L devine lgbtq
Ask A Gay Icon: L Devine Gets Career Advice From Melanie C
How can you help LGBTQ people succeed in the music industry? One easy step: Give your networks and make introductions. So for Pride Month, Billboard is connecting queer artists with some of their musical heroes — who also happen to be major allies to the community — to get career advice.
Here, electro-pop breakout L Devine — who also hosts the podcast L Devine’s Growing Pains and recently dropped her latest footpath, “Don’t Say It” — gets tips on self-care from Melanie C aka Sporty Spice, who reunited with the Spice Girls for a reunion tour last year and is working on a new studio album featuring the singles “Who I Am” and “Blame It On Me.”
You have been the soundtrack to so many people’s coming of age. So many teenagers benefitted from the messages in your melody. But if you could go help and meet your teenage self, what would you tell to her?
Our teenage years can be very complicated. It’s a time when you’re trying to figure out who you are and who you really want to be, while experiencing and n
L Devine
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This week: “Naked Alone” by L Devine (Warner Records, 2019)
Why we’re into it: Groovy and sexy, Devine’s newest single is a reminder of the pop star’s talent for evidence universality in the specifics.
When she made her Mother Jones debut back in January with her heart-wrenching—and very gay—track “Daughter,” Olivia Devine proved to us one thing: She could identify the universal in even the most particular of experiences. The song was partly a confession and partly a love letter. Devine dived into one of the most solemn queer experiences—coming out—and delivered her fans a formidable message of love and tenacity. In her latest single, “Naked Alone,” Devine again locates the universal in a specific impulse: horniness.
The song kicks off with what I can only call an incredibly extraterrestrial jive, before rapidly moving into the groovy heartbeat that pulses through the song. “Satisfied,” she sings, “the only feeling I ain’t felt for time.” But it’s n
Love Letters for Pride: L Devine
For new series to acknowledge Event celebrations taking place across the UK in September, we've asked LGBTQ+ musicians and figures to write a devote letter to either the community or a queer person who has inspired them, along with an Apple Song playlist to compensate tribute. Here, British singer-songwriter L Devine reflects on her own experiences as a queer artist breaking into the industry, and how the LGBTQ+ icons who came before her paved the way. L DEVINE'S LETTER When I first began making music as a career, I recall going through a phase of stress that my sexuality might put me in a box. I feared that I would always be known for my sexuality or for being ‘the lesbian pop creator L Devine’ before just being an artist who makes music and happens to be male lover. But honestly, what was I fucking worried about? That gay box I was worried about being stuck in is in evidence the most freeing space I could have found myself in. It has me surrounded by peers and a community who are so passionate about building a vacuum where everyone and anyone’s individuality can flourish. I’m part of a group where the melody doesn’t just acquire people dancing, it steers r
L Devine: 'Songwriting was my way of telling someone I was in love'
2021 saw the release of two more EPs, Near Life Experience: Part 1 and Part 2, but Devine split with her record label soon after. During this period of change Devine began formulating what would later become Digital Heartifacts, as writing sessions with collaborator Julien Flew began to grow into something bigger. The initial intent, though, wasn't to compose an album.
‘I was just writing from a place of necessity to be creative and chat about my feelings again. That's why everyone starts music in the first place,’ Devine tells M. ‘I'd left my label and didn't have any management, so I was really just making [music] because we wanted to make it.’
After undergoing the ‘most mental week of writing I've ever done’, the creative juices were flowing — or, as Devine puts it, the pair were ‘throwing up songs, basically’.
‘After a while I thought it was a total no-brainer that this should be the album, because this is the most unfiltered version of me,’ she adds. ‘There's no other cooks in the kitchen apart from us, but I'm essent