Slide 1
The Multisexuality of Erasure: Part 1: Music
Slide 2
I see Erasure’s art as multisexual, because it includes multiple sexual perspectives and possibilities.
But what is multisexuality? Since its origin in the 1920s, the term has had several meanings.
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For our purposes, we’ll focus on two meanings, both of which apply to Erasure and their work.
The first is to describe groups of people with diverse sexualities. This describes Erasure perfectly. The band members are gay and straight, and both their sexual perspectives flow into the creation process.
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For example, Vince wrote almost all of "Oh L'Amour" on his own before bringing it to Andy. Andy suggested the words "oh l'amour". In a different interview, he described this as “what screaming queens would say if they split up”.
In doing this, Andy was adding his gay perspective to a song that had been written from a straight perspective. This would continue through their career.
Quote 1: "Slowly but surely I did get to know him and we started collaborating with the writing. He's the most fair and diplomatic person that I know. When we were writing for 'Oh, L'Amour', he'd written the whole song and had the chorus, and I said, 'Let's put in 'Oh, L'amour,' for the chorus line' and he gave me 50 percent of the writing credit. I thought, 'How generous!'"
Source: Gay and Lesbian Times, February 10, 2005 (Andy speaking).
Quote 2: "Andy writes about his own experiences and emotions in various forms. The new single "Oh, l'Amour", I put to him, is obviously a song about gay love?
"'Oh, l'Amour' is gay humour; it's what screaming queens would say if they split up."
Source: Gay Life, June 1986 (Andy speaking).
Slide 5
Multisexual is also used as an umbrella term for sexualities that include more than one gender (e.g., bisexuality, pansexuality, sexual fluidity).
In most Erasure love songs, both the singer and the singer’s love interest have a gender that is fluid (not specified and changeable). As a result, the desire expressed in these songs is fluid too. It is at once gay and straight and any number of possibilities.
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Erasure initially set out to write love songs that could apply to any gender. They were open to interpretations of their love songs as gay love songs, but neither of them wanted that to be the only possibility. They also said that writing gender-specific love songs would be political, and they were a pop band.
Quote 1: Bell has always been very forthright about his gayness - "I don't want to go out of my way to talk about it, but I'm not going to pretend I'm not. I won't portray a heterosexual in the videos, for example, and we're consciously doing lyrics that can apply to either sex, but I'm not going to bore people rigid with it either."
Source: Melody Maker, May 31, 1986 (Andy speaking).
Quote 2: "I'd like people to be able to see the songs as 'gay love songs' if they want to. It's good to sing about forbidden love, but it's up to everyone to choose their own interpretation."
Source: Record Mirror, May 7, 1988 (Andy speaking).
Quote 3: While some gay critics have taken Erasure to task for not exploring queer themes in their songs, Bell says their music isn't intended to be message-oriented. "We're a pop band, we write pop songs. We're not a political-statement band. I think to write a gender-specific love song is very narrow. It crosses over into slushiness."
Source: Update, December 1991 (Andy speaking).
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Furthermore, in the 90s, Andy began to acknowledge some of his own fluid desires and fantasies. Both he and Vince linked those fantasies to the songs he was writing.
Quote 1: "I now get the feeling more than ever that I don't want to be part of an apartheid system. I don't want to cut myself off completely and shut down those sexual antennae. Saying you are gay and making a stand is not as important as it used to be. People used to have to say it because it was so denied, but now we've gone beyond. Now we don't have to stick up for anybody like that so I'll try not to sign my name in blood."
[Andy] is pleased with his new-found sexuality. "I think that sensuality has really moved into the songs and for the first time I feel sexy. Vince is aware of this too. And it's good that he's aware of it."
Source: Vox, June 1994 (Andy speaking - this quote comes after some fantasies about women).
Quote 2: "It would probably be more true to say that Andy would steer clear of writing a song that would just be seen as a gay love song. I'm not saying it bothers me if people do interpret the songs that way, but I wouldn't want our music to be reduced to just that. Few songwriters would. Besides, Andy's lyrics have changed over the years and are now more dream-like and less specific, particularly on the new album. And even Andy doesn't only dream about men."
Source: The Irish Times, April 7, 1988 (Vince speaking).
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Finally, the unspecified gender in Erasure’s love songs doesn’t just apply to the love interest; it also applies to the singer. In interviews, Andy has said that he wants his voice and his persona to be "androgynous" and "neither male nor female", and that he wants "to be a man and a woman" when he sings. This means that Erasure’s love songs are sung by, and directed to, someone whose gender is unspecified and changeable.
Quote 1: "AB: Well I’ve always loved female singers, which is quite typical, and I’ve always felt from the very first time I heard my voice recorded on a machine, that I sounded like a girl. So when I’m singing, I always feel I want to be a man and a woman – going between the two of them, so it’s almost asexual, bisexual, whatever – so you can’t be pigeonholed. It’s the same as being both black and white. Also, as we do electronic music, we’re not part of lad culture, MTV, guitar culture; we come through clubs and various ways."
Source: BBC - Tyne - Entertainment, April 26, 2006 (Andy speaking).
Quote 2: Playing the queer character of Torsten with an LGBT+ theater company has also allowed Bell to further explore his desire to keep his music open to all listeners. “The thing with my singing voice is I’ve never wanted it to be male or female,” he says. “I’ve wanted it to be androgynous. It’s for everyone.”
Source: Rolling Stone, April 10, 2019 (Andy speaking).
Slide 9
Thanks for reading all the way through! You get an Erasure snuggle! Stay tuned for Part 2, focusing on their visual art (videos, stage shows, and more)!