Anna Calvi has voiced her passion regarding a need for more queer representation in art.
Anna Calvi’s latest album Hunter is a celebration of individuality. It’s about embracing every aspect of who you are and resisting other people’s desires to put you in a box. It is, therefore, no wonder that Calvi is calling for more queer representation in art.
Her feelings seem to be particularly inspired by the recent release of Bohemian Rhapsody. She said to NME of the movie: “It seems like his [Freddie Mercury] queerness obviously completely created his music, and yet we watch a two-hour story about him and some f******g woman. That just makes me feel really angry because it feels like we still have to make sure that straight people feel OK.”
Anna Calvi’s killer single “Don’t Beat The Girl Out Of My Boy,” on the other hand, is an expression of the queerness she seeks to embrace.
“That song was about the idea of happiness as an act of defiance,” Calvi told NME at The Great Escape. “When you’re in a queer relationship, you feel so great and so happy that you would defend that relationship with everything that you’ve got. There’s a bravery to face off any criticism for what you feel is very pure and beautiful love for someone.
“There’s a moment in the music where I do this very high shouting note. That was inspired by ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’ by Pink Floyd, but was also about not wanting to be contained or told that what I felt was intrinsically wrong – just because I don’t fit this heteronormative world that we live in.”
You can listen to the single here:
