Girls will be boys Boys will be Girls

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So what are the best songs about the fluidity of gender and which artists are the most interestingly fluid

― anthony, Tuesday, 24 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"If I Was Your Girlfriend", Prince

― John Davey, Tuesday, 24 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

terre thaemlitz

― francesco, Tuesday, 24 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

'Lola' by The Kinks.

― The Dirty Vicar, Tuesday, 24 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I love that song because it has the greatest hooks ( lola)

― anthony, Tuesday, 24 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The Who, "I'm a Boy" - unusually, it's about COMPULSORY FLUIDITY!

― dave q, Tuesday, 24 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The obvious answers come from those who made a point of playing with this idea: Reed (you name it... VU stuff as well as "Walk On the Wild Side"), Bolan, Bowie (what could be more blatant than the lyric "...and Lady Stardust sang his song of darkness and dismay..."?).

Interestingly enough, all these guys were later lambasted in a book by one John Gill, called Queer Noises: Male and Female Homosexuality in Twentieth Century Music, for "exploiting" a culture, ie, hamming it up in the limelight and pretending to be gay while actual gay persons were suffering. Gill also goes on to attack Eno (who, in reality, never claimed to be gay) and then claim that Miles Davis was gay based entirely on hearsay, so the actual validity of this argument, or at least its progenitor, is suspect, to say the least. However, it is useful as a vehicle to point out that, as is inherent in glammy sort of music, all that was going on in the above was some clever pronoun switching, no actual gender studies were being explored within the music. (The thought of a stage-makeuped Bowie with 5" red leather platform boots teaching in a lecture hall at the local college about the intrinsic differences between men and women comes to mind...)

― matthew m., Tuesday, 24 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Wayne/Jayne County

― dave q, Tuesday, 24 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Do drag queens count?

― Catty, Tuesday, 24 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Johnny Cash - Boy named sue.

― Geoff, Tuesday, 24 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Dead or Alive.

Zappa's "Bobby Brown."

― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Tuesday, 24 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Momus, 1995, written about Shazna Nessa: "I was born to be a girlish boy, and my lover is a boyish girl, and if everyone could be that way we could change the world / In the rough and tumble of boisterous horseplay, I could probably cry, for my lover is a boyish girl, and I am a girlish boy"

(if I remember any of the above wrongly Nick is welcome to correct me!)

― Robin Carmody, Tuesday, 24 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Massive Attack - "Protection"
The Smiths - "Sheila Take A Bow"
Another vote for "If I Was Your Girlfriend"
Tracey Thorn is very fluid because I can never tell what sex hir is.

― Dan Perry, Tuesday, 24 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

And yet another thread where I can mention Jobriath!! "The world is ready for a true fairy and I'm it."

― Sean, Tuesday, 24 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Jobriath, that is, not me.

― Sean, Tuesday, 24 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Ok, me too.

― Sean, Tuesday, 24 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Taylor Hanson.

― Catty, Tuesday, 24 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Sean, did you ever hear that Lance Loud story about his run-in with Jobraith in a piano bar in the early Eighties? Ann Magnuson makes it part of her act, before launching into her Jobriath medley. Apparently Lance heard that Jobraith was performing standards at some hotel cocktail lounge in Manhattan as Cole Something-or-other. Cole Black? And Jobriath/Cole had a request jar set up on the piano, into which Lance placed his request for "Blow Away". A few songs later Jobraith/Cole picked up Lance's request, looked out into the audience, and said, very seriously, "I'm sorry. I don't do my own material." Isn't that sad?

― Arthur, Tuesday, 24 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"Androgyny" by the Replacements is very unassuming and pretty. Artists: "Pretties for You"-era Alice Cooper, Roxy-era Eno, early Wayne Newton.

― Arthur, Tuesday, 24 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Arthur: I don't think I heard that story, but it is sad, as is much of his story. The name he was performing under was Cole Berlin, btw. Did you see that Ann Magnuson show? Hopefully she did it as a tribute, and not to make fun of him.

― Sean, Tuesday, 24 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Re: Ann. Oh no, it was definitely a tribute. In fact, she got very angry with the audience for laughing at the end of the story. They thought it was cute, ironic, kitschy thing (well, that is her bag, to some extent) and not a heartbreaking example of an artist losing faith in his own gift...

― Arthur, Tuesday, 24 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

There's that funny Robyn Hitchcock song, "Uncorrected Personality Traits."

Which artist? This is too obvious. Walter/Wendy Carlos, of course. Probably even before Wayne/Jayne.

― X. Y. Zedd, Wednesday, 25 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

ooo I missed an obvious one ... Pink Floyd's "Arnold Layne"

― Tadeusz Suchodolski, Wednesday, 25 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

...and Bowie's short-lived "Arnold Layne"-inspired "Arnold Corns" side project with men's dresses designer Freddi Buretti on pseudo-lead vocal.

― matthew m., Wednesday, 25 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

'Why Can't I Be You?'; 'Animal Lover'.

― the pinefox, Wednesday, 25 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

brian molko from placebo tries so hard but fails miserably.

― nathalie, Thursday, 26 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

sonic youth -- "secret girl" (kim gordon singing "my mother used to say to me 'you're the boy who can enjoy invisibility'")

interestingly fluid/androgynous artists: robert plant, most glam- metal bands

can anyone name any hip-hop examples?

― sundar subramanian, Thursday, 26 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yes Sundar I can: Tricky around 'Maxinquaye' did this fluid/andro/alien thing perfectly [enter all hiphop purists: Tricky ain't real hiphop]. That's before a real alien took over his body and made this utter shite Blowback. Outkast have a certain effeminate edge, sometimes.

Nathalie: true, but it's kinda fascinating to see him try so hard isn't it? :)

― Omar, Thursday, 26 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think Stephen Merrit has to be at least in the top 5. He writes gay love songs (as the songwriter for Magnetic Fields) then gets his female band member to sing the lyrics so it sounds htero. Word

― turner, Thursday, 26 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

and of course a boy named sue

― anthony, Thursday, 26 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I don't think much of boring old Sonic Youth, but at least now I know they quote Ulysses in their lyrics.

― the pinefox, Thursday, 26 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

i should have mentioned that it was a quote. it`s more the context that`s important.

― sundar subramanian, Thursday, 26 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Good old boring old Sonic Youth again, this time from 'Creme Brulee', sung by Kim Gordon - "Last night I dreamt I kissed Neil Young/If I was a boy guess it would be fun".

― Andrew L, Thursday, 26 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

How about Hanson? Okay, I'll stop.

― Dan Perry, Thursday, 26 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

one month passes...

"Jet Boy/ Jet Girl" by Elton Motello

― Spencer Sweeney, Wednesday, 5 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

you think you're a man
you are only a boy
you think you're a man
you are only a toy
you think you're a man
but you just couldn't see
you weren't man enuf
to satisfy me

Divine was pretty "fluid".

― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, 5 September 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

one year passes...

Johnny Cash - Boy named sue.
Naw. That song is ALLLL about being ALL MAN.

― Lord Custos Epsilon (Lord Custos Epsilon), Friday, 16 May 2003 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

six years pass...

while we're talking about country music - "man to man" by unknown hinson - a song from a man to his ex-wife who is now a man...

― beavis, Monday, 14 September 2009 16:03 (sixteen years ago)

Mott the Hoople - "I Wish I was your Mother"

weird but touching song, Ian Hunter imagines being not juat a woman but the parent of his love interest...the song is more about loneliness than gender dynamics, I think...

― henry s, Monday, 14 September 2009 16:36 (sixteen years ago)

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