From the Smiths to Britpop.

Musician Emily Capell talks about her early influences, cheesy ’80s pop and a song that lead to a series of appearances on the gay cabaret scene.

“Yeah. I write about what I know … what I do. You won’t believe the amount of people that actually ask me, ‘Is your dad really a Smiths fan?’… of course he is! Can you imagine if he wasn’t … ‘no, he really likes Take That’.”

The Smiths, ‘Reel Around The Fountain’

To mark LGBT History Month, 2013, Polari asked its contributors to recall a song that had an impact their own stories.

” My unspoken feelings seemed to be woven throughout the lyrics of the songs we listened to that night and my secret was being decoded and laid bare in the music.”

Champion of the Bear Subculture.

Polari talks to punk bear Eric Kuhlmann about the bear culture in Australia, the band Armpit Stench, and his upcoming Edith Piaf cabaret.

“I’m working on a new show at the moment which is gonna be Edith Piaf songs, which I’m translating into English. It’s going to be called Edith Woof. It’s going to be a bear character, taking things from Edith Piaf’s life and turning it into a bear story .”

Polari’s Editor Writes His Coming Out Story.

This is the first in a new Polari Magazine series.

“Maurice armed me with a phrase that I still use to this day, for the most part because it’s so funny: “I’m an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort,” as the hero tells his therapist. It was that exact phrase I used when I came out to my friend.”

Morrissey, Piccadilly Palare

The Readers Wifes first choice of song with LGBT significance. For UK LGBT History Month.

The 1990 single ‘Piccadilly Palare’ sees the bard inhabit the tragic-comic lives of 1950s rent boys in the seedy West End of the capital’s good old bad old days.