Can You Spare Me A Dime?
On July 23, 2025, I got to go to an extremely memorable concert. On my very first post, I mentioned how bad Slayyyter was live; she was the opener. But the headliners for that show were a two-for-one: Kesha and Scissor Sisters. I had already seen Kesha in 2023, but her 2025 show was like watching an entirely different musician, in a good way. I wouldn’t have paid to only see Kesha again (even though I’m so glad I did because she was so much better the second time), so the real reason I went to this show was for Scissor Sisters.
It likely won’t surprise you to hear that music was (and is) a huge part of my journey of self-discovery when it came to my gender and sexuality. Scissor Sisters released their self-titled debut album in 2004, one year before I came out of the closet for the first time. Their blatant, in-your-face brand of queerness mixed with radio-friendliness and mainstream appeal made it music that I could listen to in the car with my mother without incurring her private wrath. It was also one of the first albums I bought when I got my first iPod.
Needless to say, I loved Scissor Sisters and listened to it quite a lot. As I did to their second, third, and fourth albums, Ta-Dah (2006), Night Work (2010), and Magic Hour (2012). They hadn’t released any new music since 2012, so their appearance as a headliner on a national tour in 2025 was a very welcome fact to me, as I had never gotten to see them live before.
I’m sharing a poor-quality video I took at the beginning of their set. I also cropped it to only the first twenty seconds, because everything after that is me dropping the camera and loudly sobbing.
“Laura” is the first track on their debut album, and, fittingly, the song they opened their tour with. It’s a song driven by piano and accordion. The lyrics are notoriously gobbledygook, and Scissor Sisters have repeatedly changed their story about what the song is about at live shows and in interviews, just picking a random woman named Laura and saying it’s about her—Laura Palmer, Laura Bush, etc. It also repeats a made-up word “sh’mon” as the chorus. Some think it’s the name “Simone” but that doesn’t make any more sense than the other option. The name “Laura” is said only once, as the first word of the song. It’s a fairly slow song on an album that is alternatively referred to as glam rock, electroclash, or disco. The song has two very different music videos, further leading to the confusion regarding what this song is about. It might not be about anything at all.
Nevertheless, “Laura” is far greater than the sum of its parts. I am heavily biased on this point, but I would actually argue it’s one of the all-time great opening tracks. That lickety-split accordion riff is so sticky. One theme that most listeners agree on is that “Laura” is about this band getting its start. In so many different ways, this song did get Scissor Sisters its start. It technically wasn’t their first single, which was a non-album track called “Electrobix,” which actually received so little attention that its B-side, a cover of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb,” was what people actually cared about. That cover ended up being track number three on their debut album, while “Electrobix” never made it onto any of their albums.
Back to “Laura.” I keep trying to put my finger on what makes it such a memorable song, and I think it’s that this song ties this no-skip album together thematically. From the coming out anthem “Take Your Mama” (which I later cathartically performed in drag, dancing with my own mother), to the heartbroken “Mary,” to electroclash filth “Filthy/Gorgeous,” to the hard-partying “Music Is The Victim” to the classic about growing up “It Can’t Come Quickly Enough,” “Laura” sets the seemingly incompatible tone between all of the wildly differing songs on the album. For an album so varied and so wonderful, this is no small task.
Fuck it, you should listen to the whole Scissor Sisters album. I’m sitting in my study after midnight sobbing, writing this. If you’ve heard this before, it’s probably been too long, and if you haven’t, there’s no better time than today. As I mentioned, this is a no-skip album, meaning there are no filler songs. Every song is meaningful, authentic, and unabashedly queer.