Mighty Real - by Barry Walters (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

"An excellent history of the queer world's countless music scenes."
--Emma Alpern, Vulture

"An essential book for this moment."
--Rob Sheffield

The definitive history of LGBTQ music, from Stonewall to RuPaul, and its impact on culture and American life

From the underground dancefloors of the Seventies to the global charts of the Nineties, LGBTQ artists and audiences shaped music's sound, style, and spirit. In Mighty Real, veteran journalist Barry Walters chronicles its LGBTQ history from the Velvet Underground to the 21st century's dawn as he honors the artists who redefined gender, defied tradition, and dared to challenge sexual norms with the help of a record business that wasn't as straight as commonly believed.

Drawing on his decades as a New York- and San Francisco-based music critic, Walters examines how LGBTQ musicians, music industry executives, and fans reshaped the mainstream. He connects the dots between David Bowie's dazzling reinventions, Grace Jones's androgynous glamor, Prince's boundary-shattering sexuality, and the radical candor of the Indigo Girls to prove they're all doing the same thing: fighting oppression.

With exuberance, insight, and encyclopedic knowledge, Walters brings to life the songs and society that filled dancefloors, bedrooms, and streets as he uncovers yesteryear's coded LGBTQ messages that paved the way for today's unabashedly queer hits. Mighty Real is a masterful love letter to the music that liberated generations, and it's written in a page-turning, personal way that blurs distinctions between chronicle and memoir. This is the rare and revolutionary music history told to help you laugh, cry, and then rally against lingering inequality.

Review Quotes

Praise for Mighty Real

"An excellent history of the queer world's countless music scenes."
--Emma Alpern, Vulture

"Glittering and exhaustive . . . A must-have music compendium."
--Nathan Smith, Observer

"It's not easy to find something new to say about Bowie or Prince, but Walters finds a way."
--Keith Harris, Racket

"A sonic encyclopedia . . . [Mighty Real] can be browsed as one might flick through a record shop bin . . . Walters's project is a bulwark against attempts by Trump and others to appropriate or erase these cultural contributions--and a reminder that music can't so easily be taken away."
--Evan Moffitt, The Observer (UK)

"A massively ambitious, deeply personal, and wholly persuasive retelling of 30 glorious years of pop music . . . Reading Walters's book unlocked truths about pop music that I have sensed and questioned for years but never fully understood or articulated."
--David Pike, PopMatters

"Mighty Real is mighty glorious, a hug that combines nostalgia and empowerment one song at a time."
--Brian Watson, Hippocampus

"Ambitious, entertaining and deeply felt, Mighty Real is both a love letter to queer music and a reminder of how profoundly LGBTQ culture has shaped the soundtrack of modern life."
--John Evans, Buzz Magazine

"Mighty Real is not a polemic, but the book's dedication to depicting LGBTQ and allied musicians through the lens of queer history is exhilarating."
--Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, Hearing Things

"You owe it to yourself to read this fabulous book . . . [Mighty Real] is eminently readable, and mercifully free of the dense academic jargon that curses so many writings on popular culture. Waters writes with intelligence but from the heart."
--Janet Prolman, queerguru

"A kaleidoscopic journey through the myriad intersections of music, pop culture, and LGBTQIA+ life, showing how queer creativity has shaped the soundtracks of many lives . . . Timely and necessary, this book is an encyclopedic manifesto of the radical joy and defiance that LGBTQIA+ artists continue to bring."
--Claire Sewell, Library Journal (starred review)

"An ebullient love letter to LGBTQ+ and 'gay friendly' musicians. . . . Walters evocatively draws out how LGBTQ+ musicians battled oppression in their work even as they navigated a record industry that sought to silence sexual nonconformity while profiting off styles gay musicians made fashionable. It adds up to an impressive and expansive celebration of a rich chapter of music history." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Fascinating and revelatory . . . Uplifting, endlessly entertaining, and informative, [Mighty Real] honors decades of influential music-makers, their craft, and 'the community these nurturing songs give us--especially when we think we're most alone.' A knowledgeable, high-spirited tribute to queer music through the ages."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"[A] wondrous journey . . . [Walters] writes thoughtfully and insightfully about the artists and what it is about their material that taps into gay themes and culture . . . A bodacious, playfully addictive history for music lovers one and all, no matter their gender or orientation."
--June Sawyers, Booklist (starred review)

"Meticulously researched and entertainingly written, Mighty Real not only navigates the major rivers and minor eddies of queer music from the time of New York's Stonewall riots into the new millennium, but serves as a memoir for the author, who was exploring his nascent gay sexuality around the era of the book's opening . . . Absolutely not to be missed by pop culture mavens, LGBTQ+ readers, or anyone who wants to know how the music business finally came out of the closet."
--Thane Tierney, BookPage (starred review)

"Mighty Real is an incredibly real reminder that the people who changed music were often the ones told they didn't belong."
--Tig Notaro, comic and New York Times bestselling author of I'm Just a Person

"Barry Walters has been writing about music from an American queer perspective for five decades. This is his testament: a musical, personal and political history that explores and celebrates the LGBTQ contribution to popular music."
--Neil Tennant, Pet Shop Boys

"Painting a vivid mural of genius and provocation that music lovers--queer or not--will devour, Barry Walters delivers as much energy, heartbreak, and humor as the artists he covers. This treasure trove of queer music history provides the perspective left out of the music magazines I scoured as a kid."
--Jake Shears, Scissor Sisters

"In Rolling Stone, back in 1999, Barry Walters's coverage of Breakdown was the first time one of my albums got a serious review. Here and now, he's once again bringing the respect and insight that's often been denied LGBTQ artists. He understands us because he is us."
--Melissa Etheridge

"[Mighty Real is] nostalgic, yet also serious in the history it presents. This is the kind of book you want to leave near your album collection, or wherever you get your tunes."
--Terri Schlichenmeyer, Out South Florida

"Barry has always been an inspiring guide to music that's emotionally open and truly inclusive. Mighty Real is a stunning testament to the queer pioneers in pop who made it okay to be gay--and to be boldly, joyfully oneself. Makes me feel mighty real!"
--Emmy-winning composer Lisa Coleman, keyboardist for Prince and the Revolution

"We're now at a place in our culture where pop's queerness is acknowledged and celebrated, where LGBTQ pioneers are given their due, when today's young pop artists (gay, straight or otherwise) celebrate their queer audiences and queer influences. Barry's writing did much to help this moment arrive--he was telling these stories from the beginning, and he invented the language for them to be told. Mighty Real is a crucial and essential book for this moment that only he could tell."
--Rob Sheffield, New York Times bestselling author of Heartbreak Is the National Anthem

"Witty, incisive, and beautifully written--an illuminating queer reframing of popular music as lived history."
--Rob Epstein, Oscar-winning director of The Times of Harvey Milk

"An insightful, can't-put-it-down chronicle of the music and iconic moments that mattered most to queer communities in the decades following Stonewall, Mighty Real offers a powerful reminder that LGBTQ artists have become central architects of our collective liberation, expanding the very definitions of freedom, self-expression, and possibility."
--Jason King, Dean, USC Thornton School of Music

"In this joyride of a book, Barry Walters tells the story of music as both stage and haven for queer folk and sensibilities. He doesn't merely chronicle the history of lavender women and leather boys, disco queens and homopunks: Walters redefines the conversation around how gender identities and sexual desire are expressed within popular culture. Overflowing with brilliant musical analysis and fascinating detail, Mighty Real changes the game when it comes to pop history."
--Ann Powers, author of Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell

"It's waaaay more than disco. It's rock, pop, soul, punk, hip-hop, folk, singer-songwriters, everything: the LGBTQ community has made massive contributions to them all, and Mighty Real finally tells the tale in all its inspiring, outrageous, ingenious and moving glory. No matter how much you already know, you'll learn a lot more."
--Michael Azerrad, author of Our Band Could Be Your Life

"A vast compendium that defines the many iterations of LGBTQ music, Mighty Real grounds our history not only through concurrent culture and relevant events, but also through a fascinating framework of the author's own experience."
--Robbie Leslie, DJ & SiriusXM Producer

"This exciting yet forensic tome will set readers to listening, re-listening, and discovery. Although its audience is anyone touched by popular song, Mighty Real is most compelling when it reveals how musicians--unintentionally or otherwise--edified the queer folk out here in the dark."
--David McAlmont, singer and art historian

About the Author

Barry Walters has spent 40 years documenting the intersection of mainstream and LGBTQ culture. He began his career at The Village Voice -- where he came out publicly in a 1986 Pet Shop Boys review -- before becoming a fixture at Spin and Rolling Stone. In 1992, Walters' work at the San Francisco Examiner made him the first critic to receive an award from The National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association. Throughout the Nineties, he was The Advocate's music columnist before a decade's worth of writing at Out. Along the way, he's regularly appeared in Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Pitchfork, and other media mainstays. Love Me Like You Should: The Brave and Bold Sylvester, a 2020 mini-documentary he wrote and co-produced for Amazon Music, won a Clio Award.