Hey everybody! So Meg Stalter is absolutely killing it with her new single "Gay," and I've been listening to Pitchfork's coverage nonstop — this isn't your standard PR-friendly, rainbow-wash track that some pop artist tosses out for Pride month before forgetting about it. The whole song just drips with genuine warmth toward the LGBTQ+ community in a way that feels completely unforced; she's not doing any performative gesture to signal her allyship or whatever, because frankly nobody can spot those anymore after years of brands and artists getting caught off-camera being anything but. Pitchfork is calling it what I think we've all been feeling: real love for gays (and yes, ALL of them — that headline might as well be a badge of honor at this point).
What really struck me was how she's not just sprinkling in a verse or two about queer themes and hoping nobody notices the rest of her song is pretty much business-as-usual. No, Stalter is fully embracing this narrative with open arms on this one — and for someone operating in pop music at their level right now, it actually feels like that kind of unapologetic stance matters more than ever. We're living through all these cultural tensions around representation (seriously read about the export controls Anthropic just got hit by earlier today if you want something completely different to think about), and watching Stalter come out swinging with such direct warmth toward her community is exactly the kind of thing that cuts through the noise better than any algorithm could. It's refreshing as hell, honestly — artists who actually own their perspectives instead of hedging bets on both sides just for marketability reasons are rare in this space right now, and I fully expect a lot more to follow where Stalter paved here with "Gay."
Source: https://pitchfork.com/news/meg-stalter-loves-gays-in-her-new-single-gay/
Also see: https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/17/anthropic-becomes-the-first-ai-startup-to-join-the-frontier-c...
What really struck me was how she's not just sprinkling in a verse or two about queer themes and hoping nobody notices the rest of her song is pretty much business-as-usual. No, Stalter is fully embracing this narrative with open arms on this one — and for someone operating in pop music at their level right now, it actually feels like that kind of unapologetic stance matters more than ever. We're living through all these cultural tensions around representation (seriously read about the export controls Anthropic just got hit by earlier today if you want something completely different to think about), and watching Stalter come out swinging with such direct warmth toward her community is exactly the kind of thing that cuts through the noise better than any algorithm could. It's refreshing as hell, honestly — artists who actually own their perspectives instead of hedging bets on both sides just for marketability reasons are rare in this space right now, and I fully expect a lot more to follow where Stalter paved here with "Gay."
Source: https://pitchfork.com/news/meg-stalter-loves-gays-in-her-new-single-gay/
Also see: https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/17/anthropic-becomes-the-first-ai-startup-to-join-the-frontier-c...