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Introducing Orville Peck, a Queer Artist of his Time

 Orville Peck's 'Bronco' album cements his place in pop culture — and country music

By Amy Campbell, GQ Magazine Australia, 21 Apr 2022

For artists of colour, queer artists and anyone who isn’t your typical Jack Daniels-drinking, pickup truck-driving crooner from the Deep South, finding mainstream fame in country music has always been an uphill battle. And summiting that hill isn’t even the end. Because earning fans is one thing. Being accepted and embraced by the vastly white, vastly straight country music institution is another struggle altogether.

Orville Peck discovered this in 2019, with the release of his debut album Pony. Here was a country artist who was born in South Africa, but lives in Canada, singing about love affairs with cowboys, not cowgirls. His elaborate disguises and cinematic visuals saw new audiences flock to the genre, hungry for more of the masked singer’s storytelling and deep, affectionate tenor.

Even Harry Styles was a fan—in November 2021, he asked Peck to play his ‘Harryween’ concert at Madison Square Garden in New York. 

But the old guard was harder to convince. 

“There were times when people straight-up told me this wouldn’t exist in the country world… they didn’t know where to place it, they didn’t know what to call it,” the artist said in a 2020 interview with GQ. When we catch up today, he says he’s still battling some of the same prejudices. “It’s funny, because I feel like I'm writing about the same stuff that straight country artists are writing about. The only real difference is I’m writing about a different gender."

“I think in 2022, the people who consider that an anomaly… they are the anomaly,” he adds with a chuckle.

Now, on the eve of Pony’s third birthday, Peck returns with his sophomore album Bronco. Where Pony felt charming in its stripped-back candour, and follow-up EP Show Pony, which landed in 2020, popped with a more glittery sound (there’s a duet with Shania Twain), Bronco’s expansive soundscape and heavy-hearted lyrics radiate with authenticity, in a way that suggests Peck has come into his own.

“I wrote it with so much heart. It kind of wrote itself in a way, because of what I was going through,” offers the artist. “I was so busy with touring and so preoccupied with being a touring musician.

“Then Covid hit. Work stopped and it forced me to reckon with the fact that I was really, really unhappy as a person, I was running on empty, my personal life was hell, but I'd been distracting myself and escaping into my work.”

‘I sat around last year / wishing so many times I would die’, he sings on ‘The Curse of the Blackened Eye’.

Peck was also anxious about the inevitability of making a second album, and whether it would live up to the popularity of his first. It has. And his decision to double down on the nostalgic Western swing rather than rely on pop inflections—one critic likened Peck's vocals on Bronco to ‘a gothic Elvis Presley’—proves that Peck oughta be taken seriously.

“I think sometimes the best way to overcome barriers is to not even acknowledge them,” says the musician, when we ask whether he feels more accepted by the establishment. “I always approached my place in country music as if I already had a seat at the table. I sort of just sat down at the table, and people are finally starting to accept that I sit at it."

“Rather than wanting people to accept me, I realised that people would rather accept that I was already accepted, if that makes sense… there have been moments in my life career where I didn't believe in myself as much as I should've. And I'm glad that now, finally, I feel like I'm at a place where I don't question it for a second.”

At Coachella this week, as Peck belted out the melodies of Bronco in front of a crowd that chanted back every lyric, that sentiment rang delightfully, daringly true.

The Surreal Identity Crisis of “I’m Not a Robot” (short film)

In Victoria Warmerdam’s short film I AM NOT A ROBOT, a series of failed Captcha tests plunges a woman into a strange new reality. She sets out to answer the disturbing question of whether she's a robot, and therefore bought by her own boyfriend, thus undergoing a surreal identity crisis. An intriguing Dutch short film which could well pass for a mini Black Mirror episode. Get ready to rack your brains. Winner of the 2025 Academy Award for Best Live-Action Short. [In Dutch with English subtitles. Also available on Movistar+ with subtitles in Spanish.] 22 min.

Harvie Krumpet_Oscar-winning Short Film

The odd biography of a man who has Tourette's Syndrome, chronic bad luck, menial jobs, nudist tendencies, and a book of "fakts" hung around his neck. A very stimulating story! Who ever said that animation is not meant for adults? Directed by y Adam Elliot, (Australia, 2003), 22 min. [with Spanish subtitles]

 

Gay Top Athletes: The Ultimate Taboo?_survey

In recent years, some top British, German, Spanish, Australian and American gay sportsmen have come out of the closet.

Would it be possible for a homosexual athlete,  footballer or basketball player to become openly gay and visible in your country? If a professional gay footballer were to come out, would he be respected?

Recently, three international footballers have taken the big step: British Jake Daniels at 17: "Now I just feel like I'm ready to be myself, be free and just be confident with it all"; Australian Josh Cavallo, at 21, with a deeply moving announcement on YouTube: "I'm a footballer and I'm gay. All I want to do is play football and be treated equally. I'm tired of trying to perform at the best of your ability and to live this double life. It's exhausting, it's something that I don't want anyone to experience. I want to tell all the other people that are struggling, that are scared, don't act like someone you are not. Be yourself. You are meant to be yourself, not someone else."; and Czech Jakub Jankto, at 27: "I don't want to hide any more". 

On this subject, the powerful, engaging British short film WONDERKID (Rhys Chapman, 2016), which depicts the inner turmoil of a gay professional footballer as he strives to succeed as his true self in a hyper masculine, straight environment, is a must see.

Please, give this question some thought and post your comment (anonymous or not) in English or in Spanish below.

Related articles and documentaries:

• Can gay footballers ever come out?
• Tarjeta amarilla al armario del fútbol
• Jason Collins on coming out
• El club de fútbol de Madrid donde los jugadores sí salen del armario
• Milestone for Gay Athletes as Rogers Plays for Galaxy
• Comprehensive Poll on Homosexuals in Sports Reveals Bias Against Gay Athletes
• Why Do Gay Men Love the Olympics?
• En el armario del fútbol español
• El armario sellado del fútbol
• Documental LGTBI. Deporte invisible (Movistar+)
• Documental Fútbol y homofobia (Movistar+)

The next four years are gonna suck

"The next four years are gonna suck. But they’ll suck worse if we let the news cycle — and the man who dominates it — drain the joy from our lives. We need to pay attention and we need to stay in the fight. Because of course we do. But we should spend as much time as we possibly can over the next four years with friends and lovers doing things that bring us joy.

Anyone who tells you that making time for joy — however you define it — is a distraction or a betrayal has no idea what they’re talking about. During the darkest days of the AIDS Crisis, we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night. The dance kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for.

It didn’t look like we were going to win then and we did. It doesn’t feel like we’re going to win now but we could. Keep fighting, keep dancing."

- Dan Savage

Black Mirror_series

Black Mirror (Netflix) is a British science fiction television series written and created by Charlie Brooker and centered around dark and satirical themes that examine modern society, particularly with regard to the unanticipated consequences of new technologies, reminding us that to revere our digital gadgets is to become their pathetic slaves. Episodes are stand-alone works, usually set in an alternative present or in the near future. All genuinely unsettling and thought-provoking.

Stories tap into the collective unease about our modern world. Over the last fifteen years, technology has transformed almost every aspect of our lives before we've had time to stop and question it. In every home; on every desk; in every palm -a plasma screen, a monitor, a smartphone- a black mirror of our 21st Century existence. A must-watch series. Take my word for it.

Check the plot summary of Black Mirror's 28 episodes (6 seasons) on Wikipedia or on radiotimes.com only after you have watched an episode. I personally recommend the following stories:

The National Anthem

The Entire History of You

Nosedive

Shut Up and Dance

San Junipero

Hated in the Nation

Black Museum

Smithereens

Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too

Joan is Awful

Reading is sexy

Photo: John R. Hamilton, 1958

 

Tech oligarchs

This is the cartoon The Washington Post censored last week. The cartoonist, Pulitzer prize winner Ann Telnaes, has resigned out of dignity.