Queer culture can be a lot to keep track of. That’s why “The Buzz” brings you everything you missed in queer culture over the past week. This week, we’re talking Lil Nas X, Elliot Page and the wild ride that is Demi Lovato’s new alien show.
→Brace yourselves: a Kidz Bop take on Lil Nas X is coming. The news first went viral when Lil Nas X himself tweeted that a Kidz Bop version of his famously risqué bop “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” was in the works.
And it’s true: the official Kidz Bop 2022 commercial prominently features what looks like a school-set version of the sultry song about giving the devil a very homosexual lap dance.
For the uninitiated, Kidz Bop is a music brand that produces “family-friendly” covers of popular songs, often replacing suggestive lyrics with more neutral ones. Since the series’ launch in 2001, it has produced some iconic moments, like changing “I’ve got a long list of ex-lovers” to “I’ve got a long list of some others” in Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space.”
So obviously social media users were ready to guess what a Kidz Bop spin on a song about having great gay sex would entail.
If you want a glance of what horrors await us, the group has tackled Lil Nas X before with their cover of “Old Town Road.”
And the Moonies, another group that puts out family-friendly versions of pop songs, has already made an ear-splitting version of “Montero (Call Me By Your Name).”
Kidz Bop 2022 is available Oct. 22, so get ready for the lyrical mastery of giving the devil a high-five.
→Demi Lovato’s alien show is here, and it’s a lot. Recap: Demi Lovato, noted non-binary pop star and causer of yogurt drama, says they were abducted by aliens in their sleep in October 2020. This kicked off their fascination with extraterrestrials, and their new show, Unidentified with Demi Lovato, sees them travel around chatting to alien experts about the unknown. Ke$ha even shows up! A case of lesbians allegedly being abducted by aliens in 1953 is discussed! Truly, so much happens.
→This week, notably heterosexual (until this point) Apple+ series The Morning Show gave us hot lesbian Julianna Marguliese kissing Reese Witherspoon. It’s a blessing, and proof that everything’s better with lesbians.
→Zendaya agrees that feminism isn’t feminism if it isn’t intersectional—and that includes trans women.
→No Time To Die star Ben Whishaw wants to shake (not stir) things up by having James Bond be played by a gay actor.
“It would be quite an extraordinary thing,” Whishaw told Attitude. “I really believe that we should be working towards a world where anyone can play anything, and it would be really thrilling if it didn’t matter about someone’s sexuality to take on a role like this.”
→Miss Universe Phillipines just crowned its first openly queer winner, which is a huge deal!
→This week (Oct. 4) marked actress Dakota Johnson’s birthday, meaning we’re coming up on the anniversary of this vital moment in queer TV history:
→Elliot Page showed up at Paris Fashion Week in an oversized Balenciaga ensemble reminiscent of his Met Gala look. The discourse is already strong on this one because apparently people on social media can’t not be weird about famous trans people.
Let the man wear his oversized designer Crocs in peace!
→Grimes says she’s going to start a lesbian space commune, but seems to mostly continue to be doing out-of-touch rich person shit like this.
→Tony Award-winning playwright Matthew López is set to direct a film adaptation of Casey McQuiston’s bestselling novel Red, White and Royal Blue for Amazon Studios. The book follows the son of a U.S. president who falls in love with a British prince.
→Phoebe Bridgers covered the super depressing song from Bo Burnham: Inside to raise money for the Texas Abortion Fund.
→Real Housewife Bethenny Frankel is back at it again with the transphobia, doubling down on her transphobic comments about her daughter’s summer camp.
→The batshit Tom Hardy superhero movie Venom: Let There By Carnage premiered this weekend, so here’s your friendly reminder that it’s canonically a queer story and Venom basically says “gay rights!”