#blueboy

I have a copy of Popkiss but I haven’t done more than skim the chapter on Blueboy in the years since I got it lol. The NME review on this page i think was the first time i saw keith called definitively gay, and it was posthumously. after a while i guess i though that he was sort of mostly gay but it wasn’t so simple that he felt the label described him fully — re: cosmopolitan. but maybe he just meant people stereotyping gay people by the "pidgeonholing" line…

Online, I've found a few things as well - you might've seen it already, but Dickon Edwards's post about Keith after his death, if you read between the lines, isn't all that ambiguous. I also remember finding a Sarah/Shinkasen newsletter, I believe from around 1995 or 96 just after or before the "day for destroying things", where Clare writes smth like - "Paul has just welcomed a child. Keith, if he continues as he has, is unlikely to have children any time soon, but has taken up gardening!"

I have not seen these, not that i remember! Paul has/had a child?!! If you can send these my way, please do :)

I can try and find that newsletter if you like. OTOH I found an online interview with a Spanish fanzine writer from the late 90s, where he says to Keith "I know you're not gay but...". I don't know how this writer would know that, and frankly I think he's wrong - Keith's response is fairly ambiguous but IIRC it's not very affirming. He also says smth like "my songs are based on my own experiences", so yeah. In the end I trust Jane Duffus' book - she wouldn't just write "he was gay" if he weren't

I do remember reading that interview! It was on an old fansite. Def was odd :P Yeah, it seems like whoever that was was a bit ignorant, the other sources are more trustworthy.

popkissriver asked: Anyway, I think the lyrics mostly speak for themselves, and Cosmopolitan ought to have the final word - it's not for anyone else to pigeonhole his sexuality, as much as we might like to. For me I think it's cus I feel such a strong personal connection to the music, but it's prolly better to let his private life stay that way; if he wanted to say something more publicly he would have done so. I also thought your questions to Keith/Paul were interesting so I'll try answering a few. TBH I don't think what's called "stagegay" (honestly never heard the term before) was very prevalent in the Sarah/indiepop scene; it was a lot more shy boy/girl stuff yk. I remember reading somewhere, I think in Duffus' book, that Keith sometimes kissed Paul on the cheek onstage so clearly they were different. I'll go find the book again later (tho maybe you already have it). Amongst fans of Sarah/indiepop, I'm certain homophobia would've been considered totally unacceptable, given the politics and who was involved and the context etc. indie's hostility toward dance music/mainstream pop probably had some underlying homophobic attitudes tho. Stuart Maconie in the NME wrote some things about Erasure that weren't very nice, tho I think he didn't like Sarah either. I think homophobia, where it existed, was probably way more common among fans of mainstream "indie" bands like Stone Roses or Oasis, who were more laddish. Still, those fans were probably much less homophobic than your average Brit at the time, even amongst their age group; Britpop was def straight-coded, but it would not have been cool at all to hate gay ppl. Oasis said something very homophobic about Blur and I think they got a ton of backlash for it. On the Imipramine thing, I might have an answer as well - I think it was on tweenet where I came across this message Keith posted, dated early 1996, where he said something about wanting to sound less britpop, so they were going back to a duo of just him and Paul. Gonna look for the links to all this stuff later; I don't have em saved unfortunately but I can probably find them again.

Thank you!! tbh i don't even remember exactly what it was i was asking about, but this is all very interesting! I really have no sense of context for Blueboy/Sarah so all very useful info :)