The term “lesbian celebrity” was once an oxymoron. Openly lesbian musicians, most famously the signers and signees of the Washington, D.C. label Olivia, often worked in an insular and separatist manner, making and distributing music among themselves while maintaining a keen skepticism of the mainstream. Not until the 1990s did lesbians start to become a visible, marketable demographic, a commercial watershed marked by events like k.d. lang holding Cindy Crawford on the cover of Vanity Fair in 1993 and Ellen DeGeneres coming out on television in 1997. More recently, the banner of proud lesbian cultural icon has been taken up by Hayley Kiyoko, the former Disney actor turned pop singer. For almost a decade, Kiyoko has helped to forge a consistent place for women who love women within pop’s contemporary mainstream, tethering her success to a politics of visibility and representation. Across her self-directed music videos, Kiyoko has brought underrepresented identities into her mainstream ambit.
Unfortunately, lesbian celebrities are still scarce, and as such, Kiyoko is often called upon as a delegate for queer women. In the choreographed intimacy of her videos and her recently publicized relationship with former Bachelor star Becca Tilley, she provides a public template for the private lives of young fans. Each June, she appears for timely cover stories, granting gracious soundbites about self-love and queer joy. Today, there’s a striking disconnect between the radical community figurehead of Kiyoko’s interviews and the steamy vapidity of her music. Her lyrics tend toward well-worn and impersonal platitudes, and you’ll have to dig beyond the music itself for any sense of transcendence or revelation. You’re more likely to find poignancy and power in fan comments on Kiyoko’s Instagram account than in her lyric book.
Her second album Panorama—inspired by a shift toward healthy, conscientious living after a period of years dogged by mental and physical health issues—intends to display Kiyoko’s personality beyond the pablum. Instead, its theme of embracing the journey and the struggle, rather than the destination, feels as bromidic and remote as a commercial for therapy. Kiyoko hides behind well-trodden pop star guises: From “Found My Friends”’ supersized take on E•MO•TION-era Carly Rae Jepsen to the metrically perfect pilfering of Taylor Swift’s hiccupy flow on “Well…,” the pop genre is in control of Kiyoko rather than the other way around. Instead of defining a unique sound, Panorama carries the unmistakable metallic tang of reverse engineering.
Kiyoko’s 2018 debut Expectations was filled with euphoric walls of sound that made your heart feel as though it were in congruence with the world, reminders of her theater-kid youth spent listening to Arcade Fire and Coldplay. This time, she collaborated with Danja, the superproducer famed for his work with Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, who encouraged her to make her vocals more prominent. Panorama has fewer such cinematic moments, but when they appear—as on “Found My Friends”—the production makes ample space for Kiyoko’s voice. This isn’t necessarily a good thing. Kiyoko isn’t the strongest or most distinctive singer; more nose than diaphragm, her vocal personality tends to make everything sound like an anti-emergency. This has suited her music in the past, as on the 2018 single “Curious,” where she played the role of an ex-lover trying to appear disaffected by her former girlfriend’s new relationship. But when she attempts a dramatic, emotionally sincere vocal line, she misses the mark. As her voice wades flatly into the stacked nighttime-drive chords of “Found My Friends,” it feels like speeding into a traffic jam.
The unintentionally anhedonic delivery squanders the album’s more galvanizing moments. “Loving you is all I wanna know,” she sings through the sputtering embellishments and weeping violin of “Supposed to Be,” with all the urgency of a hotel receptionist. Even when the lyrics point toward desperation, there’s no frisson. Here, Kiyoko has achieved the previously unimaginable: a lesbian love song that feels devoid of intensity.
It’s a shame that Panorama’s artistry doesn’t match Kiyoko’s accolades. But she shines on the album’s best songs, “Sugar at the Bottom” and “For the Girls,” a pair of summery, percussion-driven jingles that make use of a bass-as-lead approach. Both revolve around slick hooks rather than soaring choruses, in a way that’s commensurate with someone like Dua Lipa, who crams syllables into a tight metrical structure, turning tongue-twisters into refrains. Kiyoko’s voice sounds absorptive rather than detached, and for a moment, the most interesting thing about her is the music she’s making.
