hunter kelly
Pride Month Held Some Valuable Lessons for Country Music’s LGBTQ+ Community
In June 2020, country music had zero openly LGBTQ+ artists signed to Nashville’s major record labels. By June 2021, country music had three openly LGBTQ+ dotting the big record label rosters. Brooke Eden went public on social media with her longtime partner Hilary Hoover in late 2020, and Lily Rose signed with Big Loud Records in a joint deal with Back Blocks Music and Republic in January 2021 partly on the strength of her uptempo love song “Green Light,” sung directly to another woman. Then, CMA Award-winner T.J. Osborne of the country duo Brothers Osborne came out as gay in a February 2021 feature in Time. As a result of that modest yet groundbreaking queer uptick, this year’s Pride month was hands down the queerest in country music history. As the host of Proud Radio, an LGBTQ+-fo...
