We’re coming out, and we want the world to know … that not all gay men are born with an innate, all-encompassing love for disco, ok!? In fact, only 50% of Aural Fixation was, as we discover on a glitter ball-guided tour through 1980’s diana , by Diana Ross. Released in the disco revolution’s twilight years, diana was the Boss breaking free from the shackles of Motown, the record label which made her in the 60s, and was starting to break her. Helping her out were CHIC’s very own Nile Rodgers and ...
Feb 19, 2020•56 min•Season 3Ep. 7
A tornado blew around the Aural Fixation recording studio before we came, and, well, excuse the mess it made! Ok, that analogy can only go so far, but nonetheless, the memorable opener from Frank Ocean’s “Thinkin Bout You” has endured since it’s 2012 release on Channel Orange . At the time, a ground-breaking hip hop album documenting the lost loves of a 23 year old finding out who he is, Frank had us shook with the mainstream explosion of queerness in a traditionally not-very-queer music scene. ...
Feb 05, 2020•56 min•Season 3Ep. 6
It’s hard to believe that the Spice Girls were active for less than two years during their initial run as a (Spice Force) five-piece. Hot on the heels of their ground-breaking 1996 debut Spice , the gals were on a roll when they put out both Spiceworld (the album) and Spice World (the movie) in 1997. By this point they were cooking with gasoline-soaked platforms, overtaking the globe with their trademark Girl Power at a rate the music industry (and impressionable young music stans) had never see...
Jan 22, 2020•59 min•Season 3Ep. 5
Amy Ray and Emily Saliers met at school before forming femme folk twosome Indigo Girls in 1985. They’ve performed together steadily ever since, providing the soundtrack to sapphic glances across campfire singalongs the world over. In this episode, Drew and Andy take a look at their self-titled LP. Released at a time where queer female voices were scarce, the album became a beacon for the lesbian community, its songs speaking to love, loss and longing. Indigo Girls has since gone on to inspire a ...
Jan 08, 2020•49 min•Season 3Ep. 4
God rest ye merry queers, and step into an Aural Fixation wonderland for our very first Christmas special. Drew and Andy take each other on a Yuletide journey down and up their respective memory lanes, applying their now trademark Queer Analysis™ to exactly what makes a merry music moment so magical. Each picking their eight favourite festive bops, the boys riff on the spectrum of emotions Christmas music can conjure up - from joy and mysticism, to loneliness and longing. With cameos* from LGBT ...
Dec 18, 2019•1 hr 2 min
Does any gay icon better illustrate the Anglo-Australian tapestry of Aural Fixation than Kylie Minogue? Just why it took so long for us to sit down with the Princess of Antipodean Pop is unexplainable and inexcusable, but we’re here now, spinning around, so ploise move out of our way. After blazing through the late 80s as Stock Aitken Waterman’s poster girl and notching up four UK number ones, Kylie found herself at a reinvention crossroads in the early 90s, trialling different sounds and images...
Dec 11, 2019•1 hr 1 min•Season 3Ep. 3
As part of teen pop two-piece Wham!, George Michael was every little hungry schoolgirl’s – and statistically one tenth of all little hungry schoolboy’s – pride and joy. With his hair feathered, his torso bronzed and his shorts shortened, George spent the first seven years of his career selling more than 30 million records globally alongside ghost of pop past Andrew Ridgely. By 1987, it was time for George to go it alone. His debut album Faith heralded the death of Day-Glo George and the birth of...
Nov 27, 2019•56 min•Season 3Ep. 2
We begin our third collection of musings on queer musos with a deep dive into Andy’s second favourite of all time, Mother Björk. Defiantly impossible to compare to pretty much any other artist, queers the world over have clasped Bjork to their alternative bosoms since her 1993 first album Debut , but what exactly is it about her body of work, visual language and legacy that appeals so directly to so many queer fans? Drew and Andy take her commercial and critical peak, 1997’s Homogenic , as a sta...
Nov 13, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Season 3Ep. 1
Q: Can Andy and Drew last an hour without talking about Madame X or Mother Monster? A: No. Q: Can Andy and Drew last five minutes without talking about Madame X or Mother Monster? A: Also no. By popular demand, the boys wrap up the second season (!) of Aural Fixation with another bumper Q&A session. But this time there’s a twist – any word of either of their #1 bitches comes with a punishment. If you sliced Aural Fixation straight down the middle, this episode’s companion playlist would come...
Oct 30, 2019•1 hr 9 min•Season 2Ep. 9
Aural Fixation’s second season of queer icons wraps up with our most contemporary yet. Ariana Grande might be the most popular artist among queer people under the age of, erm... twenty-five, but in recent years has trodden a path taken by very few, if any, of her peers. Released just six months apart, Sweetener and thank u, next both represent a different side to the complex coin of Grande’s career in 2018. Common threads carry through both, of relationship woes, mental health struggles and inev...
Oct 16, 2019•1 hr•Season 2Ep. 8
It’s the early seventies and Dame Elton John is spaffing out music like it’s nobody’s business. As part of his songwriting sisterhood with Bernie Taupin, Elton had already gifted us with six albums by early 1973, featuring hits such as “Your Song”, “Tiny Dancer” and “Crocodile Rock”. You’d think at this point the gal needed a break. Actually – if you’ve seen Rocket Man , you’d know the gal needed a break. But anyway... Break he did not, for it was straight back into the studio with our Elt. What...
Oct 02, 2019•58 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Whether you've been a regular on the fan forum since 2002 or you simply know them as the band that did the song from Romeo and Juliet , chances are you know a little about this episode's subject – Garbage. But there is no way in gay hell you know anywhere near as much as this episode's guest, Liam, who has deeply stanned the band ever since discovering an obscure Garbage remix on his 12th birthday. Experimental and unapologetically queer, Garbage cut their tusks in the nineties with their inimit...
Sep 18, 2019•53 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Gimme a beat! This is a story about Control – Janet Jackon's Control , the 1986 album which quite literally birthed an entire genre (Siri, what's 'new jack swing'?), and placed the Jackson Five's little sister on a path to international stardom, selling 100 million records worldwide and directly influencing artists as diverse as Britney, Beyoncé and, erm, Heidi from the Sugababes... according to Wikipedia. At just twenty years old, Janet set out to cast off her family's astronomical shadow, whil...
Sep 04, 2019•55 min•Season 2Ep. 5
What do maketh a queer icon? Pop princess blighted by tragedy – tick. Indie darlings, misunderstood by their contemporaries but retrospectively lauded – check. Alexandra Burke – say no more, dot com. How about an effeminate, sexually ambiguous teenager pulled from small town 70s England to front a reggae-influenced pop rock band who would go on to sell 150 million albums, and soundtrack wedding dance floors for decades to come? Boy George confused and bewitched men, women and everything in betwe...
Aug 21, 2019•50 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Let us take you back to 2011. Egypt is in revolt. The people of London are rioting. Earthquakes are wreaking havoc in New Zealand and Japan. Amy Winehouse is dead, for christ sake. Life is bleak. But wait – what’s that we can hear in the distance? It’s a girl with a sugary voice. And it sounds like she’s... imploring a boy to... pick up the phone and... give her a call? Oh happy day mama, it’s Carly Rae Jepsen! Come to remind us all that there *is* joy in the world, through the twinned arts of a...
Aug 07, 2019•56 min•Season 2Ep. 3
After slyly dominating the first ten episodes of your new favourite music podcast, we're finally giving a much-deserved hour to the pop monolith that is... Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone. Madame X, if you're nasty. Fourteen studio albums, three hundred million records sold and a superlative-exhausting run of smashed records later, the Queen of Pop has been thrusting queer sensibility to the forefront of mainstream pop culture for nearly 40 years, spanning from her early 80s association with Kei...
Jul 24, 2019•1 hr 3 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Any typical conversation about Kelis will almost undoubtedly centre around *that* dairy-based beverage, and its power to lure ~the boys~ to her front lawn for a taste. Of course, Drew and Andy aren’t interested in typical conversations. This episode, the boys have gone lactose-intolerant – they didn’t come here to talk milkshakes; they came here for flesh. 2010’s Flesh Tone was recorded in collaboration with visionary – if not ever-so-irritating – Black Eyed Pea will.i.am and marked the beginnin...
Jul 10, 2019•52 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Our email servers have crashed time and time again underneath the sheer influx of mail, and our fans have questions which need answering. It was time to give the people what they want. Drew and Andy settle down with a glass of cask wine and give our listeners insight into what makes us tick, what gets us razzed, and what makes up our pop DNA. Forty-five minutes isn’t enough to get through all the enquiries, but tune in to find out who soundtracks our seduction techniques, what we’d love to see o...
Jun 26, 2019•49 min•Season 1Ep. 9
The year is 2004. The likes of Katie Melua, Jamie Cullum and Dido dominate supermarket shelves, as the UK charts are pervaded with an overwhelming sense of beige – that is, until, a glamourous quartet from the streets of New York storm through with a disco Pink Floyd cover to punctuate the gloom with glitter. The Scissor Sisters channelled the peacocking showmanship of Elton John and Freddie Mercury through an early 2000s sensibility, which remains futuristic, yet timeless, to this day. In this ...
Jun 13, 2019•48 min•Season 1Ep. 8
When 23-year-old Lady Gaga strode boldly into the flashing lights with 'The Fame' in 2008, she was lauded as a new kind of pop princess – honest, opinionated, perhaps a little extra but with the vocal chops to back it all up. Her eight-track 2009 follow-up 'The Fame Monster' dug its gilded heel into the zeitgeist with instant classics like 'Bad Romance' and 'Telephone', clinching Gaga a spot in the sonic hall of fame. From here her war cry was clear: Be your authentic self, celebrate difference,...
May 29, 2019•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 7
From daughter of a preacher man to empress of New York nightlife, Grace Jones has spent her career challenging, scintillating and titillating listeners, audiences and baffled onlookers, with panache like no other. Andy and Drew meet underneath the disco balls of Manhattan, dancing through Grace's early greatest hits, before skipping thirty years ahead to a decade-in-the-making comeback, recorded in the heady hills of Jamaica. Through 1985’s ‘Island Life’ and 2008’s ‘Hurricane’, we tackle one of ...
May 15, 2019•45 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Step aside, we're back again – and frothing to spill ALL of the tea on RuPaul's political juggernaut 'American'. Released as a direct response to the 2016 US Election, the album speaks to civic disenfranchisement, administrative unease and, of course, lady cowboys. With a career trajectory unlike any other, RuPaul has solidified his status as an icon in recent years with the growing success of RuPaul’s Drag Race . But as he approaches his sixties, is he still a Champion of the queer community – ...
May 01, 2019•53 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Birthed from the profits of Cher’s ‘Believe’ and Geri Halliwell’s blink-and-you-miss-it reality show judging career, Girls Aloud are the biggest UK girl band ever… who no-one outside the country actually knows. With twenty consecutive top 10 UK singles, four million albums, and some of the most bonkersly brilliant bangers of the 21st century to their name, the band hit their commercial and critical summit with 2007’s ‘Tangled Up’, and we think it’s time that this pop masterpiece got the internat...
Apr 17, 2019•49 min•Season 1Ep. 4
Let us break the ice and give you more in our third episode, an exploration of a pop masterpiece created at the most tumultuous intersection of Britney Jean's career. Released four years following her commercial zenith with 'In the Zone', 2007's 'Blackout' gathered innovative producer upstarts, like Danja and Bloodshy & Avant, alongside industry veterans, like the Neptunes, to mark Britney's personal struggles with futuristic-sounding anthems of frustration, sex and independence. Drew and An...
Apr 07, 2019•46 min•Season 1Ep. 3
Episode two of your new favourite podcast plunges deep into The Velvet Underground and their debut album 'The Velvet Underground and Nico'. Produced by Andy Warhol and featuring the trickley tones of German songstress Nico, 'The Velvet Underground and Nico' is lauded as the first indie rock album ever, and one of the greatest of all time. Join Drew and Andy as they wax intrigued on the mysteries shrouding the album's inception and the sexuality of frontman Lou Reed. You can find this episode's c...
Apr 07, 2019•47 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Drew and Andy kick off Aural Fixation with a personal analysis of the Divine Miss M, the wind beneath our wings, Bathhouse Bette herself: Bette Midler. In our inaugural episode, the conversation centres around Bette's 1993 greatest hits collection 'Experience the Divine' – a childhood favourite of Drew's – featuring beloved hits such as 'Chapel of Love', 'From a Distance' and 'The Rose'. Allow us to put a spell on you as we discuss, arguably, the best Bette, in which Drew and Andy pose all the i...
Apr 07, 2019•46 min•Season 1Ep. 1
