‘TAKING A STAND,’ STRIKING A POSE

Gay Chicago Beefcake Spellbinds YouTube With ‘All-American Boy’

By Elizabeth Coady

T HE BUZZ POWERING STEVE GRAND’S ALL-AMERICAN BOY compelled me to check out the country-theme video about a gay hottie’s longing for a straight man.

I was blown away — not by Grand’s voice, not by the song’s lyrics, the production values or the pseudo-daring exploration of a gay man’s unrequited love — but by his dreamy eyes, his wavy brown locks, his chiseled six-pack and his beefy butt.

The producer of America’s so-called “first country gay music video” is a bonafide poster boy. Is that what’s propelling his song on YouTube?

Only uploaded six days ago, the five-minute country-themed tune has snared just under a half million hits and dozens of news stories.

“I fought with who I was for most of my life,” Grand said in a blog post. “In every way a young person can fight with himself. But starting today, I’m laying it out there. I’m done playing it safe.”

The former model is certainly putting his livelihood on the line: currently he earns his keep by playing music at four churches, according to The Backlot. “”Putting up this video, I’m not sure how [my jobs] will be affected. There are plenty of things in the video that make the church upset: smoking, drinking, there’s nudity, there’s a gay kiss. You know?”

Grand tells USA Today that the video, depicting a gay man’s longing for a male friend, was inspired by his own experience as a 13-year-older at camp. “One of my counselors was warm and strong and he took an interest in me,” he said. “Not sexually, but as a friend, and it really moved me. I remember leaving with a horrible ache in my heart.”

In the video his straight friend enjoys his company and even shares a sudden kiss but ultimately rejects the overture. Though many in the media have referred to the song as country, Grand himself tells The Backlot that he “I never thought of myself as a country artist. I think labeling it kind of takes the life out of it. I want people to call it what they want. In many ways, it’s country. It’s storytelling, and that’s what country is and what country music comes down to.”

No doubt another real-life experience left a pain in his heart: Grand says when he came out to his parents in eighth grade he was sent to “straight therapy” for five years. Of his therapist, he says: “He was a good man. He helped me with a lot of things…. but in my situation my therapist believed that homosexuality was the result of unmet needs in childhood,” he said. “….We just ended up having a completely different perspective.”

Not everyone is enamored of the video. Chicago Pride published a hilarious takedown of the video which starts like this:

Gay men drink too much, feel sorry for themselves, and come on to straight dudes when their girlfriends aren’t around: that’s the message from the music video of newly-minted gay country singer Steve Grand. And gay media is too busy fawning over the young stud to notice.
Maybe Grand figures that his fellow gays will be too distracted by the video’s lascivious preoccupation with his pouty lips and sculpted abs to notice that, as portrayed here, he is one false move away from some serious gay bashing.
The storyline has Grand continually offering his straight friend - out of sight from the guy’s girlfriend - his flask of whiskey, and once they are both drunk enough to do some skinny dipping, Grand goes in for a kiss. The object of his affections looks stunned before swimming away.

The reviewer ends with some advice for Grand: “Perhaps he might consider focusing his risk-taking on something truly perilous: the gay dating pool. You know, with actual gay men. That’s a shark tank that takes real survival skills.”

Yet most of the feedback has been positive, and Grand is thrilled.

“I’m not a crier,” Grand said an interview. “But since this all began, since people have been reaching out, I’ve been beyond moved, because so many people have felt what I felt, been through what I’ve been through.”

“Like I said, I would die a happy man today,” Grand told the national newspaper. “And it’s the first time in my entire life I can say that.”