When Sam Smith released a much-discussed cover of Whitney Houston’s hit “How Will I Know” in 2014, he made two key changes—one daring, the other depressing. He slowed the pace, inverting the original’s froth to bore straight into its pain. But he also neutered the lyric, censoring the “boy” Whitney had pined for to instead aim all his yearning at a genderless, anonymous “you.”

Why would an out gay artist—one frank enough to repeatedly discuss the man whose romantic rejection inspired his breakthrough album—still get cagey about pronouns in a cover? Smith gave a tidy explanation in his Fader cover story: “I’ve made my music so that it could be about anything and everybody—whether it’s a guy, a female, or a goat.” That sounded inclusive enough to snow plenty, especially those who never liked thinking about man-on-man lust to begin with, even within the unseen ether of a pop lyric. But for gay people—and for the increasing population that identifies with them—Smith’s move probably felt like a drag. Certainly that’s how this gay person felt.

Here was the top-selling openly gay star in current pop—as well as the only artist of his sales stature to ever come out during his first flush of fame—still deflecting, still making assumptions about what the mainstream audience wants or needs. In the process, Smith implicitly extended a history of hiding. And for what—the pretense of universalism?

Smith’s lyrical tweak came as a contrast to far more progressive changes in pop, which had begun to gather steam right around the time of his Whitney cover. Over the last three years, increasing numbers of LGBT artists have pointedly used the proper pronoun when singing of their romantic pursuits. That growing list includes Frank Ocean, Tegan and Sara, John Grant, Olly Alexander, Troye Sivan, Kevin Abstract, Mary Lambert, and Chad King of the hit duo A Great Big World. At the same time, Smith’s reticence speaks to something LGBT artists have long felt uncomfortable expressing. Decades after gay artists felt emboldened to announce their identities, many still shield their lusts.

Why has desire lagged so far behind identity in queer pop? Why have so many LGBT stars felt comfortable saying who they are but not who they want?

If you survey the history of queer music over the last century, you’ll see a group of people struggling with these questions, along the way coming up with lots of camouflages and codes to make their feelings palatable. As far back as the 1920s, blues mamas like Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith sang of gay characters, though they didn’t directly express their very real own desires in that direction.