Country Queer

Lifting up LGBTQ+ voices in country and Americana.

CQ Corral: Bobby Blue & George Sáenz – “Por Un Amor”

By Christopher Treacy

Queer indie-folk troubadour Bobby Blue returns this spring with the follow up to his transformative cover of the Madonna/Joe Henry collab “Don’t Tell Me.” This time out he’s performing a new take on a classic Ranchera (written by Gilbert Parra Paz in 1940) with help from fellow New York based musician George Sáenz. The pair deliver “Por Un Amor” with an assist from Zac Selissen on classical guitar, resulting in a mournful tale of heartbreak delivered without modern melismatic hysterics. Blue and Sáenz croon the painful tale and let the natural inflection of their paired voices do all the telling rather than relying on any showboating or flowery curlicues for emphasis. Not only is it refreshing, it’s downright mesmerizing and also a testament to the power of the song as it was originally written and intended to be delivered.

Mexican folk songs can certainly be sung with dramatic timbre to great effect, but Blue and Sáenz instead have chosen to let the bittersweet element of heartbreak inherent to the song’s lyric rise to the surface by not weighing the track down with unnecessary musical adornments. Bravo!

The fan made video frames the song beautifully with scenes we’re pretty sure you’ll recognize, furthering queering the classic song and making it Pride-season-centric.

For more information about Bobby Blue, listen online and follow his socials! Facebook | Instagram | Spotify 

The CQ Corral is an emerging feature at Country Queer that will bring you new music several times weekly, culminating every two weeks in the CQ Roundup our readers have come to expect. If you think your work could be a good fit for coverage at CQ, fill out our submission form!

Christopher Treacy has been writing about music and the music industry for 20 years. He’s contributed to The Boston Phoenix, The Boston Herald, Nashville Scene, and Berklee College of Music’s quarterly journal, as well as myriad LGBTQ+ outlets including the Edge Media Network, Between the Lines/Pride Source, Bay Windows and In Newsweekly. He’s the Managing Editor for CQ and lives in Waitsfield, VT.