About the Project

“The first time I heard an oopsie gaysie was in 2015, as I searched through old big band recordings. I pressed play on a song by a vocalist I hadn’t heard of before, and I couldn’t believe my ears. She was singing about wanting to marry another woman.

I felt shocked, elated, and I had so many questions about this seemingly rare find from almost a hundred years ago. In a world still filled with straight songs... How? Why? And where could I listen to more!? As I searched through old albums, my MP3 collection slowly grew to dozens of similar songs. It became a passion to find moments of queerness from the past, though I still couldn’t answer my first two questions.

After months of searching, I came across JD Doyle’s radio show on cross vocals. It was then I knew that I wasn’t alone in my fascination and I finally had a name for these songs that had become so important to me. As years went by my collection grew into the hundreds, and I gradually started to piece together the many complicated factors that shaped the music. I knew this project was worth sharing with the world.

With an endless thanks to the Oopsie Gaysie team for helping turn this vision into a reality, I hope this archive and its accompanying exhibits can serve as a resource for many people and for many reasons: for those researching or curious about music and/or LGBTQ history, as a place for DJs, dancers, and musicians to go to thoughtfully expand their playlists and repertoires, and most of all, for other queer people to find songs from the past that mean something just as special to them.”