A personal Queer Songbook by Jordan Tannahill

January 25, 2016

Rufus Wainwright’s April Fools

First stirrings of fabulousness. Immediate identification with a foppish crooner. Age 10.

Bjork’s Human Behaviour

The desire to unlock the inner weirdo inside. Permission to get freaky. First encountered music video at age 12, and watched Much Music for hours in the hopes it would play again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDbPYoaAiyc

Fiona Apple’s Paper Bag

Oh Fiona, you gave me a soundtrack to my moody, teenage longing. “I want him so bad oh it kills.” Age 14.

Joanna Newsom’s Cosmia

A song I appropriated as an anthem of unrequited queer love during my first major heartbreak in the first year of university. Luscious and baroque like young infatuation. Age 18.

Vampire Weekend’s Diplomat’s Son

The perfect song for when you, well, fall in love with a diplomat’s son… as it just so turns out (I did grow up in Ottawa after all). Age 23.

Le1f’s Wut

An anthem for the queers. New thresholds and frontiers. a song to play while painting the walls of Videofag. Wut it is? Wut is up? Wut is wut? Age 25.

Jordan Tannahill is the 2016–2017 PuSh Festival Curator-in-residence.

Enjoy Queer Songbook Orchestra’s top pop songs to Songs of Resilience January 29, 2016, at Club PuSh at The Fox Theatre. Book tickets on your PuSh Pass, Youth Passport or as single tickets online.