A sea of rainbow flags and the arms of queer youth sway to the beat during Hayley Kiyoko’s recent Los Angeles performance of “Girls Like Girls.” Fans sing along, cry, and hug each other. For many of them, this concert is the only place they feel like they can truly be themselves.

In June 2015, when Kiyoko released her self-directed video for “Girls Like Girls,” the world was a different place, and queer women didn’t really have a space in pop music or very many spaces at all. Now, two albums and seven years of hard work later, Kiyoko has carved out a space for lesbian and queer women like her to not just live but to thrive.

The 31-year-old performer is also in a different place. She’s in love, matured as an artist, and recently released Panorama, her most personal and mature album yet. The artist affectionately dubbed Lesbian Jesus by fans wasn’t just born, she was self-made.

Kiyoko says it took her a long time to get over the negative connotations she felt with the word lesbian, which has now become nearly synonymous with her brand. For a long time, she identified as gay rather than use the L word. But that changed as she grew as a person. Kiyoko believes that both words and people go through many transformations in their lives, and that society should better accept the multitude of ways to be a lesbian. “A lesbian doesn’t look just one way. A lesbian isn’t ‘x, y, and z,’” Kiyoko emphasizes. It’s so many, so many things.”

MAISON VALENTINO black lace top and leggings from FWRD; F + H JEWELLERY necklace, earrings, ring; JEFFREY CAMPBELL boots

Shattering stereotypes is part of this journey, particularly harmful ones that members of this community are transphobic. I think that it’s been really hard to break those stereotypes and stigmas that society has just placed on so many people that have been unwarranted and unwelcome, she says. So we’re getting rid of those, hopefully, as more people learn to love themselves and exist and change the way others see one another.”

Story continues

“I think being a lesbian has been such a journey, and I’ve always known I was a lesbian since I was 5,” she adds. “So I’ve really grown a wonderful relationship with that word, knowing that being a lesbian is powerful, being a lesbian is beautiful, being a lesbian looks many ways. And it’s been exciting to reclaim that word and what that means to me and what it means to the world, truly.”

Another relationship she’s grown is one with Becca Tilley, a former contestant on The Bachelor. The two came out this year as a couple of four years when Tilley made a cameo appearance at the end of Kiyoko s “For the Girls” music video. Their relationship has impacted Kiyoko’s creative journey. Panorama is the first album she’s written since she began dating Tilley, whom she first met at her Expectations album release party in 2018.

Recently, Tilley even joined Kiyoko on tour. “As an artist, you’re influenced by your life experiences,” she says. “And I’ve been really grateful to experience true love and a healthy, incredible relationship. 
And Kiyoko is spreading that queer joy. Kiyoko says performing “Girls Like Girls” — which she plans on doing at every show for the foreseeable future — is still just as electric as it was when it first came out in 2015. “It’s just such a special moment in my show and a moment for my fans to just celebrate themselves in an unapologetic, safe space,” Kiyoko says. “And I look forward to that moment every time I do a show. And I’m just very grateful for my fans, for always showing up for me, because I wouldn’t be able to dream without their support.”

She’s more thankful now than ever before. As right-wing politicians launch political attacks on LGBTQ+ people, Kiyoko s concerts have become a refuge where queer people can come to fully be themselves. “It’s so important to create safe spaces for people to celebrate themselves and to love themselves and to grow their self-love,” she says. “Because so many queer people in our country and in the world live in a place where they’re not safe to be who they are, or safe in their work environment or in school.”

MUGLER red jumpsuit from FWRD; RAVEN FINE JEWELERS cross earrings 

In recent years, the number of other pop artists who are sending the same empowering message has grown exponentially. It used to be that just a few artists among them, Kiyoko, Janelle Monáe, Kehlani, Halsey, and Tegan and Sara — were singing about sapphic love on pop playlists. Today, dozens of singers and bands like Muna, Fletcher, Zolita, Carlie Hanson, Rina Sawayama, Chloe Moriondo, Rebecca Black, the Aces, Sarah Barrios, King Princess, and Dove Cameron are making music that revels in the joy of being queer and loving women.

“It’s been incredible. I think that it’s long overdue. And I’m so grateful that we are normalizing our queerness in mainstream and in pop music,” Kiyoko says. “Growing up, I never could have imagined I’d have the opportunity to sing about women so boldly and still chase my dreams of being a pop star and to be mainstream. And it’s been an incredible journey and ride. And a win for one is a win for us all in just moving the needle forward in representation.”

Kiyoko sees this joyful tone as a welcome shift from the sadder lesbian songs of yesteryear. “It seems as though there is more space for us to celebrate our wins and our joy and our happiness,” she says. She points out that queer artists have always written about joy; it just wasn’t always accepted by the mainstream. “A lot of times in the media, it’s focused on our trauma and how challenging it is to exist. And so it’s finding the happy balance of validating both of those experiences,” she says. “I think we have a long way to go in Hollywood and television and film. But in the music space, I feel like we are able to listen to songs where we can just celebrate ourselves for who we are and celebrate finding love.”

Now that Kiyoko has helped create this freer music landscape, Lesbian Jesus is planning on expanding her queer kingdom. Fans of Kiyoko’s work in projects like Disney Channel’s Lemonade Mouth or The Fosters should know that she’s not giving up on acting. The former softball player even has one show in particular she’d love to be on.

“I watched A League of Their Own on tour, which was so fun,” she says of the new Amazon Prime Video show inspired by the classic 1992 sports film by Penny Marshall. “And that was really exciting to see queer narratives at the forefront…. I feel like that was something that we don’t really get to see.”

GRETA CONSTANTINE bronze coat; F + H JEWELLERY earrings; MARTYR JEWELRY rings

To remedy that, Kiyoko is also focusing on directing. She’s already directed most of her music videos and now wants to expand to feature films and television in order to tell queer narratives. The road isn’t easy. “It’s been really interesting to navigate that space as well and how challenging it is for [queer creators],” she observes. “There’s a reason why we don’t get to see a lot of queer narratives in shows because it’s just so hard to get them made.”

As an artist, Kiyoko says she always has “4,000 things” going on in her head at a time, and that she’s excited to show as many of them to fans as she can. Even as she’s wrapping up her current tour, she’s planning headlining one where she hopes to get to perform every song from Panorama. Lesbian Jesus has worked hard to build her message of self-love and queer joy, and she’s going to spread this gospel as far as she can.

talent HAYLEY KIYOKO @hayleykiyoko
photographer COYOTE PARK for GOOGLE PIXEL 7 coyotepark.format.com @coyotepark
executive producer & senior director TIM SNOW @snowmgz
creative director RAINE BASCOS
1st assistant MASON ROSE masonrose.photography @masonrose__
light tech EVADNE GONZALEZ @evadnegonzalez
digitech MERLIN VIETHEN
video AUSTIN NUNES austinunes.com @austinunes
producer STEVIE WILLIAMS x2production.com @beingstevie of X2 Production
set designer ORRIN WHALEN orrinwhalen.com @orrinwhalen
art assistant BRANDON LOYD @ohmylord
stylist EDWIN ORTEGA edwinortega.com @edwin.j.ortega
styling assistant BROOKE MUNFORD @brookesquad
hair/groomer ABRAHAM ESPARZA abrahamjesparza.com @thisisbabe
manicurist RILEY MIRANDA @rileymiranda.nails
makeup artist MARLA VASQUEZ @marlavasquez

MUGLER red jumpsuit from FWRD; RAVEN FINE JEWELERS cross earrings 

This article is part of Out‘s November/December 2022 issue, out on newsstands November 8. Support queer media and subscribe — or download the issue through Amazon, Kindle, Nook, or Apple News.

In 1972 — half a century ago — Stevie Wonder reinvented the sound of pop by embracing all he could accomplish on his own.

He released two albums that year: “Music of My Mind” in March and then, less than eight months later, on Oct. 27, the even more confident and far-reaching “Talking Book.”

“Talking Book” was a breakthrough on multiple fronts. It demonstrated, with the international smash “Superstition,” that Wonder didn’t need Motown’s “hit factory” methods — songwriters and producers providing material that singers would dutifully execute — to have a No. 1 pop blockbuster.

Wonder had given signs on earlier albums, particularly his self-produced “Where I’m Coming From” (1971), that he would not just be writing love songs. “Talking Book” reaffirmed that, and also extended his sonic and technological ambitions, as he used state-of-the-art synthesizers and an arsenal of studio effects to orchestrate his songs with startlingly novel sounds. And its album cover — which showed Wonder wearing African-style robes and braided hair in a quasi-Biblical desert landscape (actually Los Angeles) — made clear that Wonder’s futurism was unmistakably Afrofuturism.

Although Wonder had just reached voting age, he was no novice when he made “Music of My Mind” and “Talking Book.” They were his 14th and 15th albums in a decade-long career that stretched back to his days as Little Stevie Wonder, who was just 13 when he had his first No. 1 song with an irresistibly exuberant live recording: “Fingertips, Pt. 2.”

During his teens, Wonder proved himself onstage and in the studio as a singer, keyboardist, harmonica player, drummer and, with hits like “Uptight (Everything’s Alright)” and “Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours),” as a songwriter. He revealed musicianship that was both richly and widely grounded — in gospel, R&B, jazz, show tunes, folk, pop, country, classical music and more — and playfully but determinedly recombinant. Even when he was a teenager, his music meshed and reconfigured genres.

Wonder’s first Motown Records contract ended as he turned 21 in 1971. Other labels were eager to sign him, and when he returned to the Black-owned Motown, he had won complete creative control for himself. From then on, he would write and produce his own songs, release albums when he decided they were finished and choose his own collaborators. He made an unexpected choice for starters: Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, a team of musicians, producers and engineers.

In what were still the early days of synthesizers, Cecil and Margouleff had constructed a Frankenstein monster of an instrument they called TONTO (which they retronymed The Original New Timbral Orchestra). It weighed more than a ton. Margouleff and Cecil had connected modules and keyboards from Moog, Arp and other manufacturers and figured out a way for the formerly incompatible devices to control one another. Billing themselves as Tonto’s Expanding Head Band, Margouleff and Cecil made a 1971 album of synthesizer pieces, “Zero Time,” and Wonder heard in it the possibilities for sounds he wanted to summon from his keyboards.

In their test run — a three-day weekend working together in the studio — Wonder wrote 17 songs. From 1972-74, with Wonder writing the songs and Cecil and Margouleff programming the sounds, they would make four landmark albums: “Music of My Mind,” “Talking Book,” “Innervisions” and “Fulfillingness’ First Finale.”

The early 1970s were a wide-open — and in retrospect simply remarkable — era for R&B that melded social consciousness and musical creativity. Groups like Sly and the Family Stone and the late-60s Temptations had shown that psychedelic soul hits could carry strong messages, and in the early ’70s, songwriters like Marvin Gaye (with his album “What’s Going On”) and groups like Earth, Wind & Fire, Parliament-Funkadelic, the O’Jays and Labelle explored utopian dreams and street-level insights in songs that united the sophistication of jazz with the earthiness of funk and rock. These were parallel explorations, often with large stage and studio bands; meanwhile, Wonder found a path of his own, nearly solo.

“Music of My Mind,” the first album under the new Motown contract, started to probe Wonder’s newfound freedom; then “Talking Book” reveled in it. It’s an album mostly of songs about love: euphoric, heartbroken, jealous, regretful, longing, anticipatory. Yet love songs like “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” and “Lookin’ for Another Pure Love” don’t confine themselves to the ups and downs of individual romance; their love can encompass family, friends, community and faith.

Midway through, the album brandishes a pair of hard-nosed reality checks. In “Superstition,” Wonder warns against gullibility and received opinion, with a loose-limbed drumbeat, chattering stereo Clavinets and taunting horns making his advice as danceable as it is vehement. And in “Big Brother,” Wonder sings “I live in the ghetto” and denounces a sanctimonious politician who wants his vote but is “tired of me protesting/children dying every day.”

Wonder influenced generations of singers with his voice on “Talking Book”; he talks, croons, teases, preaches, moans, barks, growls. It’s not exactly gospel, blues, soul, rock or jazz; it’s all of them at once, and it gives every note he sings an unpredictable life of its own. With the keyboards, synthesizers and effects under his control — there’s wah-wah everywhere — Wonder could extrapolate his vocal inflections to the instruments he played.

Unlike some of the more heavily orchestrated or earnest efforts of early ’70s R&B, “Talking Book” doesn’t feel vintage. Its arrangements are lean and contrapuntal, uncushioned, making every note earn its place both as a melodic line and a rhythmic push. Yet their precision doesn’t make them anywhere near mechanical. Wonder had only a handful of additional musicians on “Talking Book,” but he fabricates the sound of a bustling, multifarious neighborhood largely on his own. And the whole production is set in a surreal, elastic, immersive electronic space that’s far more familiar now than it was 50 years ago.

None of that ingenuity would matter if the songs weren’t substantial and touching. Wonder sings about love going right — “In my mind, we can conquer the world,” he declares in “You and I” — and love going very wrong. The singer suddenly realizes he’s being cheated on in “Maybe Your Baby,” with a bass line as viscous as quicksand and backup voices chiming in like know-it-alls. He’s been left lonely in “Blame It on the Sun,” casting about desperately to convince himself it’s not his fault.

And the album ends with “I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be Forever),” a Beatles-tinged three-episode song in which the singer picks himself up from “shattered dreams,” imagines the bliss of endless love with a choir of backup harmonies arriving to uplift him, invokes God, then segues into a bluesy come-on to “the girl that I adore.” The romance is all still hypothetical; the sheer joy is not. And every note comes from Wonder himself.

“Talking Book” was not only a hit album — No. 1 on the R&B chart, No. 3 on the all-genre Billboard 200 — but also a harbinger of R&B and pop that would be increasingly electronic and synthetic, proudly unbound by physical realities. One of Wonder’s many gifts to music was that even as he created the artificial sound-worlds of his songs, he made sure they were brimming with humanity.

Here, 27 of the countless musicians and listeners who created and have been inspired by “Talking Book” discuss the album, song by song. These are edited excerpts from the conversations. — Jon Pareles

Turn autoplay on