Closeting, PR and the Music Industry

Closeting, PR and The Music Industry 

The music industry, alongside the movie industry has a dark past with ghosts of formerly closeted boyband members hanging around it. There has always been an element of darkness surrounding the music industry and with more being exposed about abusive practices within the music industry, it’s unsurprising that the past is being re-examined and more is being discovered about the closeting of musicians within the machines of the industry they work in. 

Sony a deep, dark past where many former acts who’ve been signed under the Sony families have been queer and closeted. Some of those speak fondly of their times in the bands they were in, but others like Lance Bass, Mark Feehily and Johnathan Knight talk of the impacts their closets had on their mental health. These men have all spoken out about how pressure from management and their labels led them to believe that staying in the closet was the best for their career and their band’s futures. 

What does it mean to closet an artist? Closeting means that a person's sexual identity is hidden, either by them or by someone else. Forced closeting is when someone isn’t allowed to come out due to outside forces that enforce a closet around them. This is something that can be done via schools, families, situations or managers, labels and PR people conditioning youngsters to believe that to come out would damage their own marketability or careers. 

Closeting is also another facet of control. If you control who people come out to then you control the person being closeted. This is a form of abuse because there is always a threat of being outed to fans and the media alike which could cause backlash against the act from the general public, especially if the artist has already stated that they are straight, Artists in the closet always fear being outed and that is horrifying because they shouldn’t have to fear coming out, but because of the conditioning, manipulation and coercive control of labels and management companies, there will always be a modicum of fear associated with coming out. 

The closet is tightened around celebrities by record labels and management companies encouraging or forcing their clients to engage in PR relationships and publicity stunts. This is done to keep the artist's sexuality a secret from the public and to ensure that the tactics of the label and management company are never uncovered. Another way to ensure that people stay in the closet is to give them a long term relationship, otherwise known as a beard. This was talked about by Max Clifford who worked with Simon Cowell and subsequently worked with One Direction in the early days of their career before he was arrested and charged with sexual assault. [not sure that he worked with 1D - you might know better]. 

Many gay men are given fake girlfriends for PR purposes, to cover the tracks of their real relationships or to closet them. They are given the girlfriends to allow them to answer the questions of whether they’re in a relationship and to give them a plausible person for songs to be written about. Most of those who’ve come out post boyband speak of management control and how they feared losing fans or were conditioned by the label and management company that coming out would cost their careers. 

Conditioning means training someone to expect a certain outcome without really thinking about it. This is important because when we talk of closeting there are many factors to consider, but young men chasing stardom are particularly vulnerable to manipulation, coercion and psychological abuse, especially if they are isolated from family and friends and are repeatedly told that they are wrong, that their sexuality is something to be ashamed of and that it’s something that needs to be hidden because it would lose them the support of their fans. 

This puts an incredible amount of pressure onto the young person in question and allows management to coerce them into staying closeted. Another way to force artists to stay closted is through the image clause of the contracts that are signed by singers when joining a record label. If a record label is paying you a million pounds and you’re a sixteen, seventeen or eighteen year old boy, how much care and attention would you pay to the contracted terms and conditions before you signed? None I’d fathom and then suddenly you’re in a relationship with your bandmate and you can’t come out because the label owns the rights to your public image. 

What does this mean for you as an artist? It means that they control your public image and if you coming out breaches the terms of that public image then bam, bye bye singing career and bye bye any hope you have of succeeding in the music industry. All three big labels are interlinked and if you are fired for breach of contract then it’s highly unlikely that you’d get hired by another label, so bye bye dreams of being a singer. 

You see how easy it is to force someone to follow the arbitrary rules forced onto them by record labels who only care about their bottom line, not about their clients’ physical, mental and emotional well being. There’s also another aspect to this coercive control. If you are in a boyband and happen to be in a relationship with another member of that band, or even if it’s just you and your friends in the band, the careers of your bandmates will also be threatened if you fail to follow the rules. They could, at the label, threaten to expel you from the band, or shelve the band so all of you are stuck on the shelf gathering dust without any choice or chance of moving on until the terms of the contract have been fulfilled. 

PR relationships are then brought in to enforce the closet and artists are paired up with people needing exposure in the media to sell a narrative. If you take Harry Styles as an example then you’ll see his dating history reads like a rolodex of epic proportions when in fact it’s long been suspected that Harry and Louis Tomlinson of One Direction (Larry) have been in a relationship. They have corresponding tattoos, lyrics that answer each other and were openly infatuated with each other early on in One Direction. 

However, it’s not just Larry who’ve been closeted over the years. Many artists have been closeted and while some are out now, many others are not. This isn’t just a music industry problem, it’s an entertainment industry problem as there are models, actors, singers, TV stars and more who are closeted and are advised by unscrupulous managers to stay closeted because it will affect their careers. Gay Hollywood actors fear coming out because they fear being typecast in only queer roles and they live with the daily fear of being outed, so it’s definitely a problem that’s wider than just the music industry. Kate Winslet has stated that she knows at least four male actors who aren’t out and are scared of being outed because of the homophobia that prevails in the world. 

Closeting and forced PR relationships are decided by publicists and marketing departments and can have an extremely negative impact on the affected person’s  physical, emotional and physical health. Artists forced into these situations can dissociate, can have increased anxiety levels, poor self worth and can begin self medicating through alcohol or drugs to numb the pain and trauma they are suffering. 

Many formerly closeted boybanders speak about the damage that was inflicted upon them by managers, labels and PR people in conditioning them to believe that they were better off in the closet. George Shelley, a member of boyband Union J, came out in 2018, six years after the band were formed and stated that Modest Management and Syco music (a subsidiary of Sony) conditioned him to believe he would harm the band if he came out as gay. His bandmate Jaymi Hensely was encouraged to come out, but only because Sony/ Syco and Modest were facing a massive backlash from the One Direction fans over Harry and Louis and the closeting that was witnessed in their case. Jaymi was actually used as a tool by those responsible to rubbish claims about the One Direction boys being closeted and was touted as the face of queer musicians supported by Syco and Sony. 

This was exposed when George came out in 2018 and told his story about how he was coerced to stay in the closet. What this showed was that they were okay having one queer person in the band, but more than one was one too many. This is unfair and ridiculous because it shouldn’t matter what someone's sexuality is, but clearly Sony and Syco were still operating under the rules created many years before. 

Many artists have been closeted over the years and many have come out after their career in the boyband seems to be over, however, no one should be forced into a closet and no one should have to live their life in fear of being punished for being who they are. Isn’t it high time this antiquated practice was stopped? 

Louis Walsh who worked on the X Factor for many years managed the careers of two different boybands and stated in an interview in 2009 that had he known Stephen Gately of Boyzone (RIP) or Mark Feehily of Westlife were gay that he would have thought twice about placing them in the bands. Both Mark and Stephen were incredibly talented vocalists and Mark remains one of the most prominent singers in Westlife to this day, so saying this is disingenuous and discounts the incredible talent these men brought into the bands. 

Another famous boybander has come out in recent years as non-binary, AJ McLean of the Backstreet Boys and AJ had huge struggles over the years with alcohol which isn’t surprising now, knowing that he was closeted in his identity. Duncan James from Blue is another singer who was closeted and would pretend to date female celebrity friends. Duncan even went so far as to have a child with a former partner but has since come out, so children do not mean people are straight and using a child as a tool to confirm or reaffirm straightness is antiquated and unacceptable. 

Over the course of this article, what’s been shown is that labels closet people for many reasons, some of which are financial, others control and lastly because they own the public narrative surrounding their acts. It’s high time that the courts stepped up and enforced the human rights act which states that people may not be discriminated against on grounds of their sexuality. To do this is a breach  of the act  and should be punishable by disbandment, excessive fine and jail time. 

Everyone knows closeting is a symptom of a diseased system, but we shouldn’t accept it as commonplace. It can and should be called out. Artists can’t speak out, so we have to. We have to work together to expose the industry and try to change it. We can’t change the past, but those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it over and over again. So let’s work to change the future and make sure that a person’s sexuality isn’t used against them as a method of control, as a stick to beat them with or as a method for closeting them. It should be personal choice whether people come out, and should not be at the whim of people in the media or through being outed by former employees. 

Labels need to end forced closets and management companies need to stop coercing their clients into accepting the closet as the only way to succeed. There are other ways and gay is okay today, tomorrow and next year. 

Behind the Curtains.