The Bilerico Project | Daily experiments in LGBTQ

Ocean Colour Scene, a late 90's britpop band, had its lead singer forced out of the closet in 1998 by The Sun. Simon Fowler wasn't even out to his family yet, but that's the way the British tabloids roll - outing's A-O-K if it'll sell papers.

Here's an acoustic version of the band's "The Circle":

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And Simon Fowler, after the jump, on the effect of outness on record sales.

I began to think if it was the thing about me being gay in the press,' Simon muses. 'I don't know. I can't see why that album didn't sell as much. It sold 500,000 copies which today is amazing but 'Moseley Shoals,' sold 1.3 million and I don't know why the sales dipped. There are so many intangibles but for me it was as good as anything we had done. That period was probably the most self confident I've ever been in my life. We were pop stars for eighteen months. We were the third biggest selling band in the country and it was because of Oasis opening up the way for bands like us.'