On a rainy Saturday night in June, there’s an audience of about ten people at Montreal’s Blue Dog bar when Gabriel Gaston gets on stage to belt Wheatus’ “Teenage Dirtbag.” Gaston always sings like he’s performing for a crowd of his best friends, and this sets the tone for the night. Blue Dog is a bit of a hole-in-the-wall, but it’s cozy—making it a great environment for Queer Karaoke, a bimonthly event hosted by Gaston and a few friends. As the night goes on, things pick up and the bar fills with Queer Karaoke regulars and newbies. Attendees stroll through the space in death-defying heels, muscle tees and drag makeup, with septum piercings, clacking fans, newsboy caps, bleached brows, masks, noise-cancelling headphones and tattoos of moths, tarot cards and zodiac signs.

Queer Karaoke started at Montreal’s cooperatively owned Bar Milton-Parc in August 2023 as a one-off event put on by current co-host Avery Haley-Lock, who saw a lack of inclusive, accessible and affordable queer nightlife options in the city. The event grew from there, and the team quickly expanded to include friends and karaoke regulars like Gaston and Lil Borger, who helped turn Queer Karaoke into a regular series and a staple of Montreal’s LGBTQ2S+ nightlife. 

The songs performed at Queer Karaoke reflect its diverse community—on a given night you’re liable to hear anything from Weezer, to Robyn’s gay anthem “Dancing On My Own,” to obscure musical theatre and epic five-minute-long ballads, to contemporary radio hits and comedy songs. You’ll definitely hear Chappell Roan; it’s a race to see who gets to perform her single “HOT TO GO!” For a successful performance Borger recommends singing songs everyone knows, but the crowd will support even the weirdest song choices. During one Queer Karaoke event, when someone gets up to sing the early 2000s Moldovan pop single “Dragostea Din Tei” the crowd is confused, but nonetheless dutifully stammers along to the Romanian lyrics, until we reach the chorus and realize we know it: it’s the “numa numa” song, popularized by an early aughts meme.

No matter what you sing, the crowd at Queer Karaoke is generous. Attendees cheer through long musical interludes, dance, scream like they’re at a concert and compliment strangers on their performances. They want to engage, and they want you to succeed and feel good. This atmosphere of support and positivity is largely thanks to the dynamic cast of hosts—particularly Gaston. He’s the kind of person to whom you could be a total stranger, but if you’re performing Joe Jonas and Demi Lovato’s duet “This Is Me,” he will happily pop up from the crowd to be your Joe. 

Gaston explains that fostering a supportive communal space was central to getting Queer Karaoke off the ground and ensuring that everyone feels welcome. “When it was a struggle to get people to sign up, what I would do is aggressively cheer and dance when someone else was singing,” they explain. “I find that a mix of that and low-key making a fool of yourself on stage helps break the ice and [makes] people feel like [they] can try this out, and [they] won’t be laughed at.” With its indulgent, community-focused atmosphere that’s not just queer-pandering but actually queer-forward, Queer Karaoke is helping to expand the meaning of what good, safe and accessible LGBTQ2S+ nightlife can look like in Montreal and beyond.

Nightlife has always been an important outlet for queer people: a way for them to express themselves and foster connections in spaces that they create. Vicky B. Ouellette is the co-founder and director of STUDIO ZX, a Montreal-based organization that highlights marginalized creatives in nightlife. She explains that Quebec’s strong roots in Catholicism made the existence of a nightlife particularly important. “Nightlife was always kind of a sanctuary for marginalized people and for outcasts to be able to meet and feel safe,” she says.

Despite the historic importance of nightlife for the queer community, LGBTQ2S+ spaces across Canada and beyond have been steadily disappearing over the last two decades, spurred by rising rents and increasing costs—and potentially by the popularization of dating and hookup apps, which have reduced the need for in-person cruising. According to Radio-Canada data published in August, there are no explicitly lesbian bars left in Canada. Even in the US, there are currently only thirty-four lesbian bars operating, compared to two hundred in the 1980s. The last lesbian bars in Montreal—Le Drugstore, a huge complex in the Village neighbourhood, and the Royal Phoenix, a bar in the Mile End neighbourhood—closed in 2013 and 2014 respectively. 

Lenore Claire Herrem is a host and organizer of the long-running weekly karaoke event at Notre Dame des Quilles, a queer bar and event space in Montreal’s Little Italy neighbourhood. She laments the lack of a “substantial, accessible [and] diverse range of permanent queer venues instead of pop-up parties at event spaces” in the city, while also highlighting recent efforts from young queer people to revitalize the sector. “Montreal has always been a beacon for DIY events, but with the escalating cost of living, lower-income queers can’t afford to spend as much time fostering these spaces,” says Herrem. 

The closing of queer venues doesn’t mean that queer people have stopped going out. But much of the focus of queer nightlife has shifted to events, rather than venues. Fostering community around an event series allows organizers to sidestep the uncertainty of the nightlife climate, while also giving them greater adaptability and bringing queer people into venues that aren’t explicitly LGBTQ2S+. In Montreal, there is a vibrant ecosystem of queer event series: dance parties like Queen & Queer and Blush, comedy nights like the Poly Mic and Bulge, burlesque and drag shows like Inter-Dimensional, Lust Cove and Slag Race, and ElleLui, which has a bit of everything. There’s even Sapphonix, an artist collective that puts on classical music events. 

These events have helped fill the gaps, not only by addressing the loss of permanent venues, but also by serving people in the queer community who feel unwelcomed by traditional queer nightlife. Many establishments in the Village cater to a predominately gay, cisgender male clientele. Other queer venues have been infiltrated by cisgender, straight clubbers, leading to uncomfortable interactions and the erosion of a community-focused atmosphere. “There’s a lot of gay clubs that have kind of been overrun and they’re not really queer spaces anymore, like Unity [a popular club in the Village] for example. So that’s unfortunate,” says Melody Grant, a Queer Karaoke regular.

When I first ended up at Queer Karaoke, accompanied by a gaggle of theatre gays, the scene felt so refreshing. This was the community I’d hoped for when I was clubbing in the Village at eighteen. The Village hadn’t exactly been a sanctuary for me. Straight girls liked going there for the music, safety or novelty, and straight guys followed. During my visits, the neighbourhood started to feel less like a meeting spot and more like an obstacle course of unwanted attention. 

Queer Karaoke was packed but intimate, messy but safe and, importantly, purely and authentically queer. Allies were more than welcome, but because it’s a free event, there isn’t a monetary incentive to cater to a straight clientele. I left my first Queer Karaoke event with new connections and a sore throat, eager to tell friends about it and come back for more. 

LGBTQ2S+ karaoke events help meet an important need for attendees to be seen in their full, unabashed queerness. “Performance is inherently queer,” argues Gaston. There’s a rich history of performance and creativity in the community: drag, ballroom, cabaret, music, performance art. Karaoke seems like a natural, more casual part of that tradition. For those who want to perform but aren’t professionals, events like Queer Karaoke provide an outlet. 

“I think that for queer folks, music tends to hold a lot of significance. Certain artists or songs or albums have been havens, helped us to realize who we are, shown us ourselves. There’s a lot going on inside of us and karaoke is one of the most fun ways for us to lay it out for the world to see,” explains Kathleen Barrett, organizer of Toronto queer karaoke event series Everybody Flirts.

Herrem cites the vulnerability, silliness and community spirit of karaoke as the source of its popularity with audiences both straight and queer. Karaoke seems like a good counter to both loneliness and a lack of sincerity, with all of its earnest, awkward glory. The activity has an innately intimate quality: singing is vulnerable, especially when you’re not a trained singer and you’re performing in front of strangers. Someone’s song choice can also tell you a lot not just about who they are, but who they want to be. Do you want to be sexy? Alternative? Fem? Masc? Theatrical? Do you want to indulge your inner child? Do you want to fit in, or stand out? Sometimes the reasons for your song choice are deeply personal; but sometimes you end up singing JoJo Siwa’s “Karma” just because you think it’ll be funny. 

For Barrett, a queer event should celebrate everyone in attendance. “If everyone in the room feels safe to be their truest self, regardless of what end of whichever spectrum they land on, you’re going to have a good time.” 

At Queer Karaoke, it feels easy to talk to a stranger and put yourself out there. It’s hard to be pretentious or cold when everyone is screaming along to songs. “I’ve had feedback, especially from the trans community, that … this space, because it’s not only run by but also populated by trans people, it’s something that is not only trans-friendly but trans-forward,” says Gaston. “That means a lot to me.” 

In creating strong community, it’s important to consider being queer not just in identity, but also politically. While many aspects of queer culture have gone mainstream or been co-opted, queerness is fundamentally rooted in politics and activism. Queer Karaoke tends to these roots by regularly posting about and having its hosts attend protests, and by holding fundraisers at its events. Rather than being asked to pay an entrance fee, attendees are encouraged to donate to causes like the Montreal Trans March, the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal and PAL Humanity, an initiative raising money for healthcare in Gaza. For the hosts of Queer Karaoke, activism is an important part of building community, and something that can coexist with nightlife. “It’s hard to escape the reality that the personal is political—queer and trans joy is inherently radical,” says Gaston. “We want to practice our ethics and values, not just state them. So to say we are pro-Palestine or pro-Land Back or pro-trans rights or any of that but to not use our platform/event to actively practice [those politics], that goes against who we are as a team and as individuals.”

For its first birthday this past August, Queer Karaoke returned to where it started: Bar Milton-Parc. That evening, the venue is warmly lit, with plants everywhere and shelves full of board games and anarchist literature. It’s the end of the summer, and in some ways it feels like a last hurrah. As attendees write their names and songs down in a notebook that gets passed around, the energy is feverish. When someone performs Charli XCX’s “Guess,” the crowd screams along fervently, “You wanna guess the colour of my underwear!” Friends, couples and in-betweens slow dance as someone croons Stephen Sanchez’s love ballad “Until I Found You.” When someone brings out their guitar to sing a Noah Kahan song, Gaston gets on their knees to serve as a mic stand. 

With its chaotic atmosphere, Queer Karaoke isn’t polished; if it was, it wouldn’t be Queer Karaoke, an event that’s so characteristic of classic, scrappy Montreal nightlife. “It’s not about making money, it’s just about having a common goal of enjoying your night,” says Ouellette. “It might feel simple, but in this overstimulating society and [era of the] limited attention span, I feel like those moments are really rich and really important.” 

On this night, Queer Karaoke is selling shirts designed by Haley-Lock featuring “karaoke rat,” the event series’ grungy little mascot. The bar is also serving a signature “rat piss” cocktail; no one knows what’s in it, but it’s pink and sparkly and it sells out. Few sounds are as comforting to me as the sound of jingling carabiners as people dance. I overhear someone hyping up their friend; “We will slay the house down boots pussy queen.”

For years, I was a self-appointed spokeswoman for the karaoke box, a type of karaoke bar where you and your friends rent a private room by the hour to sing to your heart’s content. I thought it was fun to perform and to see my friends sing poorly, but that it was boring to watch strangers sing poorly. I’ve come to think that this attitude is counterproductive to creating community. We live in an era where many preach protecting your peace, setting boundaries and believing that you don’t owe anybody anything. It’s an ideology rooted in capitalism, one that tells you to isolate and to ignore the wider world rather than engage with it. It distances us from our humanity. Friends and family are important, but so is the girl you meet in the bar bathroom who becomes your soulmate for one night. Even if you don’t owe anyone anything, it’s worthwhile to grant others your attention and patience—if only to sing along to an Amy Winehouse B-side. 

At Bar Milton-Parc, the night ends the way Queer Karaoke always does, with Gaston singing “Somebody To Love” by Queen. On their knees again, their voice a little hoarse now. The crowd has thinned out by 1 AM, but people hold each other close.  ⁂

Nadia Trudel is a Montreal/Tiohtià:ke-based writer, editor and general attention-seeker. Her work has appeared in places like the CBC, MTV News, the Montreal Review of Books and Headlight Anthology.