"The Only Boy I'd Anything is Andrew in Drag"
- Riley Howe
- Feb 23
- 6 min read
I really truly believe that "Andrew in Drag" might be one of the best love songs of all time.
Ah, the classic LATBOTS Furby cover.
Ok, first off, readers, I've abandoned you! It's been months! Oops. Not sure why, after all this time (and a LOT of days with a cursor blinking at me owlishly like "bitch what's the holdup") THIS is what gets me to start writing. 40mg Vyvanse? Or just the indomitable aura of The Magnetic Fields? But this isn't about me. THIS IS ABOUT THE BEST SONG IN THE WORLD.
"Andrew in Drag"- off of TMF's 2012 album Love at the Bottom of the Sea- is an altish, pseudo-love-ballad, in which the male narrator sees his (also male) friend Andrew dress in drag as a joke and decides, "from here on [he'll] go stag," because no woman will ever compare to "Andrew in drag".
This isn't a new trope. Like, every blundering comedy movie or frat boy prank video ever has taken on the MOMENTOUS burden of asking: "Dude. What if a guy looked like a girl and you (god forbid) thought she was cute". Stop the presses.
Usually, this culminates in some kind of totally really intelligent subversive (haha imagine) joke where all the guy's friends point and laugh at him and his reputation is ruined forever. Haha, look! He fell for it! Bait and switch! Roll credits.
In real life, it's a little different. Being more "effeminate" might end up with the Girl-Who's-Not-A-Girl assaulted or threatened, and trans women (especially WOC) are statistically much more likely to be victims of a violent crime than other, more privileged, groups. Either way, the end result is: the narrative says they "tricked" and "manipulated" the guy into feeling desire, and that is apparently a worse violation than anything straight men have ever done to gay men and women, like, ever (and it's not even true).
But, the "Dude Looks Like a Lady" trope (thanks tvtropes.com) isn't inherently "bad": at least, it wouldn't be, if social stigma didn't proclaim that literally THE WORST THING that can happen to a man is OMG SHE HAD A DICK. Like, a girl's worst fear on the first date is ending up in a true crime podcast, meanwhile a guy's is that his date isn't "really" a girl.
"Andrew in Drag" isn't like that. It isn't peppy and bright, waving a rainbow flag and standing on a parade float, but there's nothing angry or violent about it. It's just melancholic. There's nothing for the narrator to be ashamed about, except that he's in love with someone he'll never have. And the listener isn't supposed to laugh at him: we're just supposed to feel sorry.
And we do. To me, at least, the narrator of this song is touching, and deeply likeable. The song is in first person, with casual language that makes it feel like the narrator is confiding in us. It isn't quite a secret, but he's not shouting it from the rooftops either: it's just a story he's telling to the stranger next to him as they take a cigarette break outside the bar, resigned and a little morose.
It isn't a neat and straightforward story, either; and while it's a relatively short (and repetitive) song the words that are there make the two characters- the narrator and Andrew- feel complex and real. The narrator uses the f-slur only two lines into the song, which jolts a bit when you're not prepared for it, but after literally hundreds of listens I can't bring myself to find it crude or wrong.
This isn't what we think of as the "Good Gay" trope, with a cutesy "awakening" that culminates in an emotional coming-out story. It's just some guy having a normal night with his friends who has his life momentarily turned on its axis, and doesn't even bother worrying about his sexuality because, really, all that matters is Andrew's gonna wash off the makeup and take off the dress and he's just gonna have to laugh and play along and then make the best of it for the rest of his life while going through the motions because, well. That was it. His "gay journey" and the great love story of his life just began and ended in five minutes in some dive bar.
It's simultaneously a deeply, wistfully, queer song while also not a queer song at all. The point isn't about being gay, or who gets to say the f-slur, or what Andrew looks like in a dress: those things are just the packaging around the kind of idiosyncratic love song TMF's do so well. But it's also evocative in a way a lot of "gay media" falls short of.
The lyrics play with genderbending and Queerness (as a capital-Q concept and not just a word), soaking in the fluid intersection between gender and sexuality without categorizing or labeling, using pronouns and gendered terms with a casualness that feels both timeless and nostalgic. It's a safe space without even trying to be. We're not Andrew, on stage in full glam, and we're not on the dance floor or laughing with friends. It's more like the narrator has retreated into his head and let us tag along for company.
"Andrew in Drag" is also, in the vein of other great POV narrative songs like "Jessie's Girl" and "California Dreamin'" (coincidentally, both also distinctively queer songs to me), addictive because it lets the listener imagine its own continuation, some epilogue that'll soothe the balm of the melancholic end note the original song ends on. Maybe the narrator will end up with Jessie's girl after all? Or Jessie himself? Or both? Maybe the man in the church will find something worth staying in town for?
These songs all play off of "liminal spaces", ensnaring the listener by dragging them into a bubble-like interior and leaving them suspended there unsatisfied and restless. Something has to happen next. It can't just stop there.
"Andrew in Drag" in particular keeps us in a liminal space where we - at least I do- want to know what Andrew's thinking. If he's having his own awakening. If he's on the interior or exterior of that queer safe space we're floating in way in the back of the bar in the dim light. If he's thinking I look so ridiculous this is hysterical or fuck this is embarrassing i shouldn't have agreed to this or ouch these heels hurt or am i supposed to feel like this or why do i feel like i'm getting away with something or am i alone here or is someone else in this bubble with me hearing the other guys laughing like they're a million miles away.
It's a song that is sad and sweet and messy. It isn't Drag Race, or Call Me By Your Name, or leather bars, or Freddie Mercury, or the handkerchief code, or the first chapter of a heartwarming best-seller book. Instead, it's our narrator telling us, "[he's] always been a ladies' man... but [he's] become a mama's boy for Andrew in drag" and you can't help but root for him, even if the song is ending in 48 seconds. This "straight" guy with his heart in his throat as his drinking buddy tries not to trip in stupid heels.
I have listened to this song hundreds of times and every time 2:12 comes faster than I expected. Every time, the doors of that shitty dive bar close on my face and I think fuck you we're not done here let me back in. I think it's some weird mix of wanting to know what happens next as life goes on (what happens the next time the narrator and Andrew are hanging out together, like normal?) and feeling somewhat loyally protective of the narrator at the same time, wanting to cling onto that bubble and guard it like a pack animal.
Because, yeah, it sucks being in the back of the room thinking I guess this is it, and I better resign myself to this feeling now. Knowing you're supposed to laugh it off but you can't pull your eyes away. Falling in love with someone who's only going to exist in your head for the rest of your life.
So, no, I don't think "Andrew in Drag" is a funny or silly- or offensive- song. It's actually one of my favorite love songs in the world. And, while the narrator goes home thinking about the girl he'll never see again, I'll click replay and think, this time there'll be a happy ending.
But maybe it is a happy ending. After all, how many people get to find that kind of love, even if it's just for one night on a dare?
xoxo byeeee
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