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During the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic—when testing positive was widely treated as a death sentence—pop icons like Madonna, Elton John, the Pet Shop Boys, Cyndi Lauper, and George Michael channeled grief, fear, and resilience into their music.

However, songs addressing HIV, AIDS, and serophobia aren't just artifacts of the 1980s and 90s. Artists continue to write about these themes today, keeping the conversation alive and confronting ongoing stigma.

Coolio – “Too Hot”

Coolio laid it down in his signature 1995 track “Too Hot,” a loose reinterpretation of Kool & The Gang's classic of the same name.

The track directly tackles the risks of unprotected sex during an era when effective treatments were non-existent, and a condom combined with regular testing were the only real shields available. The lyrics follow a long chain of sexual partners to illustrate how quickly a virus can spread unnoticed through a community until it hits someone living with HIV. Coolio calls out the absurdity of abstinence-only preaching from elders, urging people to be realistic, wrap it up, and take responsibility before a good time turns into a tragedy.

Down Low – “HIV”

German hip-hop group Down Low took a strikingly unique angle in their track “HIV.” The song is written from the first-person perspective of the virus itself.

It reads almost like a villain giving a warning speech: the virus describes its arrival in the 20th century, mocks human attempts to eradicate it with early drug trials, and warns listener after listener about the devastating impact it can bring to families and lives. Yet beneath the menace, there's a surreal, desperate tone where the entity demands attention from the public. It serves as a stark reminder of the fear and psychological shadow the virus cast over society in the late 90s.

Elton John – The Last Song (1992)

The story of a young man dying of AIDS who reconciles with his father at the end of his life. Elton John donated the proceeds to AIDS charities.

Elton John – “Ballad of the Boy in the Red Shoes”

Elton John has been on the front lines of AIDS activism for decades. Beyond “The Last Song”—which tells the heartbreaking story of a father coming to terms with his dying son—he also released “Ballad of the Boy in the Red Shoes.”

The song tells the story of a gifted dancer named Sigmund who is forced to step away from the stage as AIDS takes its toll on his body. While the character is fictionalized, the track strongly echoes the real-life tragedy of legendary dancers like Rudolf Nureyev who lost their lives to the disease.

Queen + Paul Rodgers – “Say It’s Not True”

Written by Roger Taylor and performed alongside Brian May and Paul Rodgers, “Say It’s Not True” was originally composed for Nelson Mandela's 46664 HIV and AIDS awareness campaign concert in 2003.

Later released as a global single for World AIDS Day in 2007, the song captures the overwhelming emotional shock, denial, and grief a person experiences the moment they receive a positive HIV diagnosis.

George Michael: Jesus to a child

Dedicated to his former partner who died of AIDS in early 90s, Anselmo Feleppa.

Anselmo was very sick when George performed his version of Queen's “Somebody to love” during the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, in April 1992, an event whose funds were desined to HIV and AIDS related research.

Bruce Springsteen – “Streets of Philadelphia” (1993)

Written for the movie Philadelphia (one of the first mainstream Hollywood films to address HIV and AIDS directly), this haunting track explores the physical deterioration, isolation, and social alienation felt by a man dying of AIDS. Springsteen’s understated vocals capture the quiet dignity and devastating loneliness of living with the virus during early 90s.

Lou Reed & John Cale – “Hello It's Me” (1990)

From their tribute album Songs for Drella (dedicated to Andy Warhol), this song also serves as a poignant farewell to friends lost during the early years of the epidemic in New York's art scene. It reflects on sudden loss, unsaid words, and the grief sweeping through creative communities.

Salt-N-Pepa – “Let's Talk About Sex” / “Let's Talk About AIDS” (1991)

At a time when public health education was stalled by taboo, hip-hop pioneers Salt-N-Pepa revamped their hit single into an explicit educational campaign track. They urged young people to break the silence surrounding safer sex, condoms, and HIV testing, playing a massive role in destigmatizing the conversation on mainstream radio.

TLC – “Waterfalls” (1994)

One of the biggest R&B hits of the 1990s, “Waterfalls” tackles two major societal issues of the era: street violence and the AIDS crisis. One of the verses explicitly tells the story of a young man who engages in unprotected sex, contracts HIV, and ultimately succumbs to the illness, serving as a powerful warning about health and lifestyle choices.

Jimmy Somerville / Bronski Beat – “Read My Lips (Enough Is Enough)” (1989)

Jimmy Somerville was one of the most vocal openly gay artists protesting government inaction during the peak of the crisis. “Read My Lips” was an angry, upbeat synth-pop anthem demanding funding, medical research, and an end to homophobic policy decisions that exacerbated the epidemic.

Safe Livin' in Dangerous Times – Automatic Pilot (1984)

One of the very first songs about AIDS. It was written for “The AIDS Show”, staged by Theatre Rhinoceros in San Francisco in 1984, probably the first musical on the subject. A practical, community-made song about staying safe when nobody else was giving information.

Living with AIDS – Romanovsky & Phillips

The gay folk duo Ron Romanovsky and Paul Phillips wrote several songs on the epidemic. This one, together with “No False Hope”, is among the ones they were proudest of: direct, honest and without euphemisms.

That's What Friends Are For – Dionne Warwick & Friends (1985)

Dionne Warwick, Elton John, Gladys Knight and Stevie Wonder recorded this charity single to raise money for AIDS research. The lyrics never mention the disease, but the song became a symbol of solidarity at a time when many people turned away.

Boy Blue – Cyndi Lauper (1986)

Written for one of Cyndi Lauper's best friends, who died of AIDS. The proceeds of the single went to AIDS research and patient care in New York.

It Couldn't Happen Here – Pet Shop Boys (1987)

One of the earliest songs on the subject by a major pop act. It comes from a conversation between Neil Tennant and his friend Chris Dowell about the false belief that AIDS would never reach Britain. Dowell died in 1989.

Domino Dancing – Pet Shop Boys (1988)

On the surface, a story of jealousy and a love triangle, with a Latin sound and a famously homoerotic video. Some critics read it as an implicit AIDS song, with the image of dominoes falling one after the other. The band never presented it as an AIDS song, so it is an interpretation rather than an official meaning.

Jimmy – Boogie Down Productions (1988)

KRS-One's classic hip hop track about using condoms. Often cited as one of the best safer-sex songs in rap history.

Halloween Parade – Lou Reed (1989)

Lou Reed walks through New York's Greenwich Village Halloween parade and notices who is no longer there. A quiet, devastating list of absent friends.

Being Boring – Pet Shop Boys (1990)

An elegy for Neil Tennant's best friend Chris Dowell. It looks back at youth and parties, and at the people who are “missing” by the 1990s. Many gay listeners recognised it at once as a song about AIDS.

I've Got You Under My Skin – Neneh Cherry (1990)

A Cole Porter standard turned into a dark warning about HIV. Recorded for “Red Hot + Blue”, a benefit album where artists reinterpreted Cole Porter songs to fight AIDS.

One – U2 (1991)

The song itself is open to many readings: the band's own crisis, German reunification, broken relationships. But the single was released as an AIDS benefit, with the band's royalties going to AIDS research, and its cover is a photograph of buffalo falling off a cliff by David Wojnarowicz, a gay artist and activist who died of AIDS in 1992. Through the single and its videos, the song became tied to the epidemic.

Dreaming of the Queen – Pet Shop Boys (1993)

Neil Tennant described it as an anxiety dream about the disease: a surreal meeting with the Queen and Princess Diana, where love seems to have run out.

Jonathan Wesley Oliver Jr. – Lee Lessack (1995)

A song about the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the giant patchwork made of panels sewn in memory of people who died of AIDS. Considered one of the most moving songs on the Quilt.

Goddam HIV – Mary Gauthier (1997)

Folk singer Mary Gauthier speaks in the voice of a man dying of AIDS. Raw and angry.

Together Again – Janet Jackson (1997)

An upbeat dance song written for friends lost to AIDS. Instead of mourning, it imagines meeting them again. It became a number one hit.

B.O.B. – Outkast (2000)

Not a song about AIDS, but among its list of unanswered questions it asks for a cure for AIDS. A sign of how HIV had become part of the collective worries at the turn of the millennium.

Want to listen to more?

• Queer Music Heritage – Songs About AIDS, a radio special by JD Doyle with hours of songs, many from the gay community.
• Soundtrack to a Pandemic, by the Thackray Museum of Medicine, with Spotify playlists.

Looking Back and Moving Forward

The medical landscape today looks vastly different from the 1980s and 90s. With effective Antiretroviral Therapy (ART), people living with HIV can achieve an undetectable viral load, meaning the virus cannot be transmitted (“U=U”: Undetectable = Untransmittable). Furthermore, Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) offers reliable prevention for those who are HIV-negative.

Despite these breakthroughs, stigma (serophobia) remains a major barrier. Access to treatment and prevention still varies wildly across the globe due to cost and systemic inequalities. The songs written during the height of the crisis remain vital reminders of how far we’ve come—and how important it is to keep fighting for global access to care.

Alessandro “Gifter,” content writer for the “PlusBrothers Poz world” project, talks about singer-songwriter Alessandro Bono: how can you go from hatred to respect?

The 1990s

My name is Alex, and I’m telling the story of my past as a hater, back when Internet was not yet available in every home.

How stupid we were back in 90s, even if general public didn't realize it!

Teenagers laughing at other people’s failures — including when the failing one was a singer-songwriter who died very young, Alessandro Bono. I wonder if he will ever manage to forgive us.

Alessandro, a.k.a. Gifter

Those who already know the “PlusBrothers” project have always seen us side by side without asking too many questions about whether “Elettrona” or “Gifter” was writing; now, however, it’s time to explain that I — Gifter — mainly take care of the fiction area.

I am a happily married gay man, passionate about singing and music, HIV-positive since 2013, but we are not here to talk about me because this space is dedicated to Alessandro Bono — who is not me.

The Bride: going back in time

Neither my husband nor I call ourselves “the bride.” I’m talking about a book that reminded me of a particular moment when I was 19. “La Sposa”, Italian translation for “The Bride” by Mauro Covacich, also available in e-book format for those who are interested – I doubt there's an English translation though.

I won’t deny that I strongly disagree with many thoughts shared in this work, but one story in particular reminded me of past years when I was a hater — perhaps even worse than the online ones.

It was 1994 and, on the threshold of my 19th birthday, I was already complaining about how Sanremo Italian music Festival was declining with Aleandro Baldi and Andrea Bocelli's victories.

“They’re mediocre and they won because they’re blind,” I used to say. My self-esteem was rock bottom, so it gratified me to lash out at those I considered weaker than myself.

At school I was “the nerd” studying at the conservatory. I had convinced myself I would have to die “healthy and a virgin” because I was attracted to men and terrified of AIDS — an infection that at the time offered no escape. And if targeting Baldi or Bocelli wasn’t enough, I behaved even more despicably toward another performance: that by Alessandro Bono.

Alessandro Bono? Who is that?

My name is Alessandro and “Bono” is a jargon to say that a man is handsome, sexy, hot; so, trust me. It's my picture.

No, seriously: Alessandro Bono is a singer-songwriter I learned — too late — to appreciate, but only after mocking him when he performed at Sanremo chewing a gum and his show was not the best at all.

“So these are today’s singers,” I used to say. “Alessandro, where do you think you’re going like that? Smoke less and stop using drugs, for heaven’s sake.”

I had seen him a couple of years earlier, in 1992, together with Andrea Mingardi, without paying much attention to his song “Con un amico vicino,” (“together with a close friend”) which placed third among the newcomers. In the end, that name disappeared like so many others.

If the 1992 performance was overall mediocre, two years later it was even worse: “I hope he disappears,” my disrespectful bully mentality allowed no forgiveness.

That’s why the book “The Bride”, mentioned by my colleague Elettrona while we were discussing Alessandro Bono, intrigued me and I decided to read it — unaware that it would slap me in the face with how much of a bastard I had been at 19.

Covacich recounts that distant 1994 evening when he was watching Sanremo with his girlfriend and other people:

“Will he manage to sing it all?” says the host, reading my mind. The whole living room bursts into laughter.

Right from the start, the performance felt like an announced failure — I fully agreed with the author and his friends.

[...] It’s especially the voice not working, it sounds like that of an amateur. If he’s really a champion, he should know that you don’t improvise. He should have worked on it for a long time — diaphragm, vocal cords, stage presence. It’s not just about hitting wrong notes; he should have practiced [...] Everyone can sing in the shower, but performing in a theater during a live TV broadcast is another story. Criticizing this guy makes me feel good...

Diaphragm! Vocal cords! Practice!

Exactly. Even though I stopped studying music, exercises accompany me daily. I love singing and, if I don’t want to lose technique, I have to keep training — even though I have no intention of performing in public. Singing for others would only take time away from activities I prefer to focus on, and it would expose me to haters both online and offline. Covacich explains the phenomenon perfectly.

“Criticizing this guy makes me feel good,” he says. That’s the point. That’s the reality: punishing with hostile words someone we consider inferior gives us the illusion of hiding our own failures for a moment. And when you’re a teenager, you behave like that very often.

In hindsight, I try to forgive myself, and Covacich was probably about my age.

Indeed, he reproaches himself for not understanding what Alessandro Bono was trying to communicate to the audience:

“The day will come when you will be / with a bottom as big as a whale / I will love you as I do now / you who have a mermaid’s body… / Or maybe not! I don’t know!” He gasped, swallowing constantly. “Oh my God, look — chewing gum!” shouted the host. “He’s singing with chewing gum!” And everyone burst out laughing. What a wonderful evening, laughing ourselves silly at that clumsy guy. He really does have gum in his mouth; I’m sorry I didn’t notice it myself — even back then I was known as a very observant guy, someone who noticed the smallest detail. And yet back there, in that other geological era, I’m too dazzled by the shining iridescence of his failure to catch such a detail. It all seems so instructive to me. I see the moral lesson, not the lost look. His eyes wander among the front rows searching for a friend or a relative, but I don’t see what they see. It’s easy — it would be enough to observe them with a minimum of attention — and yet I can’t. I press him: how can you not know whether you will love her forever or not? How can you not know whether that day will come? Don’t you feel confidence in the future irrigating your brain?

“His eyes search for a relative or friend in the front row.” Alessandro was afraid he wouldn’t make it, and now, when I rewatch that performance on YouTube, I see myself as a guy playing piano or singing for someone, especially during exams.

I always needed a reassuring look, even when there was no real reason to fear something going wrong.

What did Alessandro Bono want to tell us with that song? Sixteenth out of twenty — frankly, I would have given him last place. Covacich called it “quite a flop.” I was far less indulgent: in my view, Bono shouldn’t have gone to Sanremo at all.

Forgive me, if you can

In fact, someone much more authoritative had advised him not to sing at the Festival: his doctors. But we only learned that information two months after Sanremo. Alessandro Bono died on May 15, 1994, in Milan, before even turning 30. AIDS.

There it was again — the infection that terrified me and kept me from approaching sexual experiences. What off-key singer, what failure — Alessandro was dying, and with that song he was trying to share his sensations with all of us.

In hindsight, I think Bono was better than me. If he, with full-blown AIDS, had the courage to appear at Sanremo come what may, I spent years denying myself experiences out of fear. And when, twenty years later, HIV happened to me because of an unsuccessful relationship, I shut myself away until I found someone more stubborn than me — and in the end, little by little, I even married him.

“The answer, my love, is hidden in time.” You were right, Bono. And fortunately there were no social networks back then — otherwise they would have torn you apart even more than we idiotic teenagers, who thought we were perfection, already did.

“Stop using drugs,” I used to say to you — and you had already quit long before, focusing on music. Too late, and too early: because if your virus had left you positive without making you sick, you would still be here.

I even tried singing your song with my own voice. I looked for the instrumental track but didn’t record it, so only my husband, Elettrona, and my HIV can say whether I did it well — OR MAYBE NOT.

I can already hear your virus echoing mine: “I don’t know!”

Alessandro me, Alessandro you — both HIV-positive — and trying one of your songs made me feel as if you had personally handed me the microphone. I hope I was worthy of it.

In any case, forgive me for not understanding, for being one of your most relentless haters — until years after you left this world, when I finally had the chance to hear your songs and understand them better.

“Dentro l'anima”, Inside the Soul

Alessandro Bono was born in 1964 and died in 1994.

In May 2024, on the 30th anniversary of his death, Sony Music released a commemorative album titled Dentro l’anima (“Inside the Soul”). Finally, after years in which his songs seemed to have disappeared from circulation, someone decided to republish his greatest hits in digital and physical formats.