No. 096 - Garbage’s “Queer” changed my life

A gift, a transition, and Layne Crawford’s full circle moment

Jun 27, 2025

This Song Changed My Life is an independent music publication featuring weekly essays from people all around the world about the songs that mean the most to them. Created (and illustrated) by Grace Lilly.

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• 4 min read •

I got into the passenger seat of my mother’s Mitsubishi Galant and threw my backpack in the backseat. My mom’s thick Boston accent cut the short-lived silence. “I gotcha something,” she said, nodding toward the bag at my feet. The bag had a smiley face with a toothy grin, an iconic logo for anyone who knew anything about music in New England. I pulled two CDs out of the bag; one was Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill, and the other had this hot pink cover emblazoned with a G.

“You said you wanted new CDs, so the girl at Newbury Comics said these two are good.” Almost thirty years later, I like to imagine the record store employee had a septum piercing and a Bikini Kill shirt. Nearly thirty years later, that unknown record store employee changed my life.

See, at 8 years old, I was a sports kid. I played Little League, but wasn’t good enough in the infield, so I was relegated to the outfield. I played basketball, but was relegated to guard because of my short stature. And I earned my junior black belt in Kenpo Karate because I wanted to be the Red Power Ranger. That all changed once I made a habit of sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night, pouring myself a cup of milk, topping it off with cereal, and watching music videos on MTV at a volume setting only prepubescent me and dogs could hear. (Have you ever had cereal and milk in a cup without a spoon? It’s a game changer.) Quite literally overnight, my focus shifted from sports to music, specifically alternative music, and I quickly enrolled in drum and guitar lessons.

When I got home, I played Jagged Little Pill on my Aiwa personal CD player, which was portable in the sense that it could be carried in the back pocket of a pair of JNCOs. Alanis was everywhere in 1996, and I went with what was most familiar to listen to first. Then I decided to give the hot pink CD a try. The trite saying don’t judge a book (or in this case, an album) by its cover rang true, because as a kid I detested anything girly and feminine, so I was a little apprehensive about listening to it, but gave it a shot anyway.

From the first drum lick on the first track, I was hooked. Then the second track began. It was eerie, dark — what I would later describe as a mix of goth and industrial. It was unlike anything I’d heard before. Then the chorus came. “The queerest of the queer, the strangest of the strange.” This word, queer, I had only ever heard uttered by drunken Red Sox fans at Fenway, but here it seemed powerful, mysterious, and dare I say, sexy. It was a song that I felt at the time could only be played in the privacy of my headphones. It tapped into my deepest fears and who I was and made me a massive fan of the band Garbage.

I knew I was trans as a toddler, but as a kid born in the 1980s and who grew up in the 1990s, I didn’t have the words to express how I was feeling. Despite being assigned female at birth (AFAB), I did stereotypical boy things, and my parents never forced me into anything that would be deemed “suitable for my assigned gender” (except wearing a dress for my First Communion; I’m still bitter about that). Still, I never outwardly said I was trans until my late 20s. Like hearing “Queer” for the first time in my headphones, I felt for the longest time that my gender identity should be private and kept close to my chest, which I so desperately wanted to get rid of.

There’s this saying in the queer community about your “egg cracking,” meaning, when was the moment that you knew you were trans, gay, bisexual, what have you? I believe my egg cracked at birth, but I chose to do nothing with that egg until I was 28 and then decided to make an omelet with every topping available at a hotel’s continental breakfast bar.

In 2016, I went to an adult summer camp for queer folks. It was after I came back when it was time to whip up that omelet and come out as trans. However, I didn’t cook it fast. I took my time, first having people call me by my more masculine middle name (now my legal first name) and using non-gendered pronouns. Eventually, I got top surgery, started testosterone, and began to use masculine pronouns. All the while, Garbage was a core part of the soundtrack of my transition.

I had a full circle moment in 2021. I took my mom to see Alanis Morissette and Garbage on the same bill for the Jagged Little Pill 25th Anniversary Tour. Although the band didn’t play “Queer” that night, I was brimming with emotion. My mother has always been my biggest fan and ally, and here in the muggy August Tampa heat, I was finally able to share with her the music she bought me all those years ago, the same music a closeted 8-year-old wouldn’t dare play out loud in her Mitsubishi Galant. ◆

About Layne

Layne Crawford is an advertising creative who has done everything from developing the brand voice for a popular hair care product to writing under a pseudonym for the adult entertainment industry. In his spare time, he likes to collect sneakers and chill with his cat, who he found under a van named Bonita Van Halen, and his goofy mutt, Buddy. Despite growing up in New England, Layne is a massive Philadelphia sports fan. Go Birds!

Instagram @themainlayne

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