throwback Look at TV’s LGBTQ+ Pop Culture Icons
Head on over to our Bookshop page to check out our fabulous LGBTQ+ Literary Recommendations List.
