Eli Lieb | Boys Who Like Boys / 2021

show me

by Douglas Messerli

 

Paul David Hager (mixer), Emily Lazar at The Lodge Mastering (master), Eli Lieb (music and performance) Boys Who Like Boys / 2021 [3 minutes]

 

We no longer have directors of music videos evidently, but only mixers and masters. Nonetheless, Eli Lieb’s 2021 music video Boys Who Like Boys is most definitely a gay work. I have now created a kind of limit regarding my gay music videos. If the singer, like Lieb, is even known to be gay but sings a song without any aural or visual gay referents that might not be equally applied to a heterosexual relationship, it does not belong in my pages.

      Only in a song such as this, blatantly gay, talking about or visually displaying gay images—this video does both—will I include it. I’ve had enough already about imagining gay encounters through music, even though Lieb, openly gay, makes it quite clear he is generally singing about other men. Talk about it, fine, but show me, I now demand.

      And in his 2021 video Boys Who Like Boys he does precisely that, serving up a host of images of men in LGBTQ-colored tutus, ready men with Love posted on their T-shirts, and cute guys perfectly ready to go straight to bed in a song laced with a plea of total gay acceptance:

     Lieb regularly crosses over to the kinds of songs that any girl might imagine that she is the subject. But when this gay man finally expresses his true loves, despite the pop-lite songs, he comes into his own, and sings quite beautiful ballads of gay love. That is what makes him interesting, despite his own attempts, at moments, to whitewash his gay heritage. He’s a sweet and handsome midwestern boy, who needs to keep making it clear that he’s not waiting in his Iowa home (actually he now lives in Los Angeles) for some chick to come calling. This video makes it quite obvious that he is one of those boys “who like boys.”

 

“When I was younger no one could stop me from acting like a kid

Was who I was there was no pretending lord knows the things I did

Then I got older a little stronger and I'd hold hands with guys

And walk around the cold concrete with a wall of judgment eyes

So what's your problem with boys who like boys

Maybe we just want a little love

Boys who like boys

Know one holds you like a big man does

Go keep on hating I'll just keep dancing

With boys who like boys

Yeah I just want a little love

And now you've made it your little mission to rain on my parade

It wasn't like I woke up one morning and decided to be gay

Look in the mirror and ask the question what are you trying to hide

I hope that you can find it out but I'm gonna live my life

So what's your problem with boys who like boys

Maybe we just want a little love

Boys who like boys

Know one holds you like a big man does

Go keep on hating I'll just keep dancing

With boys who like boys”

 

Los Angeles, March 18, 2025

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2025).