I am right about to sign off, but before I do, I feel the need to post something besides pit material, or GD. Thus, I would like to ask people what their thought are when they hear a song being preformed by a singer of the opposite gender/preference of the original singer. What do you prefer? A female lead singing it in a different style? Almost exactly the same? Also, what if it was a romantic song. Do you feel offended if they change the pronouns to reflect what society expects/what they prefer. Do you find it comical when a pop singer talks about pursuing another guy, if the pronouns are not changed? Ever hear any examples when the singer kept the original pronouns, on purpose?
Personally, I recently listened to Joan Jett singing the classic Gary Glitter song, “Do You Wanna Touch Me? (Oh Yeah)”
Now, personally the original struck me as gayer then a Tom of Finland sketch, but having a women preform the song added a whole new level, but it didn’t sound quite as good.
Now, I am listening to Punk Goes 80’s. Much to my bemusement, “Emery” , a Christian emocore band, is playing a pretty rocking cover of Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out For A Hero”. The song includes the lyrics “He’s gotta be strong
And he’s gotta be fast
And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight”
and
“It’s gonna take a superman to sweep me off my feet”
I can not stop chuckling.
Now, anyone who cares to comment, give examples of anything relating to gender and remakes, or etc.?
I hate it when they change the pronouns. I figure if you’re covering a song sung by someone of the opposite gender, you do it straight, so to speak. Change the pronouns and you get that horrible “I Saw Him Standing There.” Keep them as is, and you get things like the White Stripes magnificent re-casting of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.”
I was at someone’s house many years ago, and on their piano I saw the sheet music for “I’ve been to Paradise (But I’ve never been to Me)”, the romance novel -like inexplicable hit for Charlene from about 25 years ago. The song is pretty insufferable by itself. As I say, it pretty clearly seems to me to be told from the point of view of a heroine ffrom a romance novel to a reader of same, although no reviewer or critic writing about it seems to have caught onto that interpretatioon.
So I was flabbergasted to find, on the back page of the music, alternate lyrics for a male singer. Hard to believe such a thing could exist, given the context (which the male lyrics are consistent with), but there it is. I never heard anyone sing this monstrosity, and I hope I never do.
Me First and the Gimme Gimmes do a great cover of “Natural Woman” that still makes me giggle every time. Great song, both the original and the cover, but the way the male lead sings it like he obviously doesn’t give a damn that he doesn’t happen to be a woman is fantastic.
Caetano Veloso, the Brazilian superstar, did an all-English album a couple of years ago that I adore – he covers So in Love, Cry Me a River, It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding), and Come As You Are, etc. etc. etc. One of the best songs is The Man I Love, which he sings, er, “straight,” with no changes in the lyrics at all. (“Someday he’ll come along, the man I love, and he’ll be big and strong, the man I love…” etc.)
Tracy Grammer covers Neil Diamond’s “Solitary Man” straight.
Then again, she also does “Crocodile Man,” but it’s not a cover as it was written by Dave Carter (don’t know if the original intention was for him to do the vocals, or her.) But then “Crocodile Man” was covered by Chris Smithers (male). And I hear Mary Chapin Carpenter was going to cover it too.
On the album of Gershwin tunes sung by current pop folks, Elton John sang a modified Someone to Watch Over Me: “I’d like to add her initials to my mongram…”
Not only does that make no sense in the traditional monogramming process, but since he’s into guys he could have just left it as the original.
I’ve often thought that song would be more appropriate for a male, simply because every woman needs no outside influence to feel like one. Nor would they know what it feels like not to be one. It’s the perfect song for a post-op transexual.
The same holds true for Shania Twain’s “Man, I Feel Like a Woman.” That’s great Shania, but how do you know what it feels like not to be?
And Blondie also did “Denis”, which was a cover of Randy and the Rainbows’s “Denise”. So, they made the original female name male in a weirdly French sort of way. Truly inspired.
Never been done that I’ve heard, but I have a vision of someone re-making “You May Be Right” by Billy Joel - but as a duet. In my mind the first verse is done by a male, singing directly to a female, and then in the second verse he sings most, but she sings some of it (“I told you dirty jokes to make you smile”, and “I said take me as I am” in particular).
This may be pretty obscure, but I’d love to hear a good guy singer doing a cover of “Maybe he’ll notice her now” with switching the gender pronouns, “Maybe she’ll notice him now.”
(Though it isn’t obvious from the title, the singer’s gender should match, since he/she is supposed IMO to be converting a me/you situation into third person to avoid the immediateness, until the end, when she switches back to “I’m coming home, maybe you’ll notice me now.”)
Aretha Franklin covered Otis Redding’s “Respect” and by changing the character from a man to a woman created a classic song that had far more power than the original.
This may not quite be “off topic” but is “adajacent topic” at best.
I’m a straight guy, and I think one of the reasons I’ve always been into Melissa Ethridge’s music is that I can sing along secure in the knowledge that both Melissa and I are singing to women, if not necessarily the same set of women.
I’ve got a Motley Crue tribute album and an all female band does a cover of Girls, Girls, Girls that’s just awesome. They even do some ‘vroom, vroom’ noises at the beginning to imitate the motorcycles.
I popped in to mention Lyle Lovett’s (and the Blues Brothers’, for that matter) version of Stand By Your Man, but the more I think about it, the more I question whether it satisfies the criteria in the OP since it’s not necessarily a first-hand account.
I always appreciated the fact that Bob Dylan didn’t change the narrator’s gender in “House of the Rising Sun.”
When you hit you HIT. That’s what I was thinking of. It’s a good song in the first place but Aretha brought it to a completely different level but changing the gender.