The Year in Gay Music: Rufus Rocks, Sisters Soar, and more!

Every year, Best Music crib sheets — from Rolling Stone’s plush Manhattan offices to a blogger’s dingy basement hovel — string together chicken bones from the plucked axiom of “oh, this year was a tough year for the music industry.”

2007 was a tough year for the music industry. Album sales continued to plunge down the proverbial potty as Radiohead’s great white beacon of hope amounted to releasing In Rainbows online to grubby-handed downloaders. Britney Spears continued her descent into craziness while the fourth quarter album releases are slim pickens. Yada, yada, yada and end scene.

The good news? However bad it was for the industry, 2007 wasn’t a tough year for music itself.

In fact, it was a sterling year for gay themed releases, from Rufus Wainwright’s richly operatic Release the Stars to the Brit-pop gay invasion of Mika, Patrick Wolf and The Feeling’s Dan Gillespie. There was also the trippy discothèque punk from LCD Soundsystem (North American Scum) and French new wavers with a love for Michael Jackson and Jesus Christ (Justice’s D.A.N.C.E.).

With Christmas right around the corner, AfterElton.com has checked its list twice for the Best Music of 2007. We also sniffed out a few stinkers along the way. They can expect coal in their stockings.

Artist of the year

Rufus Wainwright

With his double-disc CD Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall scheduled to drop just in time for the holidays, Rufus Wainwright caps his orchestra-pop trifecta with a deliciously solid homage to timeless gay icon Judy Garland. His album, Release the Stars, was unlike anything else on the pop landscape with bombast melodies and a sweepingly cinematic score. However, some people weren’t firmly in Wainwright’s corner. “I’ve always been a big Judy fan and didn’t need Liza’s approval,” Wainwright said in an interview with HX Magazine. “I think she will come around eventually — if she knows what’s good for her,” he added.

Best Album

The Magic Position
Patrick Wolf

Bisexual folktronica artist Patrick Wolf crafted seamlessly smart indie-pop with his second release, The Magic Position. Wolf bristled at comparisons to fellow gauche Brit, Mika, calling his music, “over-marketed, expensive, heartless tacky rubbish.” But Wolf’s music was filled with a glam-pop richness from the wall-of-sound horns of the titular track to the breathlessly gorgeous neo-cabaret of “The Stars.” Wolf even managed a brassy cover of Kate Bush’s “Running Up that Hill” with an aching sadness worth more than his 24 years. NME crowed that Patrick Wolf is the second coming of David Bowie. But as The Magic Position proves, Wolf is an artist who’s fearlessly comfortable in his own skin; his sound and impeccable style is all his own.

Best Indie Album

Cryptograms
Deerhunter

After releasing the bulgingly aggressive Turn It Up, Faggot in 2005, Atlanta psych-rock act Deerhunter cranked up the shoegaze for their breakthrough, Cryptograms this year. These guys offer shoot-from-the-hip crunchy guitars, spiteful feedback and enough ambience to make Thurston Moore proud. The nearly wordless songs amount to an exercise in reverb as openly gay frontman Bradford Cox “tried to capture a feeling of solitude.” He succeeded.