Glad to Be Gay
| "Glad to Be Gay" | ||||
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| Song by Tom Robinson Band | ||||
| from the album Rising Free | ||||
| Released | February 1978 | |||
| Length | 5:04 | |||
| Label | EMI Records | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Tom Robinson | |||
| Rising Free track listing | ||||
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"Glad to Be Gay" is a song by British punk rock/new wave group Tom Robinson Band. It is one of their defining songs, in addition to being considered Britain's national gay anthem since its release.
The song was originally written by Tom Robinson for a London gay pride parade in 1976, inspired by the directness and confrontational style of the Sex Pistols. An out gay singer, he subsequently formed the Tom Robinson Band with three straight musicians.
Robinson said that he wrote the song to the tune of Sara by Bob Dylan: "But I realised I couldn't rip off Dylan, so I wrote new music, added the chorus and gave it that more upbeat swing".
"Glad to Be Gay" is built around four verses criticizing British society's attitudes towards gay people. In the first verse, it criticizes the British police for raiding gay pubs for no reason at all, once homosexuality had been decriminalized since the 1967 Sexual Offences Act.
In the second verse, it points to the hypocrisy of Gay News being prosecuted for obscenity instead of porn magazines like magazines Playboy or the tabloid The Sun which published photographs of topless girls on Page 3. It also criticizes the way homosexual people are portrayed in other parts of the press, especially in conservative newspapers News of the World and Sunday Express. On the third verse, it points out the extreme consequences of homophobia, such as violence against LGBT people.
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