Passionate Love Songs for My Queer Crushes

Do you have any love songs that make you think of specific people?

When I hear certain songs, they remind me of certain crushes. I don’t have a song for every guy I fell for, but I have it for a number of them. The song might have been an earworm when I was infatuated with them.

Just for fun, I’ll share some songs and the crushes I associated with them.

I call them my “queer” crushes, not because they were all queer (unfortunately), but my crushes on them were definitely queer. Let’s get it on!

Taylor Swift’s “You Belong With Me”

In Taylor Swift’s song, a girl is in love with her neighbour, who is in an unhappy relationship with a cheerleader. The girl next door (played by Taylor) feels like she is the one who understands him, they have things in common, so what is he doing with that other girl?

The song is catchy, heartbreaking, and sweet. But in my case, I was deluded and living in my head. In my first year of university, I met a handsome Thai guy. Let’s call him Denny. At the time, I believed I was a cisgender heterosexual woman.

Denny already had a girlfriend back home. Honestly, I didn’t know what I was thinking. But we never did anything that crossed the line. We were close friends in the first semester, and I believed we were kindred souls.

Yet, in the second semester, he started hanging out in a different friend group, and spent a lot of time with this girl (they were platonic friends). I was very jealous of her — even more so than his actual girlfriend in Thailand.

I don’t know how or why, but I soon stopped speaking to him, and even blocked him on Facebook. To be clear, I rarely block people. I wasn’t even sure why I did it.

But I do feel ashamed of my behavior. He hadn’t done anything wrong, and my crush on him wasn’t that all-consuming. Nevertheless, I truly don’t wish to speak to him anymore. And I didn’t want to face the fact that I had destroyed our friendship.

Linkin Park’s “Leave Out All the Rest”

Linkin Park’s song was also tied to Denny. There’s something so poignant about “Leave Out All the Rest.” Just look at the chorus:

When my time comes, forget the wrong that I’ve done
Help me leave behind some reasons to be missed
Don’t resent me, and when you’re feeling empty
Keep me in your memory, leave out all the rest
Leave out all the rest.

The song rings with so much regret and sadness. It’s tempting to assume that I resonated with the song because of my guilt over Denny, for ghosting him and wrecking our relationship. Yet, I believe this song goes deeper than that.

There’s a sense of yearning for a better story, to be with loved ones than to be without them. It feels otherworldly, in a mournful way.

I don’t know if Denny identified as straight. But it’s surreal to think that I had a crush on him when I believed I was a girl. My real identity is close to gay trans boy — I’m nonbinary.

Linkin Park’s “New Divide”

Yes, it’s Linkin Park again! But the circumstances for this crush were totally different. Back in high school, I worked with a boy on a class project. Let’s call him Ronet. Our class was named Theory of Knowledge (TOK), which was all about questioning your sources and thinking critically. We did our presentation on how subjective the Nobel Prize award judgments were.

Our teacher gave us a 19 out of 20, which I was very proud of. In the presentation, I had fun showing my classmates how William Faulkner’s sentence went on for pages with no punctuation…Faulkner is a Nobel Prize laureate.

My presentation partner, Ronet, was a shy boy with low self-esteem. He uttered many dark things that I found fascinating. But I was an ignorant kid and didn’t know that this was depression. He eventually dropped out of high school, and we never heard from him again.

The strange thing was that I didn’t have feelings for him while we were still classmates. It was only after I got into university that I thought more about him, and he gradually became an important person in my life.

Was I in love with the idea of him rather than with the real him? Maybe. You could argue that what I felt was sympathy, not genuine love. But I have trouble telling the difference between romantic love and other feelings, anyway.

Nonetheless, I dreamed about him often, and he inspired many of the fiction characters I wrote. I even wrote some gay romance starring him and my alter ego.

The reason why I connected him with Linkin Park’s New Divide, was because the Transformers was his favorite show. “New Divide” was the theme song of the second Transformers movie. Every time I sing this song in karaoke, I would think of Ronet.

Here are some lyrics:

In every loss in every lie
In every truth that you deny
And each regret and each goodbye
Was a mistake too great to hide
And your voice was all I heard
That I get what I deserve.

Is it just me, or am I drawn to songs with themes of regret? I do regret taking Ronet for granted in high school. We were sort of friends. But I could have been more proactive and responsive.

Vividly, I recall going on a biology field trip. My teacher secretly asked me to look out for Ronet, since he was severely depressed. She trusted that I was mature and sensible, so she put me in his group. I felt an elevated sense of self-importance, of course.

On the trip, there were a few times where he clearly wanted some attention. I don’t mean romantically, but just as two people connecting. Unfortunately, I was a little distant. Not because I disliked him, but because I missed my best friend. The teachers had placed her in a different group. So I was grumpy and didn’t feel like talking to Ronet.

Of all the mistakes I’ve made in life, this might be the biggest thing I’d like to go back in time for. If I took my friend more seriously, then maybe he wouldn’t have to drop out of school. Or perhaps my friendship wouldn’t have made a difference. Who knows?

Troye Sivan’s “Talk Me Down”

Despite the gloomy (but beautiful) song by Troye Sivan, this was one of my happier, more wholesome crushes on this list.

Troye’s song is about two boys who grew up as childhood friends and became lovers. One boy was played by Troye. The other boy had a violently homophobic dad, who forced them to break up.

The music video shows the latter weeping over his father’s grave. On the surface, it looks like the guy is in grief that he lost his dad, and he now has a girlfriend standing next to him. And Troye, heartbroken, is about to jump off a cliff.

However, I’ve heard of an alternative reading: the man in the grave is actually Troye. Otherwise, the guy wouldn’t cry so hard and look so devastated. Troye might be the invisible ghost, as he had killed himself after his lover dumped him for a girl, thanks to his homophobic father.

Both scenarios are dark and depressing, but neither have anything to do with my crush or our relationship. Maybe I connected him with this song, because I listened to it repeatedly while I had a crush on him.

I went to a queer Asian youth workshop, and my crush, Adrian (not his real name), was one of the facilitators. Before Adrian, I had never met a “passing” trans man who was out to me before. So I was fascinated and wished I could look so masculine one day.

Adrian soon took me under his wing. It was thanks to his referral that I got a trans family doctor, which made my medical transitioning much easier.

Moreover, Adrian was incredibly generous and bought me two chest binders…Long story, but he refused to accept payment from me and insisted on giving them to me as gifts. He said he wanted to pay it forward and help a fellow Asian trans person. Adrian is Vietnamese and I’m Chinese.

I remember being mesmerised by how handsome he was, too. He was breathtaking. What’s more, Adrian was the first guy I had sexual feelings for. Perhaps it was because I started taking testosterone, which increased my libido. I’m somewhere on the asexual spectrum, so I rarely feel sexual attraction.

Clean Bandit’s “Symphony”

Finally, we have Clean Bandit’s “Symphony.” I was on Grindr, a gay dating app. My success in finding a partner was limited, but there was a guy I grew quite close to. He and I were both English majors, which made talking to him extra exciting. He was also a fellow pokemon fan.

Our original plan was to be friends with benefits. That didn’t happen, but I fell in love with him anyway. He was the first guy I ever confessed to. But his reaction was to unfriend me and vanish from my life.

While I was in love with him, though, I often thought of Clean Bandit’s lyrics:

And when your song is on repeat,
And I’m dancing on to your heartbeat,
And when you’re gone I feel incomplete,
So if you want the truth…

I just want to be part of your symphony!
Will you hold me tight and not let go?
Symphony!
Like a love song on the radio.

In hindsight, I feel so dumb that I believed we were a great match. I could blame it on Clean Bandit’s song, but I know it was my fault for letting my fantasies run wild.

The song itself featured two black men who were lovers. One of them died in a bike crash, and the other man, who is a conductor, is left to grieve. He later composes a gorgeous symphony to honor his partner’s memory.

Surprising Discoveries

I am dismayed that all of the above were sad songs. And I also noticed a shift in queerness.

Taylor Swift’s song was an unhappy straight romance. Linkin Park’s were not about romance. “New Divide” was about the Transformers robots, and “Leave Out All the Rest” had the Linkin Park band floating about in outer space. And lastly, Troye Sivan’s and Clean Bandit’s were tragic gay romances.

Maybe this was a coincidence, but for the Taylor Swift and Linkin Park songs, I got the earworms (and crushes) when I believed I was a cisgender heterosexual girl. But for Troye Sivan’s and Clean Bandit’s gay love songs, I had already figured out that I was trans and queer.

But why did my songs dwell on such sorrow and despair? Is it because I’ve never experienced requited love before?

I’ve never been in a relationship, and on the only three occasions I confessed to someone, I was turned down. There was only one person who ever asked me out, but I turned her down because I wasn’t into girls.

An even bigger surprise is that my current crush has no songs tied to him. Weird, considering how much grief I feel.

My crush is a friend I’ve known for four years. And before you ask, yes, I did tell him how I felt back in August.

He told me he was straight.

We’re still good friends and talk occasionally. But holy, I’m stunned that even after three months, my feelings for him still haven’t faded.

Over to you

Do you have songs you associate with particular crushes in your life? Which songs and why? Are you also surprised that I have no song associated with my current crush?

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Originally published in Prism & Pen on Nov 10, 2023