This time two years ago, I found myself at my Grandma’s house, eating custard creams on the sofa with some family friends and speaking about the film Carol. I had loved it, I said, making vague references to the pretty outfits and intense orchestral score. But what I truly loved about that film had more to do with the fact it was a realistic romance between two women. Not only that, but neither of them had been violently killed in a car crash (see: Another Dead Lesbian ) or ‘decided’ to become straight at the end, and the way their relationship had unfolded on screen was more relatable than anything else I’d seen at the cinema.

Which is why, for me, this year in pop music has been particularly significant. St. Vincent, MUNA, Torres, Kehlani, Palehound and Syd among others have all released ridiculously good albums. And while none of these releases should be defined by their queer aspects or acclaimed as some of the first – that would be both inaccurate and absurd – I think it’s worth celebrating that they offer musically smart reflections of sex, dating and love lives entirely devoid of the male gaze or ‘otherness’ in a way that me and lots of others can properly relate to.

Speaking about queerness when it comes to art can be tricky. Gender and sexuality are far too fluid, nuanced and subjective to definitively pin to anything in a way that feels totally comfortable. That said, as a queer woman who sometimes feels alienated/bored by mainstream pop culture (Where are all the lesbians on Love Island?! Why is 'San Junipero' the only good thing in this life? I don’t care about Prince Harry. Is anybody going to stop Ed Sheeran singing pregnancy ballads?) it can be way more fun and meaningful to consume art that isn’t completely heteronormative – and that’s me speaking as a white, cisgender woman at that. Additionally, so much of pop culture that does speak to the queer experience is often centred on all the negative shit. No wonder people from the outside can harbour such skewed views.

One of my family friends said they’d also enjoyed the film for a variety of reasons. “I don’t mean this to be offensive...” they said, turning to me, in that way that preludes something probably offensive. “But before watching Carol, I just didn’t realise two women could really, really fancy each other like that, you know? I guess I just always thought queer women… secretly wanted to be straight.”

St Vincent’s MASSEDUCTION is an album that has everything to do with sex and nothing to do with dudes. “I can't turn off what turns me on, masseduction / I hold you like a weapon, mass destruction,” she sings on the title track in a way that calls to mind all the times you’ve had such good physical chemistry with a person it can momentarily black out all the other shit in your life. On “Sugarboy” she goes one step further by relishing in the gender-bending kink present in such a relationship, her voice slathered all over the intoxicating club beat like golden syrup. “Sugargirl, figurine / Pledge all your allegiance to me / Sugargirl, dissolve in me / Got a crush from kicked-in teeth.” For real, if that aforementioned family friend had heard MASSEDUCTION five years earlier, would she have stopped thinking queer women secretly wanted to be straight? Or would she still assume we all aspired to be more like Kevin and Susan from down the road?

If St Vincent’s MASSEDUCTION is all the melodrama that comes with intense attraction, MUNA’s debut album, About U, is more wrapped up in the softness, the regretful aftermath, the escapism and growing pains that follow. “There’s a few bad things I’ve done...” begins singer Katie Gavin over dark electronic drums in what I think is the best album opener I’ve heard all year. If you haven’t yet discovered MUNA, I implore you to rinse this record immediately. It’s everything good pop should be, sitting somewhere between Fleetwood Mac, Haim and the synthy soundtrack to a 1980s John Hughes teen movie. There’s also a deep emotiveness to their sound, an in-your-throat sensitivity that is hard to pinpoint, and even harder to articulate, but to me captures the specificity of queer loneliness and heartbreak in a very real way. “I wonder If I could ever ask for more / If I'm ever gonna ask for more from a lover,” she sings in “Crying on the Bathroom Floor”, reminding you of all the times you’ve had to police your emotions among people that lowkey don’t take them seriously, even when they’re threatening to bubble to the surface and explode.