Pride is a festival that has many platforms and different elements which all contribute to the celebration of life, love and being yourself. Pivotal to this more than anything is the music that tends to inadvertently become the soundtrack to not only the celebration but summer as well.

Previous years and celebrations have warranted and adopted their own important soundtracks and many artists, gay or otherwise have made their contribution. We all know the familiar ones: Lady Gaga, Madonna, Cher, Adam Lambert, and Tegan and Sara. There’s a whole list of musicians whose music has been adopted as anthems for standing up, being yourself, and most of all being proud.

However there’s one artist that won’t get any play on any of the radio stations and won’t be as visible, however for many reasons have become just as important. That group was Suede, one of the precursors to the Britpop movement in the early 90’s. Influenced by the glam of Bowie, the grittiness of the Smiths and the art of the Pet Shop Boys, Suede’s musical start in the early 90’s garnered them a lot of attention from the UK press. And while Oasis was the brains and muscle of Britpop, Suede was definitely the sexuality of the genre. Anyone who listens to “The Drowners” and “Metal Mickey” would immediately get it. Suede’s self-titled debut was released to immediate fanfare, however it would be Dog Man Star that would be a game changer for them musically.

I was turned on to the sound in 1997, just before I’d begun the coming out process. I’d happened to hear the song “Beautiful Ones” from Coming Up, their most communicative record with a wider audience. There was something in vocalist Brett Anderson’s lyrics that just oozed sex, all for admitting that he was a “bisexual man who’d never had a homosexual experience” Coming Up was a phenomenal album. All encasing songs about lost weekends, lost relationships and more importantly the longing that summed up real life. I identified heavily with Coming Up. It was the right album at the right time, and while Suede was petitioning for a wider audience, I was slowly coming out a couple people at the time. The disc was always in heavy rotation on my discman, listening to it while studying, or while walking back and forth to campus.

In 1998 they released Sci-Fi Lullabies, a two disc collection of their best b-sides from the first three albums. It not only had a huge collection of songs that could have easily made up the tracklisting for any Suede album, it also served as a platform for me to write short stories based on the songs that made up the collection. Some of those stories became just that. While other stories came across as messy, incomplete tangents that didn’t seem as structurally cohesive. (However I’ve been thinking about dusting off some of these stories and maybe reworking them. You may get to see some of them soon.)

Head Music was released in 1999. And it was definitely a more groove oriented album, leaning heavier on the electronic side than Suede’s previous efforts. In 2002 they released their final album A New Morning. And while personally speaking it wasn’t a bad album (it still had a lot of top tracks on it such as “Lonely Girls,” “Obsessions” and “Lost In TV”), it served as a disjointed effort that ultimately signaled the end of the band.

I couldn’t help but be excited when I heard that Suede had released a new album. When I picked up Bloodsports, I’d felt transported back to a time where the only reason why Blur really mattered was because of their hot drummer Dave Rowntree. Suede was very much on my gay pride playlist. And because I probably will not hear them at an of the festivities this summer, I’ll just have to make do and play the new album and Coming Up cranked really loud on my system at home.

Happy Pride everyone!