Rita De Los Angeles Fantasizes on Queer Country Crooner “Slow Dancing”

Rita De Los Angeles’ latest country music dispatch arrives from Germany in the form of a tender waltz, “Slow Dancing.” De Los Angeles may be familiar to lesbians in San Franciso, New York, and LA for her cafe Little Frida’s Coffe House and her zine Female FYI. De Los Angeles now splits her time between Cologne, SoCal, and her hometown of LA.

De Los Angeles grew up listening to country, rock, and Arabic music in the backseat of her Egyptian parents’ car. All of those sounds influence her country music, and “Slow Dancing” has a bubbling undercurrent of fluidity, even as it embodies the warmth of a classic country waltz.

“I wrote “Slow Dancing” after playing a gig of mostly linedance music all night,” De Los Angeles explains. “At the end, I played a few ballads  and it was wonderful to see all of these ‘in love’ couples slow dancing to the songs I was singing. In fact, it was downright sexy.  It made me miss my wife who was traveling thousands of miles away.  I went home and wrote the lyrics while pining over my wife, who coincidentally does not like to slow dance. I guess you can say, I was fantasizing that she would come home from her trip and slow dance with me on a Friday night.”  

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