Welcome to The Dougystyle Club!
Hello and welcome to my blog The Dougystyle Club! I have been a passionate and dedicated music listener since 1997 when I discovered The Spice Girls. Since then I have explored music ranging from Beethoven to Alice in Chains and while a lot has happened to me in the past 22 years my passion for music has never waned. What has changed is my journey of self-acceptance and self-love. I am an out and proud gay man who is married but that has not always been the case. I have struggled most of my life with my sexuality which is not uncommon for many people in the LGBTQ community. Through my ups and downs though music has always been there to soundtrack my life. The music I turned to throughout my life reflected different emotions and parts of my being that sometimes I myself could not express openly to those around me.
For years I dipped my toes into music journalism and broadcasting. I have a journalism degree from Ithaca College where I wrote reviews for the school paper and ran my own radio show on the school's internet station. I also had an internship with a syndicated radio show in New York City as well as with my local radio stations in Rhode Island. After college I had my own online radio station for almost 5 years on Live365 called Dougystyle's Alternative. I have also read endless reviews, articles and books about music. Many of my closest friends and I became close friends due to our shared passions for music. I also have made countless mix tapes, mix CDs, iPod playlists and Spotify playlists over the past 22 years. Really music, and by extension music journalism, is like oxygen to me. I can't imagine living without it and my passion for music always comes through loud and clear whenever I am with someone.
Yet for years I never fully committed to a creating a blog or web site about my music passion and I think the reason is that I still had internalized shame from being gay. Sure I had come out, made friends, found a husband and had a supportive family all behind me but I still thought of myself as other or less than which affected me in more ways than one. I knew more about music than most people and it helped me to connect with lots of people, but I didn't want my "Queerness" to come through in my writing which meant I was stifling my true voice which held me back a lot.
What changed was this current wave of Queer pop stars such as Troye Sivan, Kim Petras, Olly Alexander (Years & Years), MNEK, Myylo, Cubsport, Bright Light Bright Light, Jesse Saint John, Michael Medrano, Davy Boi, Leo Kalyan, Sam Bluer, Greyson Chance, Mathew V, Hayley Kioko, Gregory Dillon, Jared Gelman, Girli, Kisos, Tim Chadwick, Halsey, REYNA and many more. Discovering their music has changed my life. All of a sudden I had people in music that sang to me and for me in a way I never really had experienced before.
The music I liked before usually operated on just 1 or 2 levels. I liked the 60s & 70s music for how it represented the winds of change and the beginning of real civil rights for those who were not white straight men. The Pop divas of the music video age reflected the femininity inside me that I could never fully express but by proxy I could express through their music. Finally there was Alternative rock, especially 90s Grunge, which reflected my sadness, struggle and the feelings of loneliness I felt being in the closet and then even living outside of the closet. Then in 2018 or #20GayTeen I discovered Queer Pop Music. All of sudden I found music that spoke to me on all those levels and more while being some of the best music I had ever heard.
Next I started hearing these gay pop stars talk in interviews and it started stirring up a lot inside me especially when these gay pop stars discussed their own struggles with not only coming out but also learning to be comfortable with their feminine sides and letting go of internalized homophobia. I started experiencing emotions that I had suppressed for years. Then I went to their concerts and I experienced a sense of community and belonging that I had never felt before at any of the concerts I had ever attended. I started making friends online with fans of this music and even some of the musicians themselves and I felt like I had finally found my people.
I never thought Gay pop stars were possible before because I was conditioned to never think it was possible. The mainstream could accept me as a gay person sure but my story and my feelings were of no interest to the greater world, especially within pop music, or so I thought. I was in my early 30s, out since 18 and with my husband for almost 10 years, and yet I still was struggling with my homosexuality in ways I had not even noticed before but had now become startlingly clear thanks to this wave of new music from the LGBTQ community.
The purpose of this blog is to dissect and celebrate music that has made an impact on me throughout my life as a gay man. I will look at music from various eras and genres but all through a queer lens. I also want to use this blog to help give a bigger platform to modern acts from the LGBTQ community as well as their diverse listeners. Their music deserves a wider audience and I hope that this blog can help it reach more people as well as connect LGBTQ music fans from all over the world.
In the meantime here is a playlist of my favorite songs of all time. It is over 600 songs long and I am constantly adding to it and updating it frequently. If you want to get a good idea of my taste in music and what kind of acts and genres I will be covering in the future on this blog then take a look and maybe listen too if you get a chance. I can guarantee you that the guy who put it together has great taste!
