LISTEN: Joan Armatrading’s 1979 ode to drag queens is somehow even more relevant today
Songfacts interview, she had just seen someone off to the airport when she decided to go for an extended taxi ride around New York. “I was talking to the taxi driver and he says, ‘Have you ever seen…’ whatever this place was in New York.
And, I said, ‘No, I haven’t.’ So, he took me to this place, and it’s a view that I’ve never seen before because I don’t even know where it was, so I can’t even say to somebody, ‘Take me there again.’” One stop led to another, and Armatrading ended up around 42nd Street and Broadway where she saw gay men dressed up in their “Rosie gear.” “There were all these gay guys and they were in their little shoes and their little shorty shorts.
And that’s where I got ‘Rosie’ from, watching all the young boys in their kind of Rosie gear. That’s how I came up with ‘Rosie,’” she explained. “And, I have to say, the taxi driver didn’t charge me any more than I paid for going to the airport.”The drive was certainly worth every dime, and with warmth and melodic storytelling, Armatrading painted a very queer-centric picture of what it was like to be young and gay on the streets of New York City at that time.“He has little red feet/His stockin’s in his shoes/Lipstick and rouge on his face/He has his hair piled high/Has a red umbrella/And carries his head in the sky,” she sings before launching into the chorus. “And I said ‘Awe Rosie, don’t you do that to the boys/Don’t you come on so willing/Don’t you come on so strong/It can be so chillin’/When you act so willin’.”Over a decades-spanning career, Armatrading’s music has never gone out of style because of her eclectic point of view as a songwriter and a musician.
