In Europe they were her only big fans I think for awhile. Control and its singles did alright in the UK for example, tho it wasn't anywhere near as big as it was in the US. Rhythm Nation kinda bombed over there (at least compared to here). I have a friend in the UK who was pretty much alone in his Janet fandom during that period - other people were like, "Michael Jackson has a sister? You mean the one who posed naked with the snake?" janet did well in the UK, but nothing compared to here. She didn't really achieve parity there until The Velvet Rope and All For You. The singles from Damita Jo and 20 Y.O. did better in the UK I think than they did in the US, so that was a twist. Naaah, that was just a quarantine thing.
Janet's always been huge amongst gay men. Even in 1997 she acknowledged the track FreeXone off her Velvet Rope album was something she did especially as a token of thanks for the support she's received from the gay community. To be fair, I'd say the vast majority of successful female pop/dance/r&b singers from the past 35-40 years have at least a reasonable gay male portion in their fanbase.
I always felt that the stunt was intended to spark interest in the new LP but just happened to backfire spectacularly. A third of the radio stations carrying Howard Stern dropped him shortly thereafter which led to him moving to Sirius and smaller morning shows across the country (including mine in Fargo, ND) were shown the door as well. It was a helluvA BACKLASH
This sort of reminds me of pop singer Shawn Mendes who admitted that gay rumors gave him a lot of anxiety even though he has no problem with gay people. To me, it's like "you should be happy anyone is even interested in you enough to wonder about your sexuality" because I sure as hell know nobody who gives a care about him, even for younger male pop stars lol
As an old gay guy, a few words on the idea of "gay music." I don't think any style of music is inherently gay, but there are certainly genres and particular artists that had a huge gay fanbase, enough so that some outside the gay community started to notice. While there's nothing inherently gay about Judy Garland's singing, she absolutely had a huge gay male fanbase. Given that this was at a time when most LGBTQ people had to stay in the closet if they wanted to have a career and keep out of jail, people may have identified with Judy's struggles and the vulnerability that came through in so many of her greatest performances. And gays were definitely among the first to really pick up on disco in the seventies. And some hets just couldn't handle the idea of being thought gay-by-association if they liked some of that music. In a way, it's sort of like the weird stigma around "chick cars" -- as if driving something like a VW New Beetle made a man less of a man. That's kind of nuts, but that's U.S. culture (I can't speak for other countries). Some of this has diminished, but it hasn't entirely gone away.
If we'e still discussing "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go", I just want to say that I loved it the first time I heard it and it still sounds good to me. Sure, it's pop, but what's wrong with that?
Someone needs to tell the staff at the inn that Doris died. If you go to their website, they talk about her like she's still alive!
My favorite story about that topic: Back in 2001, I was in a fairly new relationship, and my then-GF went with me to see Janet and Madonna in the span of about 2 weeks. Because I'd purchased my tickets before we dated, we had to sit separately. Janet played DC 3X that year, and I went to all 3 shows. I also saw Madonna 6X: 2X DC, 2X Philly and 2X Miami. At the Janet show, my then-GF sat next to a gay guy and they chatted. She mentioned she was there with her boyfriend and told him how many Janet and Madonna shows I attended. He looked at her with a deadpan face and said gravely "and he's straight???"
And I'd agree. It's a rare female dance artist who doesn't have a pretty good gay fanbase. The funny one to me? Spice Girls. I got into Spice Girls in 1998 and saw them 7X that summer. That was a heavily kid-dominated crowd. Basically the only adults there attended as chaperones - except me, and I hoped people would think I was there as a chaperone because otherwise I looked like a shady weirdo! Fast-forward to the 2007-08 reunion and I saw a pretty strong %age of gay guys at those shows. Still dominated by younger females - now late teens/early 20s vs. the preteens of 1998 - but I'd estimate each of the 7 2007-08 shows I attended had at least 25% gay guys, maybe more. Were these guys already fans in 1998 but they just didn't go to the shows? Or did Spice Girls became more "gay friendly" over that decade?
I knew a ton of adult gay Spice Girls fans at the time (I was 18 and beginning to meet a lot of people in the community who were older plus people in my range), I think perhaps it was too much of a "teen" concert to consider going to in 1998 unless you were younger (ie, 16-17 year olds I knew at the time went) but ten years later not so much. Early Britney Spears carried the same sort of stigma that even if you loved her to death, if you were 25 you didn't want to be caught dead at one of her shows in 2000.
I wasn't even much of a fan but I saw Britney twice - 2001 and 2002. I like "big shows"... and she was really, really hot back then. When she did the shower sequence on stage... oh my! You're probably right about the age-related stigma. Didn't stop me from going - and I was a 31-year-old hetero dude! - but other adults may've been more leery about going to a show where the average age was about 10! I really did hope people would think I was there with a kid so I didn't look like a creepy old dude! Same thing when I saw Katy Perry in 2011: very young crowd! At least Gaga got late teens/early 20s when I started to go to her shows 10 years ago!
Gay fans tend to be a lot more loyal, so as these acts age and their audience ages up, they'll be the last ones showing up at the concerts.
I think, at least as someone who was a teen in the 90s during the height of the "divas" is that gay men have less hangups about admitting to liking certain artists vs. guys who are afraid of how uncool they'd look if they told their "bros" that they really liked a certain Whitney Houston song. Straight guys would be in agreement that Janet Jackson's RS cover was sexy, but they'd be too afraid to admit that "If" was a jam as well... on the other hand, gay teens would be the opposite and crank the hell out of Janet when she came on the radio. They're not worried or ashamed of being judged for enjoying female pop stars, and that's always been a problem with straight guys worried about how their image will look if they enjoy something less than gangsta rap or ballsy rock.
When Purple Rain moved from No. 3 to No. 2, it actually lost its bullet, which means its momentum was slowing down. Usually that would mean a drop in position the following week, but it managed to hold at No. 2 again before dropping. I'm not sure it would have hit No. 1 anyway. Maybe it's because most people had the album by then and didn't buy the single(?)
It definitely stimulated sales of the Purple Rain album, but not everybody bought the LP, as we'd see shortly... I think "Wake Me Up" was just a huge hit pop hit that got some play on lighter rock and even adult contemporary stations - it peaked at #4 on the A/C chart and spent 6 weeks in the A/C top 10. "Purple Rain" didn't have that advantage. If it had gone to #1 on the R&B charts that might have carried it to #1 pop, but it only managed a #4 placement there - too rock. And rock radio somewhat embraced it, but it only made it to #18 on the Mainstream Rock charts. So it really depended on pop radio play and on single sales. I think if it had been up against a weaker pop hit than "Wake Me Up" it would have overcome all that and gone to #1, but as things were positioned it had a hard climb.
This thread has wandered down the street and around the corner from its original track. Gay fan base discussion aside, most of the convo has drifted to acts that haven’t started having hits yet. The only one who will come up sooner than later is currently stuck in late 84 on the TV show Fame, plugging her flop album Dream Street & giving the impression she’ll be lucky to still be doing cameos on sitcoms over the next few years like she’s been doing, not starting to give her family serious competition & becoming a megastar. Mildest of spoilers, we will discuss this woman more than once. Save something for when we get there. For all the carrying on back in the 81-82 posts about how much better the charts would get post Thriller it seems like most of the posts for 84 number ones so far - except maybe Tina & Prince - have been followed by mostly negativity about them being sappy or poor compared to other hits in the particular artist’s catalog. Hopefully the tide will start to turn back again. I will say that Wake Me Up is a finely crafted track and it deserves all the airplay it still gets today. George Michael will get even better for me with time as we move forward. Just for the sake of correction since he never tops the Hot 100 - Luther Vandross died in the closet. He never admitted publicly to the press he was gay. It was folks like Bruce Villanch after he passed that talked about it. Patti LaBelle finally did but only after his beloved mother, Ida, passed a couple years ago. I’d like to think if he’d lived to see 2020 he finally would’ve acknowledged it in some way but I also think the longing born out of his secret showed up in his vocals at times and was very effective - no matter what pronouns he used on those love songs.
One odd thing about "Wake Me Up" - it is such a summer song, I always just assumed it was a hit here in the spring or summer. Finding out it topped the charts around Thanksgiving is kind of a surprise - I guess it was a spring/summer hit in the UK. I think I'd somewhat drifted away from listening to the Top 40 countdown by this point. Pop certainly wasn't as truly awful as it had been circa '81-'82, but I'd started recording hits I liked from the radio, recording both oldies and newer stuff off albums and singles my uncle had, and buying albums on my own - both oldies and brand new records - from acts I really loved. I had enough to listen to that wading thru the Top 40 countdown seemed kind of redundant. And my tastes were diverging from the pop charts, at least here in America, which zigged after '83 while I zagged. For me, the winter of '84 was all about albums like these two, which I played incessantly: It was all about the sampler, baby! And in '85 the mainstream would finally figure that out as well...
Well, as I've pointed out before, the #1 hits during the '81-'82 period weren't all that bad, if you like pop divas. Olivia and Kim Carnes ate up a good many weeks during that period, as did Debbie Harry if memory serves. The real atrocities were happening below the chart peaks. '83 was the year for me that - up and down the charts - the crap got largely shoved aside and you had great music happening all over the charts. '84 has been a lot less impressive in that regard - I think some of the #1's are really weak. Still lots of interesting stuff charting, but it generally feels much more conservative than '83. I think if it hadn't been for Prince and Purple Rain the year would have represented a real quality skid, but he kind of single-handedly elevated the tail end of '84. I'm tired but I should really do a full chart review...
I had a cassette I dubbed from a friend's tape of Make it Big, and I loved it at a time when I hardly liked any other top 40. I don't recall being aware George Michael was gay, but I do recall from quite early on it wasn't cool for the boys to like Wham for some reason. Since I was already uncool and rather proud of it, I didn't care. Besides the two #1 hits, the only other song I can still remember from reading the track list is "Credit Card Baby", which I loved. I always meant to get the "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go" 45, but never did for whatever reason. (I do remember my dad saying he liked the tune, but the words were silly. Which they are, but so what?) I didn't like GM's solo hits at all at the time (I do like some of them now), but even then I still had a soft spot for the Wham hits. Still a fun one when it pops up on the radio!
well it also didn't help that the "single" version of Purple Rain was an abomination that cuts out literally after the end of the vocals, when many would argue the guitar solo is the true climax of the song. Purple Rain was simply too long of a song for proper radio play and it couldn't get a nice tidy edit like how When Doves Cry or 1999 could be truncated from 6 to 4 minutes and still be okay For the Prince fans here, check out the song-by-song thread that recently started. We're still on the "For You" era so it's still just barely beginning Ocean of Violets: Prince song by song
Well, another one of the artists discussed isn't THAT far in the future, she'd already have a middling charting duet hit in mid-1984 and her debut album is only months from release at this point and within a years time would become one of the biggest stars out there
