WHAT MAKES THE SONG GAY?

Gay songwriters have always been an elusive bunch, but times have changed and the thrill of finding the hidden message in the lyric is gone. But just what makes a song gay can still be hard to define. Is it what the song says? How it feels? Or is there even any such thing? You know - songs are just songs. A new CD from Clearsong Records, LET IT FALL, featuring singer/songwriter Richard Isen, may help you decide.

The songs are the insights of one gay man, exploring his life from growing up in upstate NY in the sixties, to living in NY City through the 1980s, and finally settling in the San Francisco Bay Area. And the gay part is revealed as something integral to life rather than something external or unusual.

“Growing up and living as a gay man has strongly shaped my experience and outlook,” says Isen.

The gay stamp on the songs may not be so obvious without a closer listen. He says the only overtly gay track on the CD is a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Willie.”

“It’s the only song on the CD I didn’t write, but the lyrics seemed so personally true for me that I wanted to include it. It makes a great gay love song if you don't change the gender. I’m a huge fan of Joni Mitchell’s work. She affected a lot of us in the 70s, I think. She was one of the first popular songwriters to write from deeply personal experience and to reveal her life and her insights through her recordings. I try to do the same.”

A song entitled “The Only Thing” sheds some more light.

“For awhile that song was called ‘The Only Thing That’s Left To Lose Is The Lie,’ which is too long for a title but is still the core lyric for the song. In the middle of the song, the singer urges the listener to burn down his house to escape out of what’s essentially a self-made prison into the world."

Another song, “Now Voyager,” may have some more obviously gay influences.

“I was actually thinking of Walt Whitman but there’s that wonderful classic Bette Davis movie too. The song was a message to a dear friend who died several years ago.”

On the title track, “Let It Fall,” Isen sings:

I guess we just weren’t old enough to understand
Or brave enough to see it didn’t matter what they’d say

It’s a story of first love lost, but with a twist.

"It’s not a classic unrequited love song. It's a song about being afraid that anyone else might find out that these two men love each other, so it’s requited, but it’s hidden. It's a very difficult memory for me, but probably a pretty common experience growing up gay."

In the first song on the CD, “Blue Window,” a boy wanders the streets looking in storefront windows as if window-shopping to discover his self.

“I took that title from a poem I read in the New Yorker back in the 70s. I don’t remember anything about the poem except the title. I wrote half that song in 1976, then forgot about it until I found it again and added the middle section so it spans a lot of years of my life.”

Though many artists use the examinations of their own lives to find ideas and themes for their work, Richard maintains that there is a unique outlook that comes from being gay.

"Since we’re denied approval and many of society’s rights of passage, I think we must develop inner resources at a young age which tend to give us an outsider’s view of the world. I think this comes out in the songs and I can only hope that by going into what, for me, has been pretty personal, I’ve managed to touch on something universal.”

So what exactly makes a song gay? Is it whatever’s intended by the songwriter? Is it some kind of understanding between the singer and listener based on shared experience? Or is it something not readily defined that happens in the intimacy of hearing a new artist? Give Isen’s CD a listen for a unique angle on one man’s journey through life so far.

To get the latest news and information, and to hear the entire CD, LET IT FALL, go to http://clearsong.com.

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