I read somewhere (maybe SDMB?) that Combs’ recording license for the song requires that he sing it EXACTLY as written without changing a single syllable. So he sings that he’s a checkout girl. In concerts supposedly, he changes it, since a performance license is different.
What’s a recording license? I thought you could record anybody’s song however you like without permission as long as you paid the royalties.
No argument, of course. It just seemed to be a bit of a blind spot for him… an oddity, I thought.
Oh well, in the past… Weird Musicians I Have Played With… 
Nope. A mechanical license allows you to record a song AS IS with no changes whatsoever. If you want to change the words, melody, etc., you need a custom license. The owner of the work does not have to grant a custom license and, I believe, Tracy Chapman didn’t.
Thanks.
Interesting, thanks. I, too, was under the impression you could record anything as long as you paid the royalties.
“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” was written by Robbie Robertson of the “Band”, who first recorded it.
The most successful recording was by Joan Baez - a female singing from a male point of view. A few words were changed from the original lyrics - without affecting the male-female theme.
Following up, according to NOLO:
How Mechanical Licenses Allow Licensing for Cover Songs
The songwriter or music publisher has complete control over the original recording of a song. But once the songwriter has made an original recording, or authorized another musician to make an original recording, any musician can make a cover version of it so long as:
- the cover version doesn’t deviate substantially from the original
- the musician obtains a license, known as a “mechanical license,” and
- the musician pays the associated mechanical license fee.
Mechanical Licenses Are "Compulsory Licenses
As noted above, once the songwriter has made an original recording or authorized someone else to make an original recording, they can’t prevent others from making a cover version so long as the musician making the cover version gets a mechanical license.
Mechanical licenses are a form of compulsory license, meaning that, to get one, you don’t need the copyright owner’s permission.
That doesn’t read as if it would have prevented Luke Combs from changing the gender.
FWIW (since I can’t recall where), I read that he considered the song perfect, and made the decision not to change anything, including the gender.
From 1928: Bing Crosby sings “There Ain’t No Sweet Man That’s Worth the Salt of My Tears”:
(Vocals at 1:16)
Great find!
Bumping to add a new find from 1926: Frank Bessinger sings “I’d Rather Be the Girl in Your Arms.”
Blossom Dearie sings Dave Frishberg’s “I’m Hip” - including the lyric “you notice I don’t wear a beard.”*
*which she indeed did not.
Here’s Phoebe Bridger covering Wheatus’s “Teenage Dirtbag”, turning the song into an adorable lesbian romance:
(For the record, for years I though that that was what it was supposed to be, until I found out that Wheatus’s lead singer was in fact male, so as far as I am concerned this is a correction).
Sara Bareilles, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”
Rainbow Girls, “Down Home Girl” (Girls singing the Stones version almost word for word just sounds even dirtier!)
Miley Cyrus, “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”
Yola also did a tremendous cover of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” in an alto register, using the lyric “This girl’s too young to be singing the blues.”
A New England by Kristy MacColl, the cover of the Billy Bragg song. There are no gender swaps but she changes the subject of some of the lines to make it clear it’s a women singing about a man:
“I’m not looking for a new England. I’m just looking for another girl.” => “I’m not looking for a new England. Are you looking for another girl?”
“I put you on a pedestal, they put you on the pill” => “I put you on a pedestal, you put me on the pill”
“When will you grow up to be a man?” => “When you grow up to understand?”
Nitpick: Kirsty MacColl. I’m sure she had to correct that a lot in her too-brief life.
Perhaps it was an autocorrect. Stupid AI.
Definitely Autocorrect. Growing up in the UK I met far more Kirstys than Kristys