--- description: Straight artists writing about gay acceptance can be a minefield, but Greg Holden's "Boys in the Street" offers one blueprint for success title: How to Write an LGBTQ Anthem If You're a Straight Artist image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # How Greg Holden Did Gay Acceptance Right on 'Boys in the Street'  by [Nolan Feeney](/author/nolan-feeney/)  ## Nolan Feeney Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jun 23, 2015 1:30 PM CUT  by [Nolan Feeney](/author/nolan-feeney/)  ## Nolan Feeney Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Jun 23, 2015 1:30 PM CUT It’s a song that regularly makes people cry. It’s a song Tom Hanks called [“perfect.”](https://twitter.com/tomhanks/status/500644174862225408 "undefined") But it’s also a song that had the potential to rub _a lot_ of people the wrong way. Greg Holden’s “Boys in the Street” is an emotional account of a father coming to accept his gay son, but over lunch in New York a few weeks before the premiere of its music video, Holden sounds a little nervous about how it will be received. “I think the radio folk want to push it quite fast,” he says. “I’m not really too keen on doing that. I don’t want to ram it down anyone’s throat. I don’t want to be announcing it from the rooftops: ‘_This is my new single!’_” It’s easy to understand why. The song, which Holden says he wrote in just 20 minutes and which was instrumental in getting his record deal, could be the big breakout track from his album _Chase the Sun_. But Holden, who is straight, has seen how pop culture sometimes criticizes artists who write about LGBTQ acceptance. Some critics said Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ advocacy on “Same Love”—it was the first song in Top 40 to explicitly endorse marriage equality—crossed the line into self-appointed spokesmanship; detractors felt that it took an oversimplified, even condescending approach to issues of sexuality and race. And Lady Gaga, even though she identifies as bisexual, faced backlash for her 2011 song “Born This Way,” which many dismissed as pandering. “Sometimes people can use the message,” says Holden, who heard from a fan who said “Boys in the Street” helped him through a period of suicidal thoughts. “My concern with the song is people might hear it and think, ‘Well, what does he know?’ I didn’t want it to just be advertising for Greg Holden. If it’s going to have a message, it has to follow through all the way.” Holden wrote “Boys in the Street” after Kristin Russo and Dannielle Owens-Reid, the co-founders of Everyone Is Gay, an organization that supports LGBTQ youth, asked him to contribute to their 2014 fundraiser compilation, _The Gayest Compilation Ever Made II_. There were no instructions, only that the song touch upon sexuality or gender identity in some way. “I have all these musicians who are close to me who have told me, ‘I want to stand up for equality but I’m afraid my audience will turn around and say, ‘You can’t talk about that stuff because you aren’t queer,’’” Russo says. “It’s a really fine line, and for Greg, he’s a really respectful and very aware person, and that makes all the difference when you’re tackling a project or topic like this.” Here’s what Holden did right: **Write what you know** Much of the song was inspired by Holden’s relationship with his stepfather. “He was constantly telling me that I wasn’t going to achieve anything and would never amount to anything,” he says. “It was easy for me to say those things—it was coming from a genuine point of respect.” “I don’t think he was trying to tell a story that he didn’t know about,” Russo adds. “What works is that those emotions that he was feeling are very similar to the emotions that somebody feels when they are coming from a place of, ‘I’m gay, I’m queer, I’m trans, and I don’t want to tell my father because my father disapproves.’” **But still do your homework** Having knowledge about the community you’re writing about is paramount, says Russo, who is married to singer-songwriter Jenny Owen Youngs. “\[When Youngs\] has written songs about historic events and things like that, she doesn’t think, ‘I _kind of_ know what happened, I’m going to write a song about it,’” she says. “She spends time learning and gathering information.” Russo says it’s the same lesson that guided the production of Amazon’s original series _Transparent_, which extensively consulted with and employed many members of the transgender community. “You have to be in a dialogue with the reality that’s happening with those communities,” she says. Had she raised an objection to something in Holden’s song, she says: “Without batting an eye he would have had a conversation with us, we would have been able to have a dialogue about what he learned, and he would have gone back to that lyric or that verse and amended it.” **Get involved** “I think it’s important \[to\] put my money where my mouth is,” Holden says. Because it was included it on the Everyone Is Gay compilation, “Boys in the Street” directly supported an organization working with LGBTQ youth, and he says he’d like to record more songs like “The Lost Boy,” his 2012 charity single that was inspired by the story of a Sudanese refugee and raised money for the Red Cross. But being responsible doesn’t always have to be about money. Whether it’s giving other artists who are LGBTQ a platform or advocating politically—Macklemore released “Same Love” to raise awareness about [Referendum 74](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington%5FReferendum%5F74 "undefined") in Washington and donated some profits to a marriage-equality group—the important thing is to make “sure the work you do is empowering the communities that you’re speaking about,” Russo says. **Watch your message** By just telling a simple story on “Boys in the Street,” Holden avoids making sweeping generalizations or assumptions about life as an LGBTQ person. And though Russo says she’s never challenged material submitted for her organization’s compilations, there are certain messages she cautions straight artists against. “If you say it’s not a choice, it implies that if you _could_ choose you, you would not,” Russo explains. “It automatically makes the inference negative. \[Many people\] had never considered the larger implication.” That doesn’t mean you won’t hear LGBTQ artists themselves use that language, as Mary Lambert did on the chorus of “Same Love.” “That’s her experience and her story,” Russo says. **Watch your visuals, too** In the music video for “Boys in the Street,” you won’t see another human being besides performance shots of Holden, who hates starring in his videos—the entire story is told through simply dressed mannequins. “We didn’t want to stereotype the dad, we didn’t want to stereotype the child,” Holden says. “I just wanted to make it as completely neutral to tell the story through the body language.” **Don’t speak up only when it’s convenient** A few weeks after Holden and I speak, I learn from his label that he’s no longer doing interviews about the song and video, preferring to let the music speak for itself. That said, he won’t shy away from playing it live. “The places where you’d think \[“Boys in the Street”\] would go down badly, I get more excited about playing them,” Holden says. “The applause got less and less as I traveled south through the U.S. That gave me a rush. I’m really inspired by the artists who are trying to say something important in their songs. That always gave me chills. I want to try and do that, you know? If I think it’s going to make anybody uncomfortable, I get excited.” ### Photos: 25 Transgender People Who Influenced American Culture  Laverne Cox has used her growing celebrity as a star of the critically acclaimed Netflix series, Orange is the New Black, to become an outspoken leader of the trans rights movement, addressing crowds of thousands at schools and other forums around the country. Jason Merritt—Getty Images  With her brother, Andy, Lana Wachowski has co-written, produced and directed Hollywood blockbusters like the Matrix triology, V for Vendetta and Cloud Atlas. Michael Sohn—DPA/AP  Kye Allums became the first openly transgender athlete in NCAA Division 1, the top level of college athletics, when he played on the women's team at George Washington University in 2010. John Lamparski—Getty Images  Caitlyn Jenner, made famous as an Olympic gold medalist in 1976 and later as a reality TV dad, appears as a woman for the first time on the cover of Vanity Fair's June 2015 issue, photographed by Annie Leibovitz. Vanity Fair  Chelsea Manning is an Army soldier who was sentenced to 35 years in prison for violating the Espionage Act, after she leaked hundreds of classified documents to Wikileaks. U.S. Army/AP  Brandon Teena was an American trans man who was raped and murdered in Nebraska in 1993\. His murder was a catalyst for a lobbying effort for hate crimes legislation and his life and death were the subject of the film Boys Don't Cry. AP  The electronic musician Wendy Carlos released Switched-On Bach in 1968, which won three Grammy awards and became one of the first classical albums to sell 500,000 copies. She went on to compose notable scores for films like A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, and Tron. Ebet Roberts—Getty Images  Since coming out publicly in a 2012 Rolling Stone article, the musician Laura Jane Grace has been a vocal advocate for trans acceptance. In 2014, her band Against Me! released the album Transgender Dysphoria Blues. Gary Miller—Getty Images  Model and actress Carmen Carrera vaulted to reality TV fame after appearing on RuPaul's Drag Race. Nearly 50,000 people have signed an online petition asking Victoria's Secret to make her the company's first transgender "Angel." Danny Aarons—Newspix/Getty Images  Christine Jorgensen, a former soldier, became a nationwide media sensation after having sex reassignment surgery in Denmark in 1952. Fred Morgan—New York Daily News Archive/Getty Images  The American jazz musician Billy Tipton became famous after his 1989 death when it was discovered that he had been assigned the female sex at birth. AP  The American public grew up knowing Bono as the daughter of entertainers Sonny and Cher, before he came out as a transgender man in 2009\. Bono, who first came out as a lesbian in ’90s, has been an active LGBT rights advocate for decades, writing and making films about his experiences and using platforms like reality show Dancing With the Stars to talk about LGBT issues. Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/Getty Images  Candis Cayne was the first transgender actress to play a recurring transgender character on a prime time series, as love interest Carmelita on ABC's Dirty Sexy Money. In past decades, the majority of transgender characters have been played by non-transgender actors and often been portrayed in negative roles, like psychopathic killers or dead prostitutes. Charles Sykes—Invision/AP  The pioneering computer scientist and engineer Lynn Conway influenced a generation of computer chip designers and has worked at Xerox PARC, IBM, and DARPA.  Caroline Cossey is a British actress best known for her role as a Bond girl in the movie For Your Eyes Only. Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images  Before she came out in 2014, the Serbian-born model was already blurring lines in the fashion world as the androgynous male model and muse for big names like Marc Jacobs. In 2015, Pejic became the first transgender model to appear in American Vogue. Nicholas Hunt—Getty Images  The LPGA removed a requirement that golfers be "female at birth" after trans woman Lana Lawless sued for the right to compete in 2010. Ben Margot—AP  Fallon Fox became the first openly transgender fighter in mixed martial arts history when she came out in 2013. Sally Ryan—Zuma Press/Corbis  Beatie went public in 2008 as America’s first “pregnant father,” undergoing artificial insemination after his former wife proved infertile. The transgender man captured the nation’s attention after appearances on shows such as Oprah, setting off cultural conversations about the social and legal status of transgender people in America. He has since had three children. Chris Jackson—Getty Images  Janet Mock, a transgender advocate and writer, published a best-selling memoir about her transition, Redefining Realness, in 2014 and hosts a MSNBC web talk show about pop culture. Fernando Leon—Getty Images  Veteran LA Times sportswriter Mike Penner announced he was a "transsexual sportswriter" in a 2007 essay and wrote under a new byline, Christine Daniels, for nearly a year. After struggling with the challenges of living as a trans woman, Penner abandoned the name in 2008 and returned to living as a man, before committing suicide in 2009. Los Angeles Times/AP  The pro tennis player Renee Richards won a landmark decision for transgender rights in 1977 when the New York Supreme Court ruled that she could compete in tournaments as a woman. Larry Busacca—Getty Images  Sylvia Rivera was present at the Stonewall uprising and remained a tireless advocate for trans people of color, as well as gays and lesbians, who were marginalized as the LGBT movement became more mainstream. Valerie Shaff—Sylvia Rivera Law Project  Geena Rocero was already a successful model before she gave a viral 2014 TED talk in which she came out publicly as transgender. “All of us are put in boxes by our family, by our religion, by our society, our moment in history, even our own bodies,” she said. “Some people have the courage to break free.” Her advocacy organization, Gender Proud, works to empower transgender communities around the world. Santiago Felipe—Getty Images  Jenna Talackova fought a legal battle to become the first openly transgender candidate to compete in Miss Universe Canada in 2012, after initially being rejected because of her gender status. 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