Replacing "She" with "He" Etc. in a song - C/D

RE: "Meaning it" - there's not a whole lot of "meaning it" in Lola either - I think they just liked the song.. But the song would not have worked if the lyrics had been changed.

"And they didn't change the gender, correct?"

I'm not sure Lola's a particularly helpful example to choose, since it's actually all about girls being boys and boys being girls; and why it's a mixed up muddled up shook up world.

How about New England? Originally written and sung by Billy Bragg of course as "I don't want to change the world, I'm not looking for a new England, Just looking for another girl"; but later covered by Kirtsy MacColl as ".... are you looking for another girl?".

Personally I think the lyrics work better the way Kirsty sang them...

Smart move.

For some reason that's the first one that's bugged me.
And I didn't even like the original!

among other changes, she switches gender on the last line of the first verse, from "bobby says it's fine..." to "[some woman's name] says it's fine..." i forget the exact name she uses, but i remember thinking that it doesn't sing as well as bobby.

and that, to me, is the single biggest problem with some gender switches. the word has to fit the music, and "he" and "she" are not always interchangeable in that sense.

"He's got eyes of the bluest skies.." Die Sheryl Crow! You're disgracing the original lyrics! This is not how the song was intended to be sung! You have no right! And what you're too stupid to realize is that it might make the song sound cooler if you had just left the genders alone.

It was a crappy cover, but I was at least somewhat happy with Sixpense None The Richer's decision to leave it as "There She Goes." A few months later, I figured out that "she" was heroin.

"Those pussies."

Yeah, they should have turned it into "Then I Kicked Her" like The Lurkers did.

OK, maybe not.

However, all male-sung versions of "the lady is a tramp" have a tendency to send me into a murdeous rage. The original context of the song is basically "you know what? people call me a tramp because I'm common, I like stuff which any lady wouldn't, I 'don't dish the dirt with the rest of the girls', 'I'm all alone when I lower my lamp', etc, so, yeah, I'm a tramp, fuck you." - it's lyrically fantastic, and it's a clasic piece of word-reclamation.

But of course if a good song exists it can't just be for the girls to sing, o no! That would be wrong! Some tosser went off and rearranged the lyrics a little, and the most successful version was sung by a bloke, and it's one of the most unpleasant, offensive versions of a song ever recorded. I do not take kindly to Buddy Greco or whoever warbling on about how the object of their affection is a "tramp". Twats.

Wait, she does? I always heard it as "you've been going with another guy". Especially since he used to wear all of her clothes, etc.

Case 2)
The furys and david arthur (or sumat like that) - a bunch of thyme... was sung as original "a lusty sailor perchance to come my way" "he gave them to me" but were made to change the words on top of the pops to "come her way" and "he gave them to mHer" (i.e. almost forgot there)...

I wonder why he did that and indeed why it took him so long to come out 'though.

Could it possibly be that he didn't think he'd sell as many records if he came out of the closet?

Personally I thought it was pretty obvious which side Mr. Stipe's bread was buttered as early as Gardening At Night.

Jeez, maybe so - I always thought she was changing it, though.

Heh, the official Cyndi Lauper site is embarrassingly completist:

http://www.cyndilauper.com/album_det.php?shname=ssu

Well, actually, the Beach Boys made it "Then I Kissed Her" (and it's a Crystals song, btw), but I would've preferred "Then She Kissed Me" for that female-aggressor side to it.

On the studio version of the Magnetic Fields' "Candy," which Susan Anway sings, there's a line that goes, "I can't be the man they want me to be." When Stephin Merritt performs "Candy" live, he sings it as, "I can't be the girl they want me to be." I like that. (...and, my guess is that the song had trans-personality Candy Darling in mind, which makes the gender-switch even more appropriate.)

And, when Future Bible Heroes covered the forementioned "Don't You Want Me?", Stephin sings the part of the waitress and Claudia sings the male part.

Can't be as bad as Reading's punk heroes the K9's version of it:

"I met her at the candy store
I fucked her 'til my balls were raw
That's when I fell for
A dose of the clap"

Other people have noted before how Tyler James' version of White Town's 'your woman' seems to have dequeered it (or whatever), making it sound more sung-to-a-lesbian. He leaves the "i could never spend my life with a man like you" lyric in, is the thing: the only lyric changed is "you're such a charming, handome man" to "said I was a charming handsome man". And yet it feels like the whole thing has been changed! Also, would the song lose any effect it had if it were sung by a girl?

Plus - I've not met anyone who dislikes the Meloboy/Justus Köhnke version of 'hot love' for changing the lyrics; is there double-standarding going on here?

(see also threads
Cover versions that change the meaning of the song
Cover Songs by Opposing Gender... )

Maybe Tyler James's vocal mannerisms are the root of the dequeering? his phrasing etc is resolutely traditional boy-singing-to-girl stuff.

What were the original lyrics of 'Hot Love'? I've never heard it.

I don't know how easy it is to hear an average-sounding male singer-songwriter and not assume he's singing to a girl (in the video he's very direct on to camera, which also automatically to me == singing to girl, despite the 'leave right now' video). How much direct male-to-male address stuff is there, really?

I was thinking that KD Lang should do it, but, bless her, her version probably wouldn't be that far off from Tyler James'.

Even with 'Leave Right Now' I don't get an overwhelming sense of SINGING TO A BOY (though obv he is) - maybe with a few PSB songs I do, but they're hardly the most carnal of bands.

(i wonder whether melissa etheridge and so on directly address?)

Lots of standards in the Rodgers & Hart / Cole Porter mode were often intended to be switched as necessary, though there are exceptions, like "The Man I Love." It's hard to sing "and she'll be big and strong, the girl I love...."

Lots of English & Irish & Scottish trad-folk songs of the "Wild Goose," "Fairest of all Yarrow" type are first-person male-female love songs, and they generally sound fantastic when sung by yr Jean Redpath or Kate Rusby type.

There are several pretty good folk songs that have a male singer embodying a female character. Richard Thompson has done this, and there's John Prine's "Angel from Montgomery." But the grandaddy of it is Richard Shindell, e.g., "Mary Magdalene" and "Reunion Hill" ("I cleaned the brow of many a soldier, dowsing for my husband's face.")

I have never heard a Melissa Etheridge song but I'm pretty sure Ani DiFranco's directly addressed it, Ani DiFranco's entire raison d'être is pretty much to Directly Address things. but like Rufus, a different thing to stuff which charts.

Have some Ovaries!

If we went just by 'getting into the charts' we'd practically be restricting ourselves to Elton John!

-- I Dream Of Sleep (masonicboo...), August 22nd, 2005. (kate)

good call. you are correct.

(x-post)
but do you get pissed when they change the key? or the arrangement? or the tempo? songs are changeable things, always have been, always will.
-- fact checking cuz (factcheckingcu...), August 22nd, 2005. (fcc)

yeah yr right, i guess it pisses me off more when it's some dude band and i'm pretty sure their changing the he's to she's so no one will think they're gay.

I always liked how in the spanish trio Mecano -female singer, plus two male brothers who made all the music and lyrics-, the songs were deliberately wrote from the point of view of a heterosexual man but she didn't change the gender while singing them. Their love songs could be interpreted in a number of ways, I think it's to Ana Torroja's credit that she managed not to make the songs as dominantly gay or straight, etc.