How “Sweater Weather” Became a Bisexual Anthem
There’s a new kind of language forming in today’s queer comunities. Lines like “friends of Dorothy” or noted ring placement have been swapped out with a different way of finding out if a person is another member of the LGBTQ+ community. It’s not uncommon to log onto a platform like TikTok, go into a person’s comments, and see an exchange along the lines of:
“do you listen to girl in red?”
“nope. sweater weather.”
This shorthand through music has been emerging for a while now. The artist girl in red has become the online code for being a lesbian. She is openly gay and has penned several wlw (woman loving women) anthems, including a song called “i wanna be your girlfriend.” A notable line from her song “girls” includes: “They’re so pretty it hurts / I’m not talking ‘bout boys / I’m talking ‘bout girls / They’re so pretty with their button up shirts.” She’s fully cemented herself as a queer icon why she’s lesbian shorthand is pretty self explanatory.
The song “Sweater Weather” has also become a code, one for identifying fellow bisexuals. But the case for this song is a bit different. “Sweater Weather” is by The Neighbourhood, a band that does not have any members that are openly a part of the LGBTQ+ community. The song isn’t explicitly about being bisexual, either. But it’s there, in all the “bisexual” playlists on Spotify, and in all the TikTok, Tumblr and Twitter comments. So then, how did “Sweater Weather” become the definite shorthand for identifying as bisexual?
“Sweater Weather” boomed in popularity in 2013, reaching Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 chart. To today’s adolescents, it’s a piece of music that evokes nostalgia. But the song didn’t only find success on pop radio. It was also a notable staple on Tumblr, where The Neighbourhood had similar soft-grunge notoriety to artists like Arctic Monkeys, The 1975 and Lana Del Rey. With its dreamy, rock tinged sound, a song like “Sweater Weather” was the perfect compliment to bleary-filtered typography edits and moody photo sets.
As the 2010s progressed, this space on Tumblr provided a haven for kids questioning their identity. It was also the hottest place to discover up-and-coming queer pop stars like Halsey, Troye Sivan and Hayley Kiyoko. It’s possible that, being on the same Tumblr sphere, the soft-grunge dashboards that housed “Sweater Weather” art melded with this emerging queer pop landscape. There’s a likelihood that many of the people with nostalgia for the song that use Tumblr associate it with their emerging queer identity.
But it’s not just the time that “Sweater Weather” got popular, or the circumstances in which it got popular, that make it a bisexual anthem. The song’s content lends itself to a bisexual reading. The lyrics are decidedly intimate but also ambiguous. The speaker announces that they’re a man in the opening line, and later on that the addressee is a woman, but that seems pretty unimportant to the narrative. Other details pop out much more, like the speaker’s toes digging into the California sand or the addressee’s “high waisted shorts,” (high-waisted pants have coincidentally become a staple in some bisexual style niches, usually paired with a sweater.)
The song is also filled with imagery depicting closeness, touch and physical intimacy. There’s touching necks, fingers on tongues, beating hearts and holding hands, just to start. There’s also the emphasis on the song’s titular sweater, which becomes a beacon of warmth that is increasingly contrasted with “cold,” “goosebumps,” and pouring rain outside. One set of lines that really sticks come in the prechorus: “One love, two mouths / One love, one house / No shirt, no blouse / Just us, you find out.” These details could apply to a relationship consisting of any genders. And the physical touch isn’t all that matters, either. What is given the most attention is the “one love,” which gets repeated twice in these lines. The unity, the “us,” is what’s put front and center.
This contrast between the relationship’s intimacy, warmth and connectedness with the cold outside is a distinctly queer narrative. Long have people in the queer community created their own spaces to celebrate their love, even if the outside world is unaccepting. This is especially true for bisexual people, who can face biphobia from inside as well as outside the queer community. With its nostalgic ties to both pop radio and Tumblr, ambiguous depictions of intimacy that could represent a slew of relationships and its imagery of warm, comforting places, “Sweater Weather” literally constructs a safe space to return to with every new listen, a safe space removed from a cold outside world. For all the young queer people using it as a shorthand and celebrating their bisexuality by blasting it at top volume, its legacy has been thoroughly cemented.