Doris Leibetseder's Queer Tracks is separated not into chapters but into tracks. The author explains that tracks are meant to be understood not only as music tracks but also as ‘traces’, an invitation to find ‘queer traces … in rock and pop music’ (p. 1). The monograph's main argument follows thus:
Queer tracks … describe traces, paths or ways in popular music that deviate from heterosexual orientation – queer grooves in the turntable for lovers of vinyl, or queer (in no way ‘gender binary’) codes for fans of digital music. As one can see from the title, the theoretical question in this work is: where and how ideas and strategies from feminism and queer theory, which subvert hegemonic gender concepts, have been employed in rock and pop music. (p. 1)
The book is very detailed and informative. The attitude and spirit of the book is pedagogical – often on the level of a primer. It is disarmingly honest and clear about its strategies and intentions. Each chapter begins with an explanation of the terms used, providing nice introductions to some difficult theory: for example, Irony, Parody, Camp, Mask/Masquerade and Mimesis/Mimicry. These introductions would be useful for the teaching and study of music, as it is offered here, but also of any cultural texts: literary, visual or aural. The book provides or points to plenty of underlying material and examples to understand how one might apprehend contemporary and recent popular music from the standpoints of feminism and much queer theory. Each chapter ends with the theory applied to musical examples.
The gentleness and helpfulness of the suggestions and pointing towards information and ideas outside of the bounds of the text – always welcome – can sometimes make it also diffident: so we get a lot of ‘in my opinion’ and ‘in my view’, which sometimes undermines the strength of a possible assertive and convincing argument. It can make the claims sound uncertain and leaves blank space where the reasons behind the assertions might have underwritten the book's contentions.
In this same vein, often the text makes links that are meant to be suggestive of an argument, but do not actually follow through on the argument. For example, in an instructive discussion on camp and the use of glitter in glam rock, we are told that the ‘glitter was a subversive form of expression, which was connected to drag queens and transvestites and therefore to homosexuality’ (p. 6), without further comment.
Also, the text does sometimes seem a little lost on ‘queer’ – it is not always clear how queer is being used; sometimes it seems that queer is whatever is subversive (as suggested in the title of the book) or whatever is not heterosexual or straight. This is not exactly what queer means, and if the author wishes to deploy it in that way, that needs to be delineated and made clear.
In addition, if queer is meant to ‘undermine’ (as in: the book's ‘analysis also includes to what extent these strategies are subversive in the examples, in view of a queer undermining of heterosexual and binary gender systems’; p. 13), one would like to know more about how that might be done – indeed, how it is done in the music and musical figures the author analyses.
Finally, a lot of the examples are of the visuals and the lyrics and not musicological examples. The author does tell us at the beginning that ‘in the analysis of popular music, the literary, musical and visual aspects are important’ (p. 13), but there does seem to be a lot more analysis of lyrics and visual presentation than of the music: Madonna writhing (p. 23), Riot Grrrls' rhetorical ‘insistence of the word “girl” as opposed to “woman”’ (p. 28), the ‘ironic use of baby-doll dress’ by Courtney Love (p. 29), Lady Gaga's ‘artificiality and stylisation’ as evidence of camp (p. 74), an Annie Lennox cd cover, and a Yo! Majesty's music video as examples of androgynous and feminist camp, respectively (pp. 96–103).
The author does occasionally comment on the music, as in Peaches' use of ‘wild, edgy rhythms on her beatbox’ illustrating irony (p. 54). Knowing more about how the music of pop and rock might be queer would be extremely interesting. One hopes the author, having laid this useful groundwork, might proceed in this direction.
Indeed, the book is strongest at the end when it moves from applying queer and feminist theory to mainstream popular music and culture and considers the bands and acts and music that are already subverting sex and gender norms. Here we also get more glimpses into the way that music is affected by gender transgression, as in the way the voice changes for trans singers: ‘For FTM people who are singers, it has much more impact if their voices break due to the higher testosterone level and they have to adjust to their changed instrument’ (p. 166). One singer, the author explains, after transitioning, ‘had a fifth of the range that he had before, and that is why he had to change the key of most of his songs’ (p. 166). This is fascinating, and although the author clearly wants to address every aspect of musical performance, as described, thinking about queer sound is the most innovative and interesting work contained here.
This is a useful early and so far fairly singular intervention into queer popular music and into the queerness of popular music that may not be evident but can be seen if one is looking in the right way (there are very few others: Julia Downes' ‘Jodie Taylor, playing it queer: popular music, identity and queer world-making’ comes to mind; so does the work of Freya Jarman-Ivens, whom Leibetseder cites). This book is welcome for many reasons, but most of all if it heralds the flourishing of an academic industry that imagines and explains the queerness of contemporary popular music – and the queers already making it.
