Dusty and Martha look a bit distracted, don’t they?
If Google Analytics has taught me one thing over the last few weeks, it’s that idle web surfers like looking up the words “Shelby Lynne” and “lesbian” together. With that in mind, I bring you this exchange from a recent Lynne interview with IGN‘s Todd Gilchrist. Mind you, there’s nothing overtly gay about it, but I wanted to post something here today and it was either this or a picture of Ernest Borgnine in a sailor’s cap.
IGN: When you’re putting your albums together, do you think about putting different kinds of songs together, to sort of have something for everyone, or is it as you say a matter of what’s going on in your life?
Lynne: It has to be having to do with my life, because I’m not big fan of bullsh*t, so it has to have everything to do with what I’m doing. I mean, I chose these tunes because I can relate to them, and for no particular reason. I mean, I think about Dusty in all of them, but every song I cut has something to with what I’ve either felt or I’m feeling or I’m going to feel or I’ve gone through with someone else who’s feeling it. So it’s not really that complicated, it just needs to be honest and real. For instance, I can’t imagine singing “Son of a Preacher Man,” not only because it was Dusty’s song and I would never do it, but because I can’t imagine doing those words.
IGN: Why is that?
Lynne: Because I can’t relate. You go back and hear that song and you think of me and you’ll go, hmm, okay.
And, you know, she might act like a dithering idiot when asked about her personal life, but Shelby isn’t incorrect here. I’ll even take it a step further and say that while I, like everyone else on the face of the earth, love Dusty’s version of “Son of a Preacher Man,” I’ve often felt it sounds a bit dishonest coming from her as well.
Had it been about, say, the granddaughter of a minister (cough, Martha Reeves if you’re wondering), maybe it would have sounded more authentic. She still wouldn’t have convinced me there was “only one” person who could ever reach her, not with a voice like that, and I’d still have trouble believing that Springfield wasn’t the one who suggested they go walkin’, but it would have been a start.
Julie Christie looked great at the SAG Awards last night, just as you’d expect. Equally unsurprising, Juno star Ellen Page was born without the dress posture gene:
“Why, yes, I used to play team sports.”
Five minutes with John Travolta would change all of that, but it’s imperative she bring along someone who can yank her out of the room when the E-meter comes out. I volunteer Diablo Cody.
Is Hayden Panettiere the new Jane Fonda? (These Washington Post reporters are referring to her activism, of course. While my exposure to Heroes is limited, I did catch Panettiere in Raising Helen and I don’t think we’ll be seeing her in a remake of Barbarella or Klute or Tout va bien.)
In an interview with New York Magazine, Clay Aiken forgets that he isn’t Lucinda Williams and journalist/fellow lesbian Ariel Levy isn’t Bill Buford as he plays up the Southern shtick. What you’ll learn, if you can hang with the Aiken for four excruciating pages, is approximately this: he’s a Democrat now, a shameless self-promoter, and he “has never had a romantic relationship with anyone, unless you count the girls he took to dances back in high school in Raleigh.” Sounds perfect for Raúl Esparza.
Reviews of Shelby Lynne’s Just a Little Lovin’ are coming in, and you can read them here and here. If you’re looking for Lynne’s contentious Advocate interview, we’ve got the scoop.
The Timespoints out that Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama have identical opinions on gay rights issues, while fear-mongering Republicans continue to pander to bigots.
Margo Bennett, the former lover of crazy lesbian novelist Patricia Cornwell, is blabbing about their relationship—you know, the one that made headlines when Bennett’s husband hatched a murderous plot that landed him behind bars—in an upcoming book called Twisted Triangle. In a passage that makes Cornwell’s schlocky prose sound downright Proustian in comparison, authors Caitlin Rother and John Hess write: “As they talked, Margo felt the blood coursing through her veins, very aware of the close proximity of her body to Patsy’s. It felt dangerous. Wrong. Thrilling.” Anyone else think this would make the perfect made-for-cable comeback vehicle for Kelly McGillis?
Since posting this item about Shelby Lynne and her New York Times Magazine profile a couple weekends ago, I’ve been asked by several Googled-out lesbians for help locating the singer’s latest interview with The Advocate.
The article (written by Michele Kort, the Laura Nyro biographer and author of Dinah!: Three Decades of Sex, Golf, and Rock ‘N’ Roll, whose Portia de Rossi interview is one of the best I’ve read in The Advocate) isn’t online yet, so to read the whole thing you’ll have to go out and buy issue 1001 of the magazine, currently on newsstands. Out of the small amount of kindness that remains in my mostly-shriveled heart, I’ve assembled the gay-centric bits for you shameless gossips.
First, you must understand that this is no ordinary Advocate interview. Most Advocate interviews consist of a fawning reporter asking a Z-list celebrity what it’s like to be a gay icon. By the second paragraph of Kort’s three-page Lynne piece (five if you count all the photos), you know you’re in for something different:
Doing press is “kind of a nightmare” for Lynne, and when The Advocate ventured out to take some pictures and talk about her new CD, Just a Little Lovin’—on which she covers songs recorded by the timeless gay icon Dusty Springfield— Shelby self-medicated, shall we say. Throughout the long afternoon and into the evening her emotions ebbed and flowed, from insecurity to confidence, petulance to intimacy. One moment she was hugging me, the next walking off in a huff with my tape recorder. “Don’t worry,” said Lynne’s manager and friend, Elizabeth “Betty” Jordan, “she’ll bring it back.”
Cranky note: The nature of Lynne’s relationship with Jordan (then known as Betty Bottrell) was first questioned by a brave reporter in 2001, and it didn’t go over well with Shelby. Kort is more delicate in her approach to the subject:
In Elizabeth, Shelby found a manager, executive producer, and best friend. “It’s very important. Very personal,” Lynne says of their relationship. “I guess we were just there at the right time for each other. My life at that time was completely uprooted; all I had was that record that I was making. We’ve depended on each other now for eight years, for everything in life. And that’s all there is to that.”
I suggest that however Shelby describes it, the partnership seems primary. She agrees. “Primary is a good word, actually. Things that are that important you keep close as you can. You’re so lucky if you ever get something that important.”
Another Cranky note: So far, so good, right? Shelby hasn’t broken a bottle of Southern Comfort over a pool table and challenged Michele to a rumble yet. Unfortunately, trouble is brewing:
But talking about whom she loves, even in the most generic terms, turns out to be off-limits, despite The Advocate’s understanding going into the interview. In Palm Springs, Lynne got downright combative when I gingerly approached personal territory. “What’s the question?” she asked several times. But when I asked, “Are you in a relationship?” she immediately interrupted with “I don’t talk about my personal life.” It was confusing: Shelby seemed to be demanding that The Question be asked even as she fended it off.
So now, on the phone, I bring it up again. She still stonewalls, but more gently. “I just don’t think I want to ever be a part of a group of people who want to make announcements about their personal life,” she says. “Because, you know, that’s all you have.”
“Do you hate labels?” I ask, because I’m sensing what may underlie her reluctance.
“Tell me, do I? You already know the answer.”
When I call her a few days later for some follow-up questions, I ask one last time, in the gentlest way I can imagine, whether Shelby could subscribe to the sentiment Dusty famously expressed in a 1970 interview: “I know that I’m as perfectly capable of being swayed by a girl as by a boy.”
Shelby’s just not having any. “It’s fine that you keep wanting me to go there, but I just don’t believe I need to,” she says firmly. “I give away so much in the songs, man.”
“But did you not think The Advocate would ask such a question when you agreed to do the interview?” I finally ask.
“But it’s not anybody’s business who I sleep with or who I fuck!” she says, as frustrated as I am. “I don’t give a shit what the magazine is. People are going to come up with whatever they want to come up with on their own; I don’t have to make announcements. Come on!”
Cranky again: Oh, for fuck’s sake. The only thing I hate more than the closet-closet is the walk-in closet, that strange space that allows someone to acknowledge her “primary relationship” with another woman without using the word gay, while also giving her room to turn around and snap that she won’t “make announcements” about her personal life.
Lynne is right that it’s nobody’s business who she fucks (though asking whether someone is gay or straight or bisexual, or merely averse to labels, is hardly the same as asking for their partner’s name, date of birth, and social security number), but she didn’t have similar meltdowns when reporters assumed that person was male. And perhaps she’s making things a bit more complicated than necessary. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure her sister was able to acknowledge her relationship with Steve Earle without doing a “Yep, I’m Straight” TIME cover.
(Special thanks to H.M.C. for the magazine hookup.)
“I hope I remembered to set my TiVo for The L Word.”
What did we learn from Rob Hoerburger’s fascinating profile of Shelby Lynne in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine? Well, for starters, she digs booze, college football, and Gladys Knight. And she doesn’t like modern country music, explaining, “The new stuff all sounds the same. I’m not ragging on anybody, but it doesn’t require emotional involvement. What Carrie Underwood is singing about has already been heard. It’s in a beautiful package. But my duty is to take the hard route.”
We learn that Barry Manilow, who is a fan of her music, is the one who suggested she record an album of Dusty Springfield covers. (She did, and Just a Little Lovin’ comes out later this month.) And we learn that Shelby, who has been known to get a little cranky herself when asked about her sexuality, still isn’t ready to come out of the closet—though she’s not exactly shutting herself in, either. Of Lynne’s similarities to Springfield, Hoerburger writes:
There are some solid parallels, though, musical and non-, between the two women. “Dusty in Memphis,” for all its acclaim, wasn’t much of a hit when it was released, just as “I Am Shelby Lynne” wasn’t. Springfield, like Lynne, could be temperamental; she was a perfectionist who frequently delivered the goods in the 59th minute of the 11th hour, and watch out if you got in her way before then.
And then there were the gay rumors that dogged Springfield most of her career, which in her case turned out to be true, though she never used the word “lesbian” officially. That same speculation has followed around Lynne, who was married briefly when she was 18, and neither will she confirm nor deny, saying only that she goes where the love is. “I’ve done everything on every corner of the universe,” Lynne said, “but I’m not going to make an announcement about it.”
I’m not sure an announcement is necessary, given how dykey (if ever-gender neutral) the song “Lonesome” is, but there you have it. Here’s a clip of Shelby singing “I Only Want to Be With You.”
UPDATE: If you found this page while looking for Shelby Lynne’s interview with the gay magazine The Advocate, you can find it here.
