Jordy’s ‘BOY’ Review: Vibrantly Queer
BOY (★★★☆☆). As he tells it, one of his earliest memories is how much he wanted to see his own experiences and desires reflected in the love songs he heard, and now that he is in a position to do something about it, he is going out of his way to make up the difference.Buoyed by a GLAAD nomination and the viral success of his recent single “Story of A Boy,” Jordy is determined to be the queer artist he wished he could have heard on the radio as a kid.Being an openly queer artist is not quite enough for Jordy, who goes out of his way to make BOY an overtly queer album. “Story Of A Boy” is his queer reimagining of Nine Days’ “Absolutely (Story of a Girl).” With its perky synths, the track sounds like it could have come right out of the early-2000s — even the subject matter of a boy pining for another boy, while it would have been unlikely to have gotten much radio play at the time, feels timeless.The single very much sets the tone for the rest of an album full of tracks that take on the well-worn themes of love, insecurity, yearning, and heartbreak, and puts a decidedly gay spin on them.Queerness may be the thread tying most of the songs together, but this is not so much an album about queerness as it is about Jordy.
He is unabashedly sincere and lets his personality shine throughout BOY, more often than not opening up with surprising bluntness.“Good Not Great” lays out his insecurities and the many ways he tries to talk himself out of them.
He also gets frank on “Dry Spell” about his relationship woes, laying out his own contradictions between his desire for quick gratification and wondering what he could possibly do to pull himself out of it.
