Before Sandra Bullock made her adorable surprising reveal on the cover of People last week, the big buzz was over this week’s upcoming issue in which a “celebrity” was going to come out on the cover. Past celebrities who have come out in People include Neil Patrick Harris, Lance Bass, and Clay Aiken. A lot of us assumed that the big reveal would be someone that we’ve suspected is gay, but who has been tight lipped about it up until now – like Queen Latifah. She has a new movie coming out, Just Wright, next week, so the timing would be good for her publicity-wise.

Only it turns out that the “celebrity” is someone most of us have never heard of, and it sounds like she’s doing this purely for publicity and not to clear the air. It’s a country singer named Chely Wright. While this is surely a big deal to Wright, and is supposedly some kind of first in country music, it doesn’t really seem to warrant the cover of People. Maybe they should have held over their “Most Beautiful” issue until this week and let Wright give her news inside the magazine, not on the front. We’ll see if it sells for them. Queerty has this news, and while they’re not 100% certain that Wright will grace the cover of People, they sound pretty sure:

It’s definitely not Oprah or Kevin Spacey. It’s almost certainly not Queen Latifah or Tyler Perry. And it’s likely not even Matt Bomer or Kelly Clarkson. And while the current favorite for May 5’s big celebrity coming out points to country singer Shelby Lynne, we’ve got a more informed entry: Chely Wright, the 39-year-old American County Music Award winner.

Why Wright? Our curiosity piqued when a source at People magazine — which has secured an interview and spread with the person — wrote us a one-line email: “Have you considered it might be Chely Wright?” We hadn’t! So we started doing some digging. (A Queerty commenter, while we were working on this item, even floated Wright’s name in our earlier post.)
As it turns out, Wright, who’s been absent from the industry for a half decade, has a new album and memoir coming out (hah!) May 4. The day before her planned big reveal. The book is titled Like Me: Confessions of a Heartland Country Singer. The album is titled Lifted Off The Ground. And both should see a huge spike in sales with the buzz of a coming out.

Wright, who was named in 2001 to People’s “Most Beautiful” list, has much to gain from coming out. Namely, financial gains. Her first major studio record debuted in 1994. She’s released six records since. Only one album, Single White Female in 1999, went gold; its self-titled single, hit No. 1 on the country charts. She’s never repeated that success. So here comes her seventh effort at hitting it big: Vanguard Records releases Lifted Off The Ground on Tuesday, and the publisher Pantheon releases Like Me the same day. Amazon.com describes the book as “a book of revelation: honest, inspiring and true.” Indeed!

(NB: What about Shelby Lynne’s publicist’s remarks? Lynne’s publicist issued standard neither-confirm-nor-deny statements to Gawker about whether that country singer was going to be in (or on) People in the next issue. Such non-committal remarks can often be interpreted as confirmations. But if Wright is May 5’s coming out, that doesn’t mean Lynne isn’t gay, nor does it mean Lynne’s rep lied.)

So on the one hand, it’s not some A-list celebrity that’s coming out and changing the world. On the other hand, at least it’s not an “obvious” celeb like Johnny Weir, who is out in all but name only.

Meanwhile, a search to find anyone who Wright has dated publicly turns up empty. Even the website WhosDatedWho.com, which often marks two people as having dated if they were merely once spotted together in public, turns up empty on Wright. The closest she’s gotten to, ahem, marriage? A duet she co-wrote with Brad Paisley called “Hard to Be a Husband, Hard to Be a Wife.” And interestingly, there is no “Personal Life” section on her Wikipedia entry, suggesting it may be constantly scrubbed.

[From Queerty]

Maybe there’s no “personal” section for Wright in Wikipedia because no one cares! I don’t mean to be so rude, but let’s be honest – how many of you have ever heard of this person? A commenter on Queerty notes that they love country music and have two of Wright’s CDs, but says that it’s kind of suspicious that she’s getting the cover of People. “I can say that even at the height of her success – with back to back hits ‘Single White Female’ and ‘It Was’ (one of my all-time favorite country songs) – Chely was never a major celebrity. More than ten years after the fact, I seriously doubt she would warrant the cover of People magazine just because she was coming out.” Let’s judge this against People’s other covers, though. If Heidi Montag can be on the cover for 10 plastic surgery procedures in one day and Kate Gosselin can earn a cover with her cheap-looking weave, then this woman we’ve never heard of can bolster her career with a more compelling personal story.

While I was researching this story, I came across this editorial in Entertainment Weekly from 2006 with guidelines for celebrities coming out. Writer Mark Harris examines the strategies that celebrities have used to reveal their orientation and concludes that it “may be a model for maintaining one’s career and credibility while revealing homophobia for what it is.” It shouldn’t be “the most interesting thing about you” though, Harris explains, and uses the examples of T.R. Knight and Neil Patrick Harris already having well established careers before revealing the news. Have we reached the point where coming out is being used as a publicity ploy and not as a means to help spread awareness and acceptance? Does it matter when plastic surgery, multiple births, and personal tragedy have already been exploited by countless people to the point that nothing really shocks or interests us anymore? Can you tell it’s Monday?

Header image is from 4/25/10. Credit: WENN.com