American LGBT singers

Swen Swenson (January 23, 1930 - June 23, 1993) was a Broadway dancer and singer. Born in Inwood, Iowa, Swenson was trained by dancer Mira Rostova and at the School of American Ballet.
Openly gay, he had featured and co-starring roles on Broadway in such musicals such as Wildcat with Lucille Ball, Little Me (for which he received a Tony Award nomination, and in which he introduced the standard "I've Got Your Number"), A Joyful Noise, Annie, No, No Nanette, I Remember Mama and the 1981 revival of Can-Can. He appeared in movies and on television variety shows, including Your Show of Shows and The Ed Sullivan Show.
Swenson died in 1993 of AIDS-related illness.

Gladys Alberta Bentley (August 12, 1907 – January 18, 1960) was an American blues singer, pianist, and entertainer during the Harlem Renaissance.
Her career skyrocketed when she appeared at Harry Hansberry's Clam House, a well-known gay speakeasy in New York in the 1920s, as a black, lesbian, cross-dressing performer. She headlined in the early 1930s at Harlem's Ubangi Club, where she was backed up by a chorus line of drag queens. She dressed in men's clothes (including a signature tail coat and top hat), played piano, and sang her own raunchy lyrics to popular tunes of the day in a deep, growling voice while flirting with women in the audience.
On the decline of the Harlem speakeasies with the repeal of Prohibition, she relocated to southern California, where she was billed as "America's Greatest Sepia Piano Player" and the "Brown Bomber of Sophisticated Songs". She was frequently harassed for wearing men's clothing. She tried to continue her musical career but did not achieve as much success as she had had in the past. Bentley was openly lesbian early in her career, but during the McCarthy Era she started wearing dresses and married, claiming to have been "cured" by taking female hormones.

Edward Droste (born October 22, 1978) is an American singer-songwriter and musician, formerly of the rock band Grizzly Bear. The group began as the solo effort of Droste with the release of 2004's Horn of Plenty, originally released on Kanine Records. All songs were written and performed by Droste. By 2005, the group expanded into a four-piece, with Droste still as a contributing songwriter. He left the group in 2020.

Francesca McKnight Donatella Romana Gregorini di Savignano di Romagna (born August 7, 1968), known professionally as Francesca Gregorini, is an Italian-American screenwriter and film director.

Claudia Miriam Gonson (born April 5, 1968) is an American musician best known for her work with The Magnetic Fields. She often provides the band lead vocals as well as performing the piano or drums. She is also the band's manager.
Gonson met Stephin Merritt in high school in the early 1980s, and the pair have worked together ever since.
While in high school at Concord Academy, Gonson performed in her first band, the Zinnias, in which Merritt wrote or co-wrote most of the band's material with John Gage. The band broke up when Gonson left to attend Columbia University. Gonson later returned to the Boston area to attend Harvard University, and joined the group Lazy Susan, which also included Therese Bellino and Shirley Simms.She has since performed on many of Merritt's albums, including the critically acclaimed 1999 album 69 Love Songs, and frequently appears with him live as part of the usual quartet that constitutes The Magnetic Fields.
Gonson has been Merritt's longtime manager. She appears extensively in Strange Powers, the 2009 documentary by Kerthy Fix and Gail O'Hara about Merritt and The Magnetic Fields.
As well as her work with Merritt, Gonson also plays drums in the band Tender Trap. She has written and performed her own music with Shirley Simms, Michael Hearst, Tanya Donelly and Rick Moody. She has also played drums in Providence, Rhode Island-based band Honeybunch and performs as the lead vocalist in Merritt's Future Bible Heroes project. She sang on Neil Gaiman's song "Bloody Sunrise".In an interview with The Advocate, Gonson remarked:
"When we started Magnetic Fields we purposely had one lesbian, one gay guy, one straight woman, and one straight man. The audience could identify with whomever they wanted."In that interview, Gonson noted that she feels that Merritt's songs are predominantly about "Loneliness, isolation, and the need to be recognized by another person." She believes that if homophobia were not so prevalent, these experiences "would be less rampant instead of being so associated with the gay personality." Gonson believes that many LGBT youth have listened to The Magnetic Fields for "words of wisdom".
In 2010, Gonson gave birth to her daughter Eve.

Melissa Ferrick (born September 21, 1970) is an American singer-songwriter. She is a music professor at Northeastern University and at Berklee College of Music.

Jonathan Rashleigh Knight-Rodriguez (born November 29, 1968) is an American pop singer. He is best known for being a member of the boy band New Kids on the Block. The band also includes his younger brother Jordan, and members Donnie Wahlberg, Joey McIntyre, and Danny Wood. He is the oldest member of the band and the first to leave it in 1994 prior to their official split.

Phranc (born Susan Gottlieb; August 28, 1957), is an American singer-songwriter whose career began playing in several bands in the late 1970s Los Angeles punk rock scene. Her musical style later shifted during the 1980s as a solo artist, into a self-proclaimed "All-American Jewish lesbian folksinger."