Help us raise $48,000 this fall! Make your donation today! →
The CHIRP Blog
Eddie writesBlack Pride: Songs from Black LGBTQ+ Artists
by Eddie Sayago
Pride Month was very different last year, and it has changed dramatically since the festivities of 2019. (This year’s Chicago Pride Parade is scheduled for October 3.) No one would have imagined that 2020’s Pride Month would consist of protests and marches for Black Lives Matter, protesting police brutality and calling for the defunding and abolishment of police departments around the world.
And Pride is different for each person. It is either a celebration of being proud of who are you or a continuation to call out the discrimination of various groups--particularly trans, double minorities, leather/kink communities--who are often left out of the parade in favor of the traditional (*cough* white cis Ken dolls *cough*) type of gays corporate America is comfortable slapping on their ads and merch.
We had a march for that reason in the formerly-named Boystown neighborhood as various leaders of the drag community confronted the white cis-male establishment that dominates the city’s primary LGBTQ+ commerical center.
This short list of Pride songs focuses on black artists from all genres, eras and locations, including a few local artists who make this queer Chicagoan proud that they are from his hometown. However you celebrate this season, I hope you seek out these and other queer-identifying artists and add them to your music collection.
Taylor Bennett “Be Yourself” (featuring Mr. Hudson)
From the EP Be Yourself (2018, Tay Bennett Entertainment)
Coming out of his older brother’s shadow to become a successful musician (and Instagram thirst-trap) in his own right, Taylor Bennett came into his own with the 2018 single, “Be Yourself”, where he came out as bisexual in the song.
More importantly, Bennett is fully showing off his confident rap delivery and lyrical prowess (“I knew since birth I was certain that I was sent with a purpose/While you competin' with crabs in a bucket I'm in the ocean”) while saying to the naysayers who question him (“And n---s still call me f----t, but b---h my sh-t lookin' fabulous”) to get out of the way. His confidence continues on his next album The American Reject and subsequent work. (See his performance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.)
CHIRP Radio writesCHIRP Radio Weekly Voyages (June 7 - June 13)
On the Podcast:
- DJ Ninja interviews Ryley Walker
Top of the CHIRP Charts for the week of 6/7/21:
Pixel Grip – ARENA (Feeltrip)
CHIRP Radio writesCHIRP Radio Weekly Voyages (May 31 - June 6)
On the Podcast:
- DJ Mick interviews Chase Cohl
On the Blog:
- The Audible Snail writes a love letter to the Empty Bottle
- Eddie Sayago compares three different versions of "The Loco-motion"
Top of the CHIRP Charts for the week of 5/24/21:
Mia Joy – Spirit Tamer (Fire Talk)
The Audible Snail writesYou Only Came for the Punk Show: A Love Letter to the Empty Bottle
In the beer sweat recycled air of a punk show at the Empty Bottle in September 2019, you perch on the steps to the left of the stage, nursing your beer—the first IPA of the night after a long week of teaching 6th grade for the first time. You haven’t been to a punk show in a long time, and you haven’t been to a punk show by yourself in even longer. It feels like home, in that deer-lodge-human-heat of the first show you attended by yourself in Chicago 14 years earlier: Empty Bottle, October 19, 2005 — in a Jens Lekman “Maple Leaves” kind of way.
You aren’t sure if you are going to talk to anyone, and the small joke you try to make to the group of punks in their 20s standing behind you returns no response. You realize you are old at a punk show.
Thank goodness.
Clarence Ewing: The Million Year Trip writesTake Two: “The Loco-motion” (Little Eva Vs. Grand Funk Railroad Vs. Kylie Minogue)
by Eddie Sayago
There is a chance that you have come across a song (or two, or so many more) that you enjoy and did not realize that it's either been covered by someone else or is a cover itself. We hope that this series allows you to appreciate both the original and the covers they have inspired, and to seek out and enjoy new music in the process.
The Original: Little Eva “The Loco-motion” From the album The Loco-Motion (1962, Dimension)
Dance crazes are a staple of pop culture, and back in 1962, “The Loco-motion” was a dance song that supposedly made listeners happy “even when you’re feeling blue.” Written by Gerry Coffin and Carole King for another singer in mind, Dee Dee Sharp, (whose signature song is the dance-fad song “Mashed Potato Time”) who rejected the song, thus allowing their sometime-babysitter, a 19 year old Eva Boyd, to record it. Boyd became Little Eva and “The Loco-Motion” was a big hit, peaking at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Little Eva was an overnight success whose popularity was short-lived. Her last hit single was in 1963 and by the end of the '60s, she stopped performing and moved to North Carolina with her children. She died in 2003 from cervical cancer.