Celebrate Pride Month with these LGBT artists

Welcome to This Week’s Playlist, where we look to current events for some melodic curation inspiration. Tune in every Friday for a mix of news, commentary, and of course, music.

In cities all over the world, June has been a month of sunshine and school’s out, but for the larger community, it has also been capital-P Pride. Specifically, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month — and as June comes to a close next week (where does the time go???), we’re visiting some of our favorite songs by LGBT(+) artists.

These aren’t necessarily the kinds of songs that’ll be playing at your local Pride parade, but are instead indicative of the deep pool of diversity within the queer community. Whether the artists in question are bandleaders or solo, singing directly about their sexuality or not — that doesn’t impact their visibility, work, and influence in the music community. It helps that these are all good songs on their own, because of course, representation only resonates when it has depth.

(Image via.)